We pray to our smartphones,

Bending necks towards our tech:

“Our Father, who art in Windows Seven,

Hallowed be Thy Name.

Lead us not into offline conversation

But deliver us from hanging out with people.

Let us only chat through apps,

And speak not in tongues but tweets;

For thine is the kingdom,

The rapidly decreasing battery power,

And the glory:

Forever and ever,

iMen.”

Poem, "The Lord's iPrayer"

Dear invisible men,
Who tweet women endless threats of rape,
Who are you?
Are you married fathers of two?
Are you teens crowded round a friend's phone in a canteen or KFC?
Are you pausing between texting your first love,
To set yourself up as an egg,
And post fresh hate?
Where are you as you type this?
Is your girlfriend asleep in your arms,
As your peer over her shoulder at your phone?
How did this become your sport?
You are not proud of what you do;
If you were, you would not care who knew.
This is strange:
You loudly announce pride in your prejudice
But your invisibility suggests your shame.
There is such an anger in you
That it cannot be cloaked with jokes.
I pity the mirror that has to reflect your misery,
Since it must see so much.
Because the women are everywhere now,
Aren't they?
They weren't just content in your beds,
Now they're not just in your clubs,
Or in the eyes and hearts of other men;
The women are in your classrooms, boardrooms and DJ booths,
They are obstructing you, or ignoring you,
Not needing you to improve.
Swiftly, they are sweeping you from every stage,
And the only place you feel safe
Is in one-hundred and forty characters of rage.
I doubt that, as you type, you will ever pause
To think that, as you promise terror,
The greatest fear is yours.

To men who abuse women online, "Invisible Men"

BBC Radio 4 talk: "Why Mount Kimbie Is Better Than Twitter"

Thierry Henry is the most elegantly devastating forward I have ever seen.  I recently received a flipbook of his finest goals, and having read it I was inspired to write the short poem below about the impact that he had when playing in England.  I hope that you enjoy it; if so, please share with a Gooner or two.  


"Thierry Be Good"

Thierry Henry:
One of the few footballers you knew
Who could have played the game in a three piece suit.
The man had a free-jazz swagger,
And rock star status was his:
From Highbury to Madrid
He toured his greatest hits.
The ex-winger
Who became the frontman of a band of winners
And a whole ground of backing singers.
The one-man blizzard
Leaving back fours with sore innards
And so many opponents' hopes undone.
No major trophies left unwon:
There's never been a better weapon in a club full of guns.
E.g.
Manchester United nil,
Thierry one;
While Spurs threw endless derbies at him,
But could never beat Thierry once.
Thierry Henry:
Letting him sprint
Was like giving Jordan
A leg-up to the rim;
Leaving him unmarked
Was like giving Senna
A getaway car.
Go Thierry, go, go;
Go Thierry, go, go, go;
Any week,
Against any team,
Thierry be good.

About Thierry Henry in England: a poem, "Thierry Be Good"

"The Hunger Games"

Truth is, 
Our youth are already playing Hunger Games:
We've lowered them into the pit, 
Then pulled the ropes away:
We have made them work for painful hours without payment
And view their plight as casually 
As online entertainment.
We promise them a harsh future of infinite constraints
And then we make examples of those who would raise complaints.
We show them that, so they'll survive, 
They must be selfish brutes,
That they must spurn compassion, and all other such untruths.
Our youth are playing Hunger Games already, that's for sure:
We teach them to greet backs with knives, 
Each other's eyes with claws -
But thankfully, 
There are still those young people resolute
To use their kindness to tear our whole world up by its roots.

"The Hunger Games"

Dear revisionists, Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view. Right now, you are anxiously pacing the corridors of your condos and country estates, looking for the right words, the right tributes, the right-wing tributes. You will say that Mandela was not about race. You will say that Mandela was not about politics. You will say that Mandela was about nothing but one love, you will try to reduce him to a lilting reggae tune. “Let’s get together, and feel alright.” Yes, you will do that.

You will make out that apartheid was just some sort of evil mystical space disease that suddenly fell from the heavens and settled on all of us, had us all, black or white, in its thrall, until Mandela appeared from the ether to redeem us. You will try to make Mandela a Magic Negro and you will fail. You will say that Mandela stood above all for forgiveness whilst scuttling swiftly over the details of the perversity that he had the grace to forgive.

You will try to make out that apartheid was some horrid spontaneous historical aberration, and not the logical culmination of centuries of imperial arrogance. Yes, you will try that too. You will imply or audaciously state that its evils ended the day Mandela stepped out of jail. You will fold your hands and say the blacks have no-one to blame now but themselves.

Well, try hard as you like, and you’ll fail. Because Mandela was about politics and he was about race and he was about freedom and he was even about force, and he did what he felt he had to do and given the current economic inequality in South Africa he might even have died thinking he didn’t do nearly enough of it. And perhaps the greatest tragedy of Mandela’s life isn’t that he spent almost thirty years jailed by well-heeled racists who tried to shatter millions of spirits through breaking his soul, but that there weren’t or aren’t nearly enough people like him.

Because that’s South Africa now, a country long ago plunged headfirst so deep into the sewage of racial hatred that, for all Mandela’s efforts, it is still retching by the side of the swamp. Just imagine if Cape Town were London.  Imagine seeing two million white people living in shacks and mud huts along the M25 as you make your way into the city, where most of the biggest houses and biggest jobs are occupied by a small, affluent to wealthy group of black people.  There are no words for the resentment that would still simmer there.

Nelson Mandela was not a god, floating elegantly above us and saving us. He was utterly, thoroughly human, and he did all he did in spite of people like you. There is no need to name you because you know who you are, we know who you are, and you know we know that too. You didn’t break him in life, and you won’t shape him in death. You will try, wherever you are, and you will fail.

Image accompanying recording: The New Yorker cover, issue date Dec. 16, 2013.  Copyright of Kadir Nelson (http://www.kadirnelson.com/).

Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel.

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking to Oxford Circus to meet a friend when the grief finally hit me. I had been kidding myself that Nelson Mandela’s death wasn’t sad, really – he’d been ill for ages, and what’s more most people don’t make it to 95; especially those who fight for the freedom of their people. And then I thought: who was I kidding. It was absolutely heartbreaking. All that love and honour and glory and beauty just floating up, away and beyond. And, just on my way past the National Portrait Gallery on a bright December afternoon, my eyes were overrun with tears and I was grateful for the shadow of my woollen winter hat. Everyone who loved anything about Mandela will have their own fond thoughts about him. I tried to put some of mine into words, and these, below, are the only ones that came.

Your name is the best answer yet
To the question:
“How can you weep
For a man you never met?”
With your bare hands,
You carved freedom from stone:
You became a king
Long before they gave you a throne.
You gave self-respect to millions of fatherless men,
Made countless Africans find joy in their skin.
Rest in progress out there among the stars
And please remember
That the privilege was ours.

For Nelson Mandela: “The privilege was ours.”

I have been thinking a lot about privilege recently.  Privilege, I think, is not inherently a problem.  The problem comes only when people who have no experience of a particular prejudice - racism, classism, sexism, and so on - act in a way which belittles the predicaments of those who are directly affected by it.  These acts are often unconscious, but that doesn't make their effects any less dangerous.  I wrote the piece below in response to the fact that Parliament has only just had its first debate on the disproportionate deaths of black and ethnic minority people in custody, despite this topic being the subject of tireless campaigns for years.  I suspect that the exercise of privilege, be it conscious or subconscious, is a primary reason why it has taken so long for this debate to come before our country's politicians.  
"The First Law of Privilege"

They make you ashamed of your rage.
They call you the angry black man,
The hysterical woman,
The paranoid Jew.
They make you stand in fire,
Then complain when you yell about the heat.
They say:
"What are you playing the race card for?" -
But I have never known a membership card
That has closed so many doors.
They cause or prolong your pain,
Then tell you how it should be expressed;
If you don't do so politely,
Then your case will be dismissed -
They talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you,
Talk over you -
Then get surprised when you shout.
They don't think:
"We ignored them,
So they had to scream it out."
For this is what The First Law of Privilege dictates:
That what to you is daily strife
Is, to them, mere debate.

The First Law Of Privilege

On Monday 20 January 2014, I gave a talk at the Economic Research Council, "Are footballers the bankers of modern sport?"  In their own words, "The Economic Research Council, Britain's oldest economics-based think tank, is dedicated to extending the reach of economic education, debate and leadership. In support of this, the ERC raises the profile of economic conversations; we host events to cultivate wider accessibility, inclusion and civic participation...The Economic Research Council was founded in 1943 as the Joint Council for Economic and Monetary Research. Its origins go back at least a decade earlier to the 1930s, when a number of prominent people, concerned at the poverty around them in the midst of plenty, started questioning the use in Britain of a monetary system that had failed the nation in the past and was liable to go on perpetuating the sequence of boom, slump, boom of the 1920s. If orthodox economics were to blame then its basic tenets should be challenged."  
You can read more about their work here: 
http://www.ercouncil.org/

My Economic Research Council talk: "Are footballers the bankers of modern sport?"

Back again for more of the same,
All aboard the train
Bring your energy and your faith and resume the chase,
Start your engines
Once more you've an agenda,
An unfamiliar adventure,
Preparing to go intercontinental
Or even fully interstellar
Propelling forward, you develop
You accelerate, make comets jealous
See dawns over favelas,
Or the sun set over empty deserts
Progress is your essence,
Optimism is your greatest weapon,
Every single second now seems a present as the future beckons
So ring the bells, all aboard, the destination's north
You've set your course, with open mind and hope you're going forth
Past valleys and fjords,
Through darkened skies, high winds and storms
This is your course, so ring the bells
Settle for nothing else
Ring the bells
Ring the bells
Ring the bells 
Ring the bells
Ring the bells

Bring your energy and your faith and resume the chase, chase, chase

Preparing to go intercontinental 
Or even fully interstellar

Optimism is your greatest weapon

Ring the bells
Ring the bells
Ring the bells 
Ring the bells

So ring the bells, all aboard, the destination's north
You've set your course, with open mind and hope you're going forth
Past valleys and fjords,
Through darkened skies, high winds and storms
This is your course, so ring the bells
Settle for nothing else

"Ring The Bells"

There is a verb: "to tiki-taka":
To slip the ball through gaps
Slim as atoms;
To use wits sharp as the tips of daggers
Leaving rivals bewitched and scattered;
We watch them tiki-taka,
Shift the ball in intricate patterns -
So swift and blissful is their magic
That when they leave the pitch, 
We're saddened.
Barca. They are tiki-taka:
They're humble, and yet rich in swagger:
Not so much athletes as phantoms,
They make hearts swell
Like the best of anthems.

To Tiki-Taka

Sitting in my bedroom refuge, thinking if
I am diligent with penicillin, I can finish this -
Pessimism is a prison not worth living in -
As for the note, yes, I’ve already written it;
Line of apology to each of my relatives:
I've got an alcoholic drink to mix with the medicine:
My second year of college, and I feel bleak as anything -
So I reach for a darkness less menacing;
Need a tune to tune out thoughts of my closest:
The music I choose is “Umi Says” by Mos Def…
…In truth, it’s a soothing process
Since this room’s as humid as I feel hopeless;
Peering in the mirror now, looking in my eyes -
It’s a miracle their light has so long survived -
Once they had such intense urgency,
Now all they have is one slow certainty…
Slightly I open my mouth for the dosage;
Take the first pill of lots more, then I close it;
Then I’m not sure; and, as I handle these
Pills, look to mantlepiece where my note’s propped up;
Think of the things I’ll have lost, once
I’ve popped some more; yes, at once I’ll have locked all doors;
Caused bitter choruses of “it’s your fault”;
Left this talent untouched in its vault,
This gift I’d been given so I could deliver warmth:
So I did the right thing, saved me, my writing;
Threw back the door latch, and soon I was charging through
College grounds, to the room of this girl I hardly knew -
There I made my confession:
I nearly said goodbye to a life I was better off getting;
After she’d wept with me, she’d made me promise:
“Not to take way of the coffin, or the comet,
Not to aim to soar through life, or run from it,
But just to buckle up, bust a gut,
Put one foot before another, that’s enough;
Even if the path’s dark as swimming in Guinness, it
Matters not, all that you can do is continue it.”

"College", with The King's Will

This is a track, "Accelerate", which I performed with Cerys Matthews (vocals), Corey Mwamba (vibraphone), Arun Ghosh (clarinet), Neil Charles (bass) and a host of other musicians at the 10th anniversary of BBC6 Music at the Southbank.  Gets pretty raucous, hope you enjoy it. 

"Accelerate" at BBC6 Music, with Cerys Matthews, Corey Mwamba, Arun Ghosh, Neil Charles

This is our monotony:
They bring the most hateful of rainfalls,
And don't make apologies:
They send storms from the jaws of a drone
To slay those who'd take the USA off its throne -
So each day, we’re preparing for rain;
For these drops not of water 
But rage;
Wait –
All you'll hear is the hum as they're closing
A teenaged male isn't safe in the open –
So we’ve taught them to run,
Our daughters and sons –
Taught them something most terrible:
That here in Yemen, it is never wise
To gaze up and daydream into our own skies:
This is -
The only way, we are told;
That's not so bad as it goes:
No:
Shattered bone,
Shattered hope,
Shattered homes,
We all raise our eyes at the drones -
And so:
In many decades, our youth will explain
Why, when about town, they still walk with necks craned

Popular tracks by Okwonga