1. The Wiki Man

Prologue

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The Wiki Man

All of our answers are here prepared in real time
In cities of servers and disks across the globe
In whatever format is the fashion
In whatever language is the mode
And all of our memories jump from the Ether
At the click of a mouse or a tap on the screen
A Gig in New York or some kids' wedding
All jostling around the grander scheme

But if I dared to question
All the congestion
Of infomedial chatter in my home
I'd be nothing!

Out of a novel from the fifties
Comes this mad nightmare, our "Childhood's End"
It gives me all that I have but leaves me half empty
With a full glass of 2000 electronic "friends"

But if I lived without it, do not doubt it
I'd be cutting off my nose to spite my screen
And I'd be Nothing, no Nothing!
Have I become the Wiki Man?

If I lived without it, just think about it
I'm living a dream in the Ether not much more
I am nothing! – Just a hopeful has been
Nothing! – An aging prog queen
Getting his kicjs while he still can
Nothing! – Am I just lines of data?
Nothing! – Or in reserve for later?
Have I become the Wiki Man?

Competition Watershed

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Edit You Out

So take some music or take a play
Some poetry you didn't write or a quote you didn't say
And write biographies of people you don't know
YOUR matter-of-opinion is the main point of the show
In these strange days

But today I had a brief talk to a man I did not know
From a place I've ever heard in a language I forgot
Written in Cyrullic, so couldn't see the words
Yet with a click I understood him
Though his voice, I never heard
In these strange days
But YOU, you can edit that out...
... of this story
But YOU, you can edit me out
Yes YOU, really you, can edit me out

Leave the house a hero and come home as a scourge
They can edit up your profile with a simple flaming urge
Level your ambition with Laetotes and bile
You're open to opinion and they'll never close the file
In these strange days

Everyone's a journalist (that's when they're not a star)
And those who aint celebrities like to diss the ones that are
The writing's on the Facebook walls, it's a spattered on the blogs
On a billion whirling hard disks, those modern squealing cogs
Of these strange days

So now we're all encyclopedia correspondents
We're all record companies
We're all world famous rock bands

And we're running the biggest car boot sale
In the history of The Universe

Car Boot Sale

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Wiki Man Reprise

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2. The Mind's Eye

In my mind's eye nothing's moving
Life's unchanging, it's almost soothing
And in my mind's eye I have this painting
A self portrait which lies in waiting
The back to front image looks back in my face
With a million lines that just seem out of place with the lie
In my mind's eye

Motorbike roars and guitars screaming
Festival's haze don't stop me dreaming
Quietly jump into shoes oh so old
With prosthetic addons to comfort my souls in the lie
In my mind's eye

More sonatas and more concertos
More recitals and more cheap death throes
Out in a dream world of fortune and fame
Where no-one around me can even remember my name
In my mind's eye
We see ourselves as what we want
The Mirror will oblige!
Wise man, young kid, rebel youth
But all of the truth's behind the lies
In my mind's Eye!

Out in a dream world of fortune and fame
Where no-one around me can even spell my name
Tell my mind's eye
In my mind's eye!

We see ourselves as what we want
The Mirror will oblige!
Wise man, young kid, rebel youth
But all of the truth's behind the lies
All of the truth's behind our lies

3. Shoot Them Down

This town is dark, a thousand buildings falling down
The dying spark, another day of selling out – 'try making a new start somewhere'
There's nothing proud about the man who's growing older, living on fallen hopes
A Falling shroud across the North – the Empire's gold, supplier of men and coal

Shoot them down in the wars of the world
Shoot them down in the peace without word of warning

This city sleeps, this city gave you ships of steel, she gave you the nation's fist
She's old and tired but in her day she gave you everything and more
She will give you nothing now
No wheels turn against the burning clouds of Northern summer night, this night
Tears burn, another tired and empty town closes down

Shoot them down in the wars of the world
Shoot them down in the wars of the world
Shoot them down in the wars of the world
Shoot them down in the peace without word of warning

4. Tech Support Guy

It took 15 seconds for the first call to come through
When the building lost the network on a tuesday afternoon
Adam's already heading for the door
To the SEH server room on the tech support floor
Today's not turning out as planned
His cellphone's really getting jammed

There's a strategies meeting on the 43rd floor
Where the powerpoint curtains ain't closin' no more
They can't reach the network or the public shared drive
And in the finance office it ain't worth being alive
The marketing manager's porn
Has frozen on his screen and his expression, well it's forlorn

And in the end they all just blame Adam
For a fault in Detroit, a hemisphere away!
But it's so easy to always blame Adam
For a seven point clusterfuck on a boring day

After a call queue that lasts a few aeons
With others on hold like the Thames-Barrier flow
Adam is told that "We've got a problem"
And he calls his manager to let the world know
But there ain't no outage in the states
Gonna be any relief to the fellow inmates

So in the end they all just blame Adam
For an unknown problem that they don't understand
"I've got no Google!!" they protest at Adam
"I need my Hotmail and Youtube to hand"

But He camps in the woods at the weekends
Where the cell signal can't call his name
He zorbs with his mates down some hillside
Where he's billions of miles from their blame,
He does lighting for poets and rock bands
And he even gets into their songs
On weekdays he's the support guy
The one you blame when it all goes wrong

The system goes back up, but just before four
But Adam works on for half an hour more
'Cos nobody rang to say that everything's fine
But some twat hit the firebell, that's the end of the line
Adam has to empty out the floor
He's H&S for the area to add to the score

So in the end they all just blame Adam
For stalling their meetings to call out their names
He makes sure they're present but still they blame Adam
For cold tea and soft biscuits and solitaire games

5. Titanic Calls Carpathia

The Millpond

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Titanic Calls Carpathia

The airwaves are still silent in the deep April cold
Magnetosphere at rest, undisturbed by our troubled world
Auroras fleek horizons, visibly observed
But not yet called upon to propagate our words

Jack Phillips takes the key in the first hour of the night
And taps out CQD from MGY in the first hour of their plight
Cottam takes the code and Rostron turns the wheel
To steam into our future, into legend, undetected

Titanic calls Carpathia in the night
Through Nothingness, through 57 miles
And the sparks still fly, down through history
And down through every walk of life

Lovell Calls Houston

And in a baked bean tin half way between two worlds
Three stranded mens' lives depend on simple words
Home hands temptingly above them in the sky
And while they plot the rescue plan, Titanic's sparks still fly

Jim Lovell's calling Houston in the night
Through Nothingness – 200,000 miles
A swingball in infinity
A rope of radio to keep the centrifuge at bay

Titanic Calls Carpathia!

Lost Soul Calls Antares

Across the endless plains of Europe
And a friendship sometimes strained
By belief and competition
But in spite of which remains
From a bedsit in the wilderness
One reaches for the phone
To hear the voices of "belonging"
Yes it's time to head for home

And a lost soul calls Antares in the night
Across Europe and a thousand weary miles
And the echoes of all his heroes will
Line up to "keep the sea ajar"
Titanic calls Carpathia

Fire In Our Fingers

And now we can all talk across oceans
If we get things sussed we don't even have to pay!
We get "FREE iTunes songs" when we return an empty bottle
But there's so much around
That we throw the damn thing away
Posting to billions who don't have time to read us
Giving ourselves away

A young kid I know's got fire in his fingers
But in this crowded room you'd never pick him out
Lost in a labyrinth of a squillion facebook profiles
The endless prize of "LOOK AT ME" and pathetic shouts
Bringing down leaders to fight over their replacements
Talking ourselves to Death

Earth Calling Anyone

Beyond the rusting pylons, beyond the looted homes
People scrabble around for batteries to get more talk time for their phones
We want so much without paying, we forget someone has to make
The things we want for ourselves so we just eat each other's cake

We made petrol out of plant-life we took fuel from the sea
We burned everything that would burn, we got it all for free
We fought it out on our Internet where everyone else was wrong
We gave our lives completely – crazy for COMM

Titanic Calls Carpathia in the night
And some planet out there might just hear our plight
In ten thousand years, they might come looking
To see who was making all the noise.