The Collection
Nine poems, in the order they were written
The early work of 2008–2009 turns inward—perplexity, despair, the quagmire. The return in 2022 turns outward: heroes questioned, media indicted, and Jamaica's unfinished independence argued in verse. Choose a poem to jump straight to it. Every poem page ends with a comment box—readers are welcome to leave a response under any poem; comments are held for the author's approval before they appear.
The State of Perplexity
“My world has crumbled, my world has crumbled…”
No. 02 · 7 June 2008Despair
“Despair, despair, oh the misery of despair…”
No. 03 · 5 January 2009Quagmire
“Oh crazy world of infinite circumstances…”
No. 04 · 5 February 2022 (published 11:14)NO HERO OF MINE
“Bustamante, Bustamante; who was this Bustamante?”
No. 05 · 5 February 2022 (published 11:31)Misinformation Disinformation
“O'ETHIOPIA—Agenda, Agenda, Agenda Abounds…”
No. 06 · 5 February 2022 (published 13:00)Xaymaca National Pride
“Where is your pride, dignity, love and self-worth?”
No. 07 · 23 March 2022Yeah Man | Yemen
“Yeah man, Yemen, let's talk about Yemen…”
No. 08 · 9 April 2022Republic of Jamaica | Quad Seven Clash
“Wat a liiv an bambaie, when the two sevens clash…”
No. 09 · 15 April 2022RUE THE DAY
“Dem a go live fi rue di day dem neva participate…”
Above: the Blue Mountains of Jamaica at sunrise—the Xaymaca these poems speak from and to. “Xaymaca” is pronounced “Yameka.”
Thought Experiments
Thought Experiments
The poems ask what was done and who answers for it. This room asks what comes next—where the same mind works forward, in research and speculation, on the world after scarcity and after labor as we know it. The shelves below are named now; the writings themselves are being gathered to fill them.
Post-Scarcity
What happens to value, dignity, and power when the basic needs of life no longer have to be rationed by price? The questions this shelf will hold:
- If scarcity is manufactured, who manufactures it—and why?
- What is a person owed simply for existing, once “earn your keep” loses its premise?
- Which institutions survive abundance, and which were only ever scarcity's managers?
Post-Labor Arbitrage
For centuries, profit has lived in the gap between what labor costs in one place and what it earns in another. What happens when machines close that gap everywhere at once?
- When labor can be automated anywhere, where does the arbitrage go?
- Who owns the replacement—and who is merely replaced?
- What replaces wages as the way ordinary people claim a share of what is produced?
These are the author's long-running research interests, pursued in documents and notes over years. As those writings are shared and organized, they will be published here in full—each experiment with its premises stated plainly, so the reader can follow the reasoning and test it. Until then, this room stands open and named, the way a chapter is named before it is written.
About the Archive
Where these poems come from
From the blog to this page
Every poem here was first published on the original NileValleyDreams blog at nilevalleydreams.com. The blog's whole published feed is verse—nine posts, all poems—and all nine are collected here, reorganized into the two movements the work naturally makes: the inward early work of 2008–2009, and the outward poetry and commentary of 2022.
The texts are reproduced as published, in the author's original spelling, punctuation, and Jamaican patwa—down to the spellings he chose on purpose. Nothing has been smoothed over.
Two houses, two kinds of work
Nile Valley Dreams is the home of the personal and speculative writing: the poetry, the verse commentary, and—next—the thought experiments. The claim-by-claim scrutiny work lives under DIS-MIS-MAL | Information, a separate house built for a separate discipline.