Feeding
We're feeding on facts, we're feeding on fiction, we're feeding because we need to eat. Supplying our minds with information, but half of it is incomplete. They used to wrap chips in newspapers, now they microwave fast food. We end up picking at rumors in the hope of a grain of truth. Do you know what you are feeding? Do you know what you are fed? We say we don't believe all that we read, but is anyone reading at all? Or merely feeding on what's being fed in the hope of feeling full? We all need to be resources rather than receptacles. There's too many lies and rumors to recognize them all. Do you know what you are feeding? Do you know what you are fed? Do you repeat what is worth repeating, or store it all up inside your head? Be a source of information. Inspire, debate, protest, and go! Feed on food for thought reaction. If no one feeds it, grow your own!

Popsongs
You'll never make the charts if you sing about repression because pretending to be in control is a national obsession. Even when the self-control is let loose as aggression. "Oh, you know he doesn't mean it man! It's his natural expression." Some say the constant hammering is following a beat, and pop-songs heard to pass the time will break up the routine. In some hazy day pre-radio you'd hear the hammers sing. Now they shout above the pop-songs, go unnoticed, and give in. It claims to break up the routine-becomes a part of it-but no signs of improvement in the way the hammers hit. You see the way the workers act when the chains relax bit. Does it indicate their mental state as happy, clean and fit? Clocking in, clocking out again. After day long happy turns its prime reaction time: blob out horizontal to the spectacle sublime. Replacing conversation space with pleasantries that rhyme. "Have a good weekend folks, just make sure you're back by nine." So when the batteries when flat and the DJ went off air, the atmosphere in the factory made everyone aware they'd been replacing interaction with dependency on sound. So when the pop-songs came back on, they turned the whole thing down.

City on a River
I see the rubble alongside the river and shout, "Its time we started looking again." We seen it before, except then it was standing, seen the demolition hand-in-hand. We watch the cars zoom past. Seems like nothing's ever going to last. Is this change or merely destruction? Wait a few months and here's the construction of another supermarket as shops close down-redundancy money like a dressing gown barely hiding the naked fear of being recognized. "I used to work here." Staring at the rubble was bad enough so we looked to the river instead. Comparison? No! It couldn't be so! This one flows and the other is dead. But the swans have gone with the current, moved one. And the trees have rotted away. The bridge that joined workers and nature is now a viewpoint to view the decay. We walk around the city a few times more (the repetition makes us numb) built on a river that keeps the score of replaceable scenery. What was won is lost. And the cost is rising. Pride in the city and its horizons killed by the slow destruction of places to live now the only function that reaps rewards is profit and the making of it. Can't afford to look after the poor, if they really want more we got it. The prices is lifelong dedication to the status quo of this consumer nation. Offer no alternative. Don't talk back. Work for twenty years then get the sack. Or not! How much have you got? What kind of strength can take you the length of the ladder? Can you reach the top? Is it madder, or saner, to stay off the rungs and start complaining? About the endless waste, the draining off of human inspiration. Where people and labor and buildings and nature are wasted. I got a taste of it. Stood by the rubble by the river on a bridge.

Used to Work
Up in the morning, out to the block, into the office, it's down to the boss. Up down and sideways and straight across. Who sets the motion? Who gets the job? I just got a promotion. The people are bigger up there. Get a suit to fit! Routinery scenery. Go holiday. The distance we go is set by the pay. Ambition retrieval, "We'll get there one day." Who sets the distance? Where do you stay? I just got an extension. The office had run out of space, getting on with it. Out of the office, back from the block, came worker and workload, set by the clock. Checked in on family, checked out the box. Its not what you're getting, its what you haven't got. This bloke just won a million quid and he's going to keep his job! He got used to it!

Plasticash
Swindon Town are going down another division today. With the introduction of 'mondex' cards, personality on display. Out with those tiresome coins and notes, it's a credit card status mirror to show you're a flexible, reliable, upbeat type-choosing to follow the 'optional' hype. Believe, consume, then pay. Here it all is to choose or refuse. All your statistics, the portable "you." Name and number, size and amount of transferable credit in the bank account. Swindon Town is being taken down the Dis-information Highway. Consumer creditability testing ground. Believe, consume, then pay. The 'optional' tag is original stance, "You don't have to do it, but now here is your chance." Gradually the rich and social elite will be forcing the standards for us all to meet. And once reported to be a success by those who do the consumer tests it will be standard procedure across the nation, like satellite dishes-infatuation! Give me more of it now! Believe, consumer, then pay. Novelty rat-race acceleration into a future with all hesitation set aside by the fear of alienation from society, it's all connotation. You are what you carry on plastic cards, and plastic cards are carrying you. When all you contain, and all that you are, is lost, well what will you do? But we refuse to play. Create a false desire then feed it.

Scene 496: Café in Melksham
How now the rose in red and pink and white its petals soft as blades of metal melting in the noontime rays and frosted cold again at night. How now the rose in sharpened thorns its underlying nature warns that beauty holds itself above proximity: a 'Do Not Touch' sign on its stem that, unconsidered, wreaks revenge on those whose jealousy condemns… Screaming baby in a café, a mewling child that will be wild in its persistence to inflict its misery upon the ear. Its times like this I get too near to kids to ever want to be parental. On the verge of going mental, shrieking spikes and lacerations ruining my concentration. Over there another angled child was dangled from a chair aware of crying in the air. And walked away from mother's smile to pass one on to the screaming child who seeing some consideration stopped its wailing emulation of tanks on slopes with failing brakes. That other kid had what it takes as we all like to think we do but we just sit and let it pass. While this bright kid got of its ass and made the difference for us all just by being natural. I doubt that kiddy's name was Rose, it was probably something like Brian, but it knew what to do. The instinctive approach and somehow it stopped the kid crying.

Words on Overtime
Sometimes something good needs understating to be understood, needs towing back the cliché status that empties meaning from the phrases used so often once they held the singularity of a bell. When words on overtime ring false cheer, cause everyone's saying them, it numbs the ears. Picking up catchlines. The wrong word at the wrong time lost you future friends. The wrong word at the right time started up a trend. The right word at the right time is only in your head. Sometimes something bad needs overstating in a sense gone mad. When pain fear and grief become to easy to believe then the feeling isn't coming through. When we daily consume oversimplified gloom reported by strangers, we fear anything we're not set to receive and feel alienated. So when someone's pain gets in our faces, we need to hear different phrases that we can believe. What kind of world have we created where basic feelings need re-creating to avoid the perceptions of fiction and cliché being received? How long before, via screen mentality, will we all forget how to tell the reality apart from the act? There's the duality, careful how you feed.

Talk about the Weather
Wind blows strongly in its rush to arrive in your face for as long as you like or hate it. We place ourselves either for or against and then later on we replicate it. Back in the box with the gas masks off we stare at the blocks through the double-glazing, wishing the air was cleaner, aware of the forecast declaring us crazy. Mindset in concrete, headset on loud to cover the noise and avoiding the crowds. Lungs on the run and breathing too fast no time to talk the air doesn't last. So back to the edge where the wind hits you hard, this is the reason you get out of the car, but then you feel lost and go back to sitting inside the car, then back to the city. When the air is polluted the sun is reputed to give us all cancer, and the rain starts to sting. We get immune to it, hoping/assuming it will somehow get better. Better stay in. Now we talk about the weather a whole lot more. Running out of conversation and running back indoors. We position our excursions and forget how to explore until the wind blows strong enough to make us want some more.

Catholic Sex Confession
The voice at the box had finally lost years of frustration in a drunk night of passion and declared in confession to the nearest 'Professional Guilt Control Know-it-all', "For once all my pride was illusion, a false self-exclusion from pleasures so vast they could hardly be named." And was told in a cold voice, "You should feel ashamed. The Church knows its business and needs the control of the body in order to manage the soul. Sexual freedom destroys any faith in a church that says freedom begins at the grave so we frown on the physical and ban contraception, abortion and women from being the Pope. It's down in the Bible that God is a man, and abstention and caution are how we all cope. Did you use contraception? You didn't? That's good-the Pope doesn't use it, no reason you should. Unless she gets AIDS or a pregnancy, mind. I suggest you get tested and see what they find. No doubt she'll keep any offspring concealed from the press and the like, get some funds from the plate. Now time marches on, and I'm late for a meal. Hail Mary times ten. Don't do it again!" They met face to face in church the next day without knowing who the other one was. "I've had it, I'm finished", said one, "And I'm leaving there's nothing left here that I can truly believe in." "But why?" asked the man, and she said, "Because I am a Nun and I'm pregnant and I don't want the baby, but you will say 'No' to whatever I choose. You never say 'Yes' and you only say 'Maybe' when someone you personally know gets abused. This body is mine, not a baby machine, but in the eyes of the church I am trash. So I quit your hierarchical, sexist regime to be ME! Is that too much to ask?

Criminal
Here in the Criminal Justice Act it says it's illegal to even react by marching against the sudden new lack of freedom of movement, assembly, and that goes for everyone because now we're all dispossessed. Little joy in the illusion that they can't mess up our heads. As we're taking life as being a reward, we're constantly told that we can't afford to live it, not the way we do, cause now we're breaking the law. Is it me or is it you who thought we could live without heeding it? Now the boundaries have all shrunk to fit to lifestyles. Based on total social complicity to work ethic, media, domesticity. Staying silent in response to freedoms being so curtailed we forget we need them to exist. Variety breeds tension. Then people debate what never mentioned before: ideas deal with feelings and laws try to shape the ideas that we deal in. At the point where the ideas have spread enough distance to call it a lifestyle, we start to meet the resistance. Here in the Criminal Justice Act all our paranoia has turned out to be fact! They really ARE out to get you, so party on, dude! Now we've all been criminalised for refusing to be led. They can't control our movements-they can't close down our heads. And if you start to think they can, they've won another round towards completion of their plan to keep the people down. The more we get pushed the more we push back. Destroy the Criminal Justice Act!

What Charlie Said
Be as honest as you can be. Question orders, accept ideas. Make a meal of what you're eating. Don't be scared of social fears. Pass the plate before it gets heavy. Have what's given; give what's gained. Spot the gaps but know connections. See how freedoms are retained. Play with work and work with play. Make it all come back someday. Be more entrance than departure. Know somehow, something you're after. That's what Charlie said under the influence. It turns the senses to directions never known before, it sets us up and keeps the score. Provides a point to reach, then we've got there and start again. I don't agree with it. I think it's really good. Here's something else to fit, and now it's understood. My head's stuck in advice, under the influence. I had to ask him twice and then it all made sense. Come here and pull up an edge and tell me your name. I'm no longer sure I've met you before, and I'd like to meet you again.

Fill Me Up
Do you know what you are eating? Oh, fill me up with food. The stomach's ringing hunger bells, sometimes anything will do. Beware the wind that Coke can bring. It dries the parts it reaches. Cultural deserts carry the can, Coke adds life then bleeds it. Eating! Be watching out for indigestion, long time since you touched a cow. Farming forms to fit consumption, that pain is what you eat, now how. Do you know what you are breathing? Oh, fill me up with air. The lungs are wringing out the smells for something fresh to wear. Cars, that fume in queues for more Petrol, to get to somewhere else to breathe. Air conditioning through acceptance extra for the Weathermen to read. Breathing! As air gains the status of grades quality recedes as any of it gets praised. Will they put it in bottles like they did with the rain? "OxyGenerico" in profits again, and again, and again. What we eat and drink and breathe filters down through industry; creates our life expectancy. Do you know what you are drinking? Oh, fill me up with water. All, bar the lungs, are in on this one, 90% and way important. Tap on the back says, "Don't use the tap." Scarcity value or it just tastes crap. Privatized and purified, it's raining chemistry outside. Eating! Drinking! Breathing! What we eat and drink and breathe creates our life expectancy. Choking, the consumer dies clutching burger, Coke, and fries.