The Personal Isn't Always the Political. Or Is It?

My schedule for the two weeks is frenetic. I don't actually want to think about how I am going to fit everything in.

And it has been a very big news week.

Firstly, the true gentleman up the road who so recently celebrated his 90th Birthday with an all-day party has died, and the world is poorer for no longer having Tom Choate in it. Some of you may recall that his first novel, The Empathy Machine, was published last year.

Secondly, my brother-in-law and his wife, plus her sister and brother-in-law, embarked on one of those "holiday of a lifetime" things in Canada, where they were going to snowboard and ski and tour and generally live the high life. Having arrived on the Saturday, they had their first day on the slopes on Sunday, and my brother-in-law broke his leg rather badly in a collision with a skier, and is now in hospital in Banff awaiting a second operation.

On a far brighter note, however, one of my bestest friends has just had her fourth child (and her eldest is just a couple of months older than the twins). Reiff was a very healthy 9 1/2 lbs and, like all the others, a home-birth (I have to report this as I find that mind-boggling). Mother and baby doing very well, but Dad seems shattered.

In the midst of all this, I have been continuously mulling the stunning documentary I watched on Saturday night, Julian Temple's Requiem for Detroit. It was a voyage through a remarkably short period of history; from the growth of the city (via the motor companies) into one of the America's most prosperous, and its subsequent, catastrophic decline, an entirely man-made disaster. The scenes and stories of inner-city Detroit, right here, right now, were post-apocalyptic. It was terrifying viewing.

And it was followed by a programme examining how Detroit's music was very much a product of the city, and whilst not ignoring Motown it also, to my great delight, covered the band the MC5 extensively. The MC5 are, in my opinion, one of the greatest bands nobody has ever much heard of anymore, and if you do not own this album, go out and buy it now. It is hard, beautiful, aural anger: one of very few debut albums that is live. It remains one of my favourite records, ever.

It's called "Kick Out The Jams" by the way. The cleaned-up version of that track follows those opening lines with "Brothers and Sisters". The original doesn't.

Finally, I get my major news fixes from the World Service, as I am a tad insomniac so listen through the night. This being the case, I have listened for the past three years to the news from Mexico, which is primarily concerned with President Calderon's war against the cartels. From that news, you can actually understand it being called a "war". The scale of slaughter in a developed country (Mexico is the world's 13th biggest economy) is unimaginable: over 18,000 dead since December 2006. The murder rate in Cuidad Juarez is around ten people a day. Last weekend saw 17 people dead in the city by Saturday night. The majority are the foot soldiers of the cartels, the bulk of the rest police and army personnel, but a significant number are "civilians".

However, the American Consulate murders have propelled the situation to the front pages of the British newspapers and onto the UK television news. Which is long overdue, but also, for some reason, made me angry. Just as the documentary on Detroit did. We are so unglobal - I am so unglobal. Very little affects us for long unless it has a direct effect of our personal well-being. Yet sometimes I am so tempted to just get on a plane and go and do something - anything - because of my egotistical belief that I can help. But I don't, because of family ties, and so a simmering anger lies just beneath my surface that things aren't right and I can't fix them. The fact that mankind has discovered so much and yet learnt so little lies deep in the very genes that have made us the dominant species we are, but sometimes there seems scant cause for celebration.

Anger is my default poetry position. I write my best when I am in a boiling fury; that is when I am most able to condense emotion to words. Obviously, one is not boiling angry very often, which probably explains a lot. But my simmering anger about the situation has led, tonight, to this.

May Fly

When is the dead time, mother?
At midnight.
What time is it now, mother?
One micron past midnight.
What must I do, mother?
Fly; fly and find.
Have I family, mother?
You have kind.
Will you come with me?
I left you at midnight.

This is your gauzy day.