Friday, 2 March 2018

A FLANNEL SHIRT INFINITY

Here is a poem I've been struggling with for some time. 
It's about Alan Turing, the genius who broke the nazi's enigma code and is credited with being the creator of computing.

FOR ALAN TURING

His was a flannel shirt infinity,
built on tweed jacket equations
that formed in his head, on the cycle rides,
across the soot streaked snow
that gentled the outlines of the bomb sites.
He had served with passion,
when numbers on a chalk board
were the only things not rationed.
Blind eyes had been turned to his difference,
as he strove to break the unbreakable ciphers,
back when he had a value.

The world had contracted since then,
become straight laced with no place
for brief encounters in public lavatories,
and they meant to shame him.
Their heterosexual hegemony locking difference out.

He could see an off/on future
of zero to one and back again,
but the apple is in his hand.
He knows he will bite into
its shiny, poisoned skin
and that will be that.
His death was a huge loss to humanity. 
I still do not think this poem is in it's final form.
I leave you with a sad song: Bauhaus Chair by The Nits.
Until next time.

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