Goin' Out West

Out on the Westway one spring
evening my misjudged boot just
jammed in the synthetic turf
my knee went one way
                    my ankle
              the other
         it was quite a circus
it's hard to convey the level
of pathetic limping and whimpering
like the most wounded puppy which
dogged me for day after week after

Fast forward six months the
creaky gang are lagging behind on
Angel Falls via Willow Creek Trail

Derek and Agnes choose me to forge on ahead
to the meeting place lest our guide the
holy Maddie becomes alarmed by the missed deadline

Proud to be chosen as the 45-
year-old messenger boy, I plug in
and jog down the path. Time to test
the ankle and the knee, meet my
guardian angel and deliver some
vital message before expiring in
the Athenian manner her sunlit
face the last - 

The clumpy boots and the dust don't help but
when Goin' Out West comes on and we're into
our stride the body knows the score
once more and the lifeforce it will be admitted
rises with a pulse affirming

I am the courier, I will meet the deadline
I am a man on a mission and I'm back
baby coming back to you my imaginary
Maddie who's secretly enjoying
a few hours peace
away from the crinklies

How it began, how it ended

Low to mid January bereft hopped on a whim
to the fourth division seaside town
we used to visit when 'family' was still a thing

How the rain fell down decades
gone, not one thing had changed
same balcony same sunken park

Equipped with a disposable camera from
Secret Santa, plus a new iPod but
some things never change
same flag pub same church hall and
the same rain fell as I snapped
each blurry inconsequence

For old times I drifted round the
extensive concrete sea defences just
like on 70s mood stomps. Then
playing Springsteen on the internal radio
with a teenage philosophy cigarette
waiting for anything to begin

Trying to say, to what remained
of myself, there will be a resolution
to this latest erosion. Surely
promenades will be built to
protect your delicate coastlines

All day listening to recently re-
discovered Karen Dalton songs older than
Springsteen was back then and
on the shivering train home played
In a Station on repeat. Not my habit
but I was swimming in that sea like
a sailor seeking salvation

Wake up you're doing it again

My boys they suffered a legendary defeat now
look need hurry sleep it off we're in
room 205 and have an action packed day waiting
peaceful slumbers are required the last thing
one needs is a taunting
from the other side of the dirty curtain, yes
it's quite the insult to suffer a haunting
from the not so ethereal
realm and I know whose tongue those foul sneers
such cheap jeers originated
no oxygen supply for my detractor
thou nameless wretch who shall remain
sir a mere flapping scoundrel

Transfigured a la realm into
squawking mocking bird of parrot
wings a clapping with glee at my boys
shortfall, stumbling, succumbent
catastrophic capitulation
as we have established, still at the
jabs and jibes the rising rage - Cut it out!

One feels targeted, one starts to mutter
from the depths, the worst of all words
and in many fresh combinations
they lurch from gut to throat

@~{(&^!^* (£%$^~~£(*!"@#

Till a familiar voice shakes and
soothes from the right side

They do this, they do that

So basically today PHP got two critical bugs
that let anyone run code on your server
without even logging in which is bad and then
the details leaked before the patch was even out
which is worse and it works on
WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Larave
and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix
so the NSA was like
"take your system offline"
and the FBI was like "take your system offline"
and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline"
and then the Prime Minister of Japan
The actual Prime Minister
posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people
to take their system offline so everyone took their system offline
like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline
and the Dutch parliament went offline
and the Port of Rotterdam went offline
and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites
and Wikipedia went down, and http://Archive.org went down
and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down
and the University of Vienna's webmail went
for some reason and that's just PHP
Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0
which is the highest score they give out
for a bug that's been there since 2014
so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years
and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer
and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images
including latest and you didn't even have to import it
just installing it was enough
and it's the second time this year
and then Railway paused every deployment
on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables
so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there
TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around
inside with stolen credentials
for basically a month
And an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes
and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months
and is just shutting down like the whole company
and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass
and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited
and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords
and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs
and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident
and Japan has been in an official
state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9
which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post
Oh and eMudhra a certificate authority
that's issued over 60 million certificates
whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are
was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long
and one of them was 4 just 4
and the others were like 66 and 237
Anyway it's Wednesday

https://x.com/fiveoutofnine/status/2113045722744717360

Heavy Metal Thunder

Would love to take a sledgehammer
and crack a nut with it
crack that nut right up

Just smash the smithereens
out of the nut
see the kernel explode
in all directions

Heavy duty steel hammer
send the shell hurtling
solid wood handle, comfortable feel
pulverize nut after nut after nut

Nutmeat
BISH
Endocarp, pericarp
BASH
Seed coat, hard shell, husk
BOSH

Smash the smugness out of the nuts
with my heavy-trade hammer
sledge it, bang it, smash it up
take them all down a peg or two

Premonition

Michael Crane
not the actor as he always said
with great patience came
out with us on a Monday mission
and after his customary
six pints

Stumbled into a boy
by the station
silent
shanked
took a sudden left, but MC was
always one for the Irish slash French
departures. We thought no more about it until
he turned up not to beat about the
bush dead

Rando poked, didn't realise the devolved
devalued state of his organs
result: immunity to pain
alert mechanism. Long cold night -

He laid him down to sleep
his associates long since
for reasons dispersed

Lifeblood gently seeping into
onto a Selling England by the Pound
Royal Scam park bench

References our friend
Michael Crane of many
a Monday mission
would have appreciated

Small, hardy breed

In a field somewhere west of Dinton Pastures
The midday sun scorching my nylon 'trackies'
Six Li'l Sebastians barrel toward us
Their manes waggling with glee
We welcome them with giddiness.
Both parties are thrilled to encounter
The other after so long in their respective
Enclosures. Unsure, I pat their solid sides and
They shake their toothsome heads in joy.
My secret friend approaches from afar - 'Look
What we have found' I will say.
These ponies are surely ours now, or for
As many minutes as they will tolerate
Our city ways. Maybe offer my fruit pot.
Slowly the novelty shrinks and they graze
on tufts and thickets. An earlier admirer
compliments me on said trackies, an
Unlikely item to select but beggars.
The other has arrived now but we've lost the
Dressing room, the tubby tribe have returned to
Their games and we to ours. The time for
Blessings was candle brief and miracles
Are for the dumbest of beasts.

After A Blessing, James Wright