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    And Still I Breathe
    And Still I Breathe
    And Still I Breathe
    Ebook81 pages21 minutes

    And Still I Breathe

    By Rik Roots

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In this, the second decade of the twenty first century, the Internet became – more. More than a static repository of knowledge. More than a set of venues for buying and selling goods and services. It became a place where people lived.

    Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, Reddit, Snapchat, WhatsApp ... Match, eHarmony, Tinder, Grindr ... if you haven't got a presence on these venues, then do you really exist?

    The Internet shapes the way we work, play, love and hate. It feeds us news and lies in equal measure. It tells us how to live, what to buy, which way to vote. It has brought us hope. It has brought us Isis and Brexit and Trump. God? Monster? Whatever ...

    I find writing poems about the Internet almost as difficult as writing poems about working in an office. The damn thing is too slippery to categorise, and we still have no idea how its powers will play out in our lives. And yet the effort has to be made ... and still we breathe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRik Roots
    Release dateOct 29, 2017
    ISBN9781370510160
    And Still I Breathe
    Author

    Rik Roots

    Rik lives in London with his partner, Nigel, and their two cats. As can be seen, he does not photograph well.

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      Book preview

      And Still I Breathe - Rik Roots

      It's like a boil, this need to write -

      a pulsed heat set at the back of my skull

      that compels phrases to form and dance

      in patterns: cadenced hopes, a catenate

      of murmers at the threshold of meaning

      beyond their means; blastocyte verses -

      I shall lance the urge now, watch words

      spurt too soon from the pock-wound, reach

      ears before their time - oh, sweet relief!

      Poverty

      I want to write of iced desolations -

      my skull-bound voice would rather sing.

      I could pretend the wind outside is shrill –

      it barely stirs a leaf. What chance have I

      of etching stark horizons when my eyes

      fill with the scrabbles of kids on bikes?

      Such first-world problems I must suffer, stuck

      here in this wealth of health and simple hopes:

      a sturdy roof, refrigeration, heat that burps

      through pipes – I have a tap that drips

      and cash to pay a man to fix it. Still,

      there's always the internets to steep my gut

      in growly biles, bring acid foams to churn -

      a proxy grief to make some words spill out.

      A tribute, of sorts

      (After: 11 February 2012)

      Snow on the bough snuggles about

      the form of a blackbird, her brown

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