Unstoppable

Found poem: ‘Ageing process is unstoppable, finds unprecedented study’ Amelia Hill, The Guardian, 17 June 2021 

We cannot slow the rate at which we get older

Says a study by a collaboration of scientists from 14 countries

The invariant rate of ageing is due to biological constraints

Rather than slowing down death

More people are living much longer

Due to a reduction in mortality at younger ages

Statistics confirmed individuals live longer as health

And living conditions improve which leads to increasing longevity

Nevertheless a steep rise in death rates as years advance

Into old age is clear to see in all species 

Says a study by a collaboration of scientists from 14 countries

A very high-powered study proving something contentious

And surely right more people get to live much longer now

However the trajectory towards death in old age has not changed

Doppelgänger

 Doppelgänger

 

He is the voracious algorithm

Serving returns to my server all the rhythms

Of my online appetite confessions

My indiscernible even to me transgressions.

He is my inner consumer ghost

Selling me more of me till more is most,

A person I can hardly recognise

Who fills in the outlines undisguised.

 I slump about, eyeball to the screen

As he darts and declares like a raging teen:

Me, a walking eyeball with playing card news,

He, the bolting regurgitator of my views.

My body into other bodies bumps unselectively,

He is everything that is pent-up electricity

QR

 

Twelve QR codes drawn in oil pastel. Quick Response code is a type of matrix barcode invented in 1994 by the Japanese automotive company Desno Wave, as a way of tracking automotive parts in their factories. In lockdown Melbourne, QR codes have become a foolishly ‘foolproof’ way of tracing private people in public places. Everywhere the grid maze of Melbourne meets us at the door in micro-form. Wikipedia breaches the historians’ unwritten rule about the past tense. These sentences were added to the ‘QR Code’ entry in January of this year: “In several Australian states patrons are required to scan QR codes at shops, clubs, supermarkets and other service and retail establishments on entry to assist contact tracing. Singapore, the United Kingdom and New Zealand used similar systems”