To those who would see me burn

 I do not want your towers of Babel

I do not need your

Street cars of desire

Your news paper cuttings

On coffee table mornings

Or friends keeping distance

In the supermarket mourning

The loss of a good friend

It's a shot in the dark

But I want life

That no computer screen can spark

I'm sick of the zoom calls

The death on the skype

The fifty yard high walls

Of Microsoft teams is a lark

Who ever enters a room of fifty people

and really gives a shit

What the tart at the front barks?

I want the intimacy of closed spaces

Cafes with small faces

And shop thieves at large

I want the risk that someone might rob my wallet

Then I can stop it

And feel cool as a shark

I want the loss, and I want the gain

Don't give me the dross

Of Microsoft window panes

I don't need their figures their statistics

Their frame

Their constant approval,

Their constant fame

Give me something real

I can write about that stuff

When people do unpredictable things

And fuck off

Or say damn it I've just had enough

Because I have of this virtual existence

Bugger off

I can already tell the kind of feminist tosh that will spout from the mouth of that

Crass oxbridge toff

Or she was brought up up in Surrey

And raised over in Spain

And now has enough nouce to run down my drain

I don't need her opinions

I don't need her high shame

Of slavery passed down through generations

I'm not playing that game

They are all pretenders

To massage their egos

But underneath it are machinations

That would equal Iago's

You can call me the moor, Desdemona's my maid

But at least when I look in my soul

It's home-made

And I shall not forsake the tribe of my nation

Who has given me my pride

In a certain fascination

With things that are green and alive

And last long

And are not just the passing fancies of

Babylon