Verzanelle Nr.01 — Cashless

Very Orson Well(i)s(h), Josh.  Sends chills down the spine not just because of the concept.  But, those who will actually buy ( no pun intended ) into it.

Thank you Ahavati. Cashless is now 'the new cool' for young people in London. Sweden is very advanced in not using cash. I find it scary, due to the far-reaching implications.

It's giving complete control to another entity.  Not something I'm willing to do.

Me neither. Fortunately Portugal is very much a cash-cash culture.

This is amazing Josh! And spoken with so much passion!

I remember your villanelles and now you invent your own form? Respect!

Same goes for the content... keep opening eyes, dear poet!

Thank you so much for your comments, Duende. I think something in me is hard-wired for villanelles - so I have to give it due honour - hence selecting some with a book in mind, even if the book never goes anywhere. I have a home-made draft copy sitting next to me. :)

Sounds like great company :-)

I understand hard-wired and if we all would write the same this would be a boring place. I really enjoy your villanelles, the comlexity of it though it's probably not complex to you anymore...

... there's more villanelles (and their derivatives) on the way over the next few weeks.

Sadly, in this so called modern age, progress has become synonym of freedom. But I truly disagree. It's not so. Like you say so eloquently here, and Ahavati in her comment, we are just left to accept what other retain convenient for us. We, de facto, lose our freedom of choice and subside to a badly hidden dictatorship. Great work Josh. J

Thank you for commenting, Juvenalis. The ideology of "Technology = Progress" underpins the continued non-questioning of the latest tech.
'Technical' progress (which there has been) is automatically equated with 'societal' progress' (questionable).
Such is the power of an ideology such as 'Technology = Progress"; it sounds good, but is vague and therefore hard to refute. A bit like 'America First' I guess.

I get my cash out of a machine
stuck in a wall, but even then
I have to put my piece of plastic
into the machine to be read ..

'Tis true - the slippery slope has been ongoing for several decades already ...

An excellent poem, Josh, and a pleasure to listen to you reading it. You've got quite the voice and good instinct of what tone to use and how much emotion to add in.

Great work!

Thanks you for reading & listening. I quite like trying out differing accents, role-playing. Sometimes it works better than others; I was pleased with this one - and am glad you you liked it.

Hi Josh ... just checking out your back catalogue.  I like the poem and the subject of the poem.  The same thing is behind this poem https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/324995-truck-stop-or-the-repeal-of-the-truck/ ... when I was studying law my father asked me to find out why, back in the '80s, employers could insist that people be paid by bank transfer rather than having to pay people in cash as they had once done.  He said that at the time he was a foreman at a building site and he ended up sacking some 'decent grafters' [hard workers] because they didn't have bank accounts.  (One of whom was illiterate).  As I dug into it I found that Ken Clarke used the Wages Act 1986 to repeal a much earlier law from the 1830s that said workers had to be paid in cash rather than a 'chose in action'.  In law-bore language a chose in action is a financial instrument that stands in for something else.  So, the worker (post '86) didn't get cash for his labours - the cash, including the ownership of it went to the bank, and the worker was given a chose in action, the mere right to the cash.  The Parliamentary debates were with Clare Short and Ken Clarke, she asked Clarke how many people didn't have a bank account.  He didn't know but it was estimated to be between 3 to 4 million people.  So, in one fell swoop the banks owned the wages of circa 3 to 4 million people and the people were left with a chose in action.  Incredible there wasn't any rioting.  (Ken Clarke has always hated the working classes).

Anyway, to answer the question, did the spoken part of the poem work for me?  Yes, but I don't know if it would travel beyond the cultural borders of Blighty ... I can imagine that people may assume that you always speak like that rather than it being an affectation to enhance the meaning of the poem.

Thank you for such an interesting answer.
I started off work-life in 1973 working for the (then) National Coal Board at Agecroft Colliery in North Manchester. Wages were paid in little brown envelopes with the cash folded over in such a way it could be counted before opening. About 1,500 people were employed at the pit, including many Polish who had their own working men's club.
I seem to remember the Friday before one summer break, roughly £1million in cash was being counted out.
The Feb'74 strike which brought the Heath government down was quite an experience for me as a young 17-year old. I left in 1980 before Thatcher destroyed it all. I was aghast at the scenes from the 1984/5 strike.
My father was a lawyer, and I'd just come out of public school, but my time 'down pit' grounded me in a reality that in large measure has shaped my whole approach to life as one of the more privileged, living in a world with such structural injustices.

Regarding "the voice", I agree - I'm in danger of it being taken 'literally'. My everyday accent flips between public school and broad Lancashire - depending on how agitated I am.  :))
I remember reading your 'truck' poem some time ago; I'll have another look at it.