Glacier

They found our bodies, perfectly preserved,
despite the ten millennia since our death.

The ice hid them all those centuries
within a cold and dark declivity.
You fell and could not leave, and so I stayed
to be by you forever. We died that day.

We've been paralysed with speed ever since.
The world thawed and with it fluid haste
has iterated life beyond love's slower pace.
Quicksilver skin eludes caress like meltwater.
Love slowly retreats like declining ramparts of ice.

Though ancient aches are numbed by births
through which our fugitive souls cascade,
I still yearn for our once secret, silent dark,
our joint grave's cold, eternal embrace.

A dead cat

Today is the Queen's (official) birthday. Colours are being trooped. Prince Philip has polished and pinned on the various medals he has won on various gruelling campaigns of handshaking and banquetting.

The Queen's birthday message has made a touching allusion to the prevailing sombre and turbulent mood in the country. The malignant indifference of the government and the wealthy elite they represent towards the dead and dispossessed of Grenfell is ironically thrown into stark relief by the monarch's attention and acknowledgement.

It was not always thus. Up until the late 18th century there were large public gatherings to celebrate the monarch's birthday. As society was transformed by industrialisation, however, and class antagonisms became more pronounced, these gatherings were marked by increasing tension, and resentment towards authority exercised on behalf of an exploiting capitalist class expropriating the products of labour simmered and boiled over into riots more often than not. The pastoral idyll of earlier occasions had been transformed into confrontation by the Corn Laws and the urbanisation and segregation of society by nascent industrial capitalism. This was most acute in Scotland, which at this time was the most rapidly and thoroughly industrialising society in the world.

And so the unregulated and spontaneous celebration of the monarch's birthday ceased and strictly controlled ceremony took over, to remove the flashpoint the occasion had become. But one thing endures in our political discourse from this time.

Illustrations and woodcuts from the period showing the riots often show an odd custom that is rather poorly documented. The pictures often include an odd detail: a dead cat, hurtling in mid flight through the air over the mob, having been cast aloft by one of the rioters. We are familiar today with the phrase "throwing a dead cat on the table" meaning introducing a political distraction. Once upon a time it wasn't a distraction. It was integral to the proceedings we were to be distracted from.

As the full horror and malignancy of the consquences of official indifference unfold, there are no more distractions. Keep your cat indoors for a while.

Grenfell

This police line between them and us
draws a line under things.

And as we shuffle and mill about
at the perimeter of disaster
it reminds me of Hillsborough,
only in so far as it is
yet another instance
of that fault line
which runs through our society,
one more bloody example
where one was more than enough:

the fence line
against which the faces
of doomed football fans
on a Saturday afternoon
press themselves onto the front pages
of our Sunday morning papers;

the front line
along which trenches
and barbed wire decorated with corpses
of school friends machine gunned side by side,
twist and wind over the mud of Flanders,
and across the map of France;

the fault line that shifts imperceptibly
to bring a man-made mountain
down on the heads of the children of Aberfan
while leaving the playing fields of Eton unspoilt;

the bottom line
pulled across our throats like a razor
by wealthy plutocrats, reaching down
from their penthouses high above the law,
levitating 24 storeys above the 24th floor of the inferno
holding us hostage in homes ablaze with poverty,
insisting we share this fate they have decreed,
this austerity they have condemned us to;

the telephone line
over which the voices of the dead are heard,
faltering as they take their last smoky breath,
trying to say goodbye and falling silent,
one night in June;

It draws a line under things. Grenfell must stand
as a charred black tombstone for all the victims
of lies and broken promises, and its fires
must light a beacon in our mind:

a beacon for all the ghosts of dead refugees
sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea,
their fumbling shades still seeking our shores,
groping through the cold dark abyss
as that false dawn filling the London sky
in the early hours of a June morning,
guides them towards those who went before,
now come back to meet them in the grave
and tell them how we burn down their homes
before they can take their place in them,
how we murder hope and all journeys are in vain;

a beacon for all who our society punishes
with poverty and hunger and wars
and catastrophes not of their making;

a beacon that guides all of us
towards a common destination,
one night in June,
to shuffle and mill about
at the perimeter of disaster,
a place prepared for us by neglect and ignorance
and prejudice and greed and cruelty,
waiting just on the other side
of the line between them and us
that draws a line under things,
and in the end none of us will survive this.

Speak truth

We've had post-truth politics, with its alternative facts.

We've had pre-truth politics, where the digital record of our activities is analysed to formulate a personalised version of reality to which we can be exposed online, using dark adverts paid for by dark money, to stimulate us to respond accordingly and deliver the required verdict at the ballot box.

Big corporations use big data to summon our simulated selves from the Cloud and consult them to discover what truths we are susceptible to, what truths make us suggestible, so that we can be persuaded to ordain the order they have already pre-ordained for us with a counterfeit consent, as though our democratic choice could be administered the same way as the suggested purchases on an online bookstore. As long as they get it right, how would we know the difference? But what if they get it wrong? What takes priority, your choice or the one that has been suggested for you? Hint: the latter works best for their bottom line.

In Scotland we now even have post-arithmetic politics, where the media finds itself unable to arrange the numbers 13, 7, 35 and 4 in descending order, and the democratic mandate of the governing party is disregarded on the basis of a fraction of the vote. And here they have got it wrong. This is not the government I ordered, we might say. But they don't care, they'll keep telling us no, it is, this is what you want, until they wear us down.

But we must move beyond arithmetic for other reasons. The share of the vote your party won is not an end in itself. Respect for your democratic mandate is a necessary but not sufficient condition for healthy politics. So stop obsessing and complaining about who said what to whom about you and how that differs from what they said yesterday. Set aside all grievances. Greet the biggest hypocrites with the widest smile.    

Because politics that is about point scoring is sterile. Politics that keeps a tally is tedious. Politics that is about the past perpetuates itself.

Real politics - the politics that endures and alters and improves our societies from the age of Pericles until today, the politics that survives even the most elaborate mechanised manipulations of micro-targeting - is about imagination, and hope, and faith, and courage, and compassion, and vision. So forget the one-upmanship. Don't be distracted by the hypocrisy of your opponents. Do not seek redress for their lies and misrepresentations. Forget triangulation. Forget credibility.

Speak truth.

Not to power, for truth recognises no power beyond itself. Speak truth that articulates a compelling vision of a better world. Speak to the future, not the past. Disregard all who complain about the cost, for prudence has ever been the shackle of progress, and nothing great that ever happened was costed.

Speak truths people can recognise, that chime within their marrow, that fire their imagination, that unite them with compassion.

Speak truths that inspire them to be better people. Speak truths that fill them with the belief they can be.

Imagine

Imagine the hysterical media and government reaction if the SNP were homophobic creationist climate change deniers.

We are discovering that a non-trivial corollary of "SNP Bad" is "DUP Good".

Imagine the UK Government was happy to consult with the First Minister of Scotland about Brexit in cabinet, rather than inviting someone who isn't an MP, holds no public office and leads a party that lost the election in Scotland.

We are discovering that, as far as the UK Government is concerned, you can vote for anyone you like as First Minister, as long as it's Ruth Davidson. The elevation of Theresa May's North British gauleiter by the media and the UK Government to a degree of prominence unjustified by any democratic verdict shows the British state is systematically delegitimising Scottish democracy and will soon progress from ignoring its institutions to dismantling them entirely.

Now imagine the Scottish Government had the power to deliver all of the policies you found attractive in Corbyn's manifesto, rather than just blaze a trail with some. Imagine we were not reliant on the DUP to form a government. Imagine our friends, family, colleagues and neighbours who are EU citizens were secure. Imagine we weren't normalising foodbanks and using poverty and hunger as weapons in a class war against the poor. Imagine weapons that can incinerate millions in an instant weren't parked outside our largest city.

There is hope. Just imagine.

A history of the future

There are really only two narratives on offer at the election tomorrow.

There's a unionist narrative, apparently controlled by Ruth Davidson and Theresa May. This is a story of hard Brexit, closed borders and antagonism towards Europe. It's a tale of tax havens for the rich and food banks for the poor, the dismemberment of the NHS, qualification-by-rape for benefits, and the slow holocaust by suicide or starvation for those incapable but deemed fit for work. It tells of the sacrifice of human rights to provide law enforcement new powers to tackle terrorist threats we previously covertly encouraged to topple foreign governments, climate change denial, Empire 2.0, and poverty and hunger used as weapons of class war, all to "make Britain great again."

Despite the attempts of Scottish Labour's various Blairite appeasers of capital to take control of the unionist narrative, it remains a story told by Tories, and ultimately controlled by a billionaire international of donors of dark money that pays for dark adverts on social media that manipulate the neuroses of the undecided in key marginals. Eventually our democratic institutions will wither and decisions will be made on our behalf by corporations who summon and consult our simulated selves from the Cloud with analytics and algorithms until each of us is reduced to a cost centre or accounting unit.

There is an alternative, a progressive narrative. This tells a story in which refugees are welcome and from which Trident has been abolished. The NHS is fully funded and run according to its founding principles, access to education is based on ability to learn rather than pay, and services are run for public benefit rather than private profit. The electorate is respected and engaged and every member is able and invited to achieve their full potential.

You have one vote tomorrow. You can validate one narrative with it.

Precious moment

Take care of that precious moment.
Be careful with that nanosecond
between the time it takes
for her to get to know you
and for you to disappoint her,
the fleeting moment
when she actually thinks she loves you.
Do not spoil it. Although it feels
like it could last forever,
it will end in the blink of an eye.
So when she leaves make sure
she takes with her a memory
of a time that she once thought
could be eternity.

Make believe

When a child pretends to be a ballet dancer,
or a tiger,
or a wolf,
or a conductor beating time,
waving a drinking straw baton at an imaginary orchestra,
and an audience of adults at some family gathering
finds itself temporarily pressed into service
in its various departments,
and smiles and says
"how cute, good effort, well done"
before dispersing
to continue their more serious conversations,
remember that this child is not playing.
This child is deadly serious.
This child's world is no less real to it
than all the worlds adults solemnly summon
with words about stock prices and political appointees
and all the familiar farces and fables and foibles and follies
with which we populate and crowd out our adversities,
calm and navigate the seething surface of turbulent distress
and confer on overgrown jungles stalked by unnamed fears
the genteel appearance of a well-prepared garden party.

Remember that,
when all your best laid plans lie in ruins
and everything has gone wrong,
and everyone laughs,
and no-one is taking you seriously.
Remember that,
when the orchestra you are trying to conduct
gets up and walks off
despite your protests
because it's got something better to do.

Remember that to make anything
first you must believe in it,
and then you must not give up,
until eventually you are that child again,
dancing
and prowling
and howling
and beating time
despite it all.