Digital Poetics 3.17 Asbestosis by Dom Hale

for L. & D.

delusions & fantasies of the comfortable, though through wailing
the coordinates convulsed, language ripped out of the sky
but holding it up on rotten pillars 
each one a lung the size of air traffic control, shadowing 
primevally, sun increaser 

we’re in the envelope, what used to get called ‘next week’, ‘a future’ 
opens & closes, flytrap spit me a serac, flowing deeper into the hulks of dead odes
plankton sown along
travel & tourism
where commitment leaves you to sweat, where
poets gouge out their barely defendable brains
or escape into storybooks, luxuries, merch, guidelines
a hallucinated comet   
become mum & dad or columnists in streetwear 
scrying commuters, and the bus driver tells me about her life 

tactics flitting between dissonance & pleasure
pleasure & dissonance & the fury for all the shit we never received, the cities
we deserved, time-cuffs dizzying me
I just write about my feelings 
another way of pledging this
bursts out of atomised hibernation, gainful symmetry 
all rise, lock leap 
to undefine myself
if boxrooms keep us at wallet’s length
the flexible writhing day, from home, or on a bike, 24/7 premium 
cardio while you graft 

and the debt in the hallway you owe
next winter, the final notice ahead 
eclipses a special Russian truth, a numb tablet

now dummy missing objects take the spot of the dream out there
til the air itself’s been accounted for & made accountable by monitors
bound incentive
as best as you can 
equals soldiering on of a suit & tie
the political party’s cinema, screengrab, its ruse
a forest of logos to twist
sadists who’ve ruled over us our whole lives 
say sign the 214th petition of the month
email your MP
get laughed at
leg it off up the crescent with a bag of nails 
in common sense like pork pie jelly, this fat we’re through

so the poem shivers in my marrow 

remember watching when the ICI chimney in Burn Naze was demolished
that fagend above bungalows 
and your grandad who died too young, and
what happened to him, what happened to the workers there
while the bosses got minted, while posh people 
occupied art, or DJed, stink of chlorine in my nostrils from a cold leisure centre
knack’s to trip the gantry stood under the noose 
a tale as old as time
and anxious children longing for Disneyland Paris

the decimal point
of a life pissed away, as sand
by force
answers

is answered, unharmed, that I look up for a sec 
at this huge green nameless tree
breathing pretty quiet overhead, bracelet of 
wind stranded by the edge of the road 
where no one’s famous 
& absolutely everything could be stolen back screaming, hurled out 
could really be returned 
to anyone afraid to even boil the kettle 
gift architecture 
in the shade of murderous existing buildings
market-frozen
the explosive present 
what you need so viciously, lightbuilt, tomorrow’s unreal barking pirouette  
from the serrated slip that fuels you in place

then I know I’m still here writing, even though they told us we wrote too much
ta for the feedback lads, do not resuscitate
when it was almost all we had 
scrambling to make something our friends & even distant people
could maybe live with, trying to do something worthwhile, meaningful
in this sea of meanness & crap
when not led in bed or impossibly unhappy or sorting out a wage
through inner yowls that obliterate the entire fucking solar system

still the stars are there, scalded by that hinterland
still we move together 

spare in a vision I confront myself on another planet
doppelgänger seated at a desk in a high-tech facility, funded by
a large conglomerate
the wall plastered with certificates, one of the levelling up
globed in the garment of his settlement
outstripping centuries of space junk in the blink of an eye 

he opens his mouth to speak, to say a word or get me taken away by security 
but the stream dissolves
and I’m left here alone on the kerb  
with my thoughts, some numbers to try you on
back into the glitz & brick dust of our era of slow death

never stop loving.
now the laptop crashes, this is the last outcrop, we are
typing into the grand nightmare of their contentment

and today the news channels are reporting the prime minister has resigned

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Dom Hale has written several books and pamphlets of poetry, including Seizures (Gong Farm, 2022), Civilian Lyrics (Veer2, 2021), Firewall (Distance No Object, 2020) and Scammer (the87press, 2020). He co-edits the magazine Ludd Gang and is helping to organise a hardship fund for poets in the U.K. at poetshardshipfunduk.com

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