I flew to Denmark in search of a soul
that, I fancied, lived in cyan,
bold on an unfamiliar stamp
that had invaded the bar on my login screen.
We arrayed in space under thin blue lights,
at tables cloned to the edge of time,
as commanders strode from centre to side
and charted our path across the sky.
But it was all too big, and I missed my fluent little
English tool box where I used to fumble,
that had been locked away and replaced by arrays
of sawn-off words, badly assembled.
A man came to talk about brand,
how it grows in a corner of borrowed minds.
But I worry for the sower and soil:
I reach for the fruit; it pulps in my hand.
So I didn’t find a corporate ghost,
a clean encounter of the executive type,
just us Brits and a man who I knew from Roskilde,
and a Finn, and a Swede I’d arranged to meet.
And now I don’t believe in a spirit that walks
over acetate covers, through seminars,
on homepages and in rising graphs,
I know a place with a thousand lives
who cling to dignify each hour,
painting dreams through keyboard talk with
coffee stains on spreadsheet days.