The Pleasure In Language

There are many vain and inept world leaders
running banana republics across the world,
where with the limits on their temporal power
some of these men have to choose between
which to claim the most control over,
the security of the state or the freedom of press. 

Where the leader retreats from public debate
they leave to others the pleasure in language
as critics who dare, bend and stretch words
into new shapes in the guise of public journalism,
or simply satire, as those who dislike government
describe in disfavour and despair how their government is run.    

The Disgrace

of cheap grace, where at first
the cheapness of it seems to be hidden,
should never be underestimated.
Least of all when we set our pitch
to be present in other peoples lives
as part of their future.

Picture Set of The Month - February - Seven Moons, One Sun.

Solar eclipse from the space station.
Photographer unknown.

But the moon in the water..  How can one pluck it out?
Yongjia Xuanjue (665-713 AD).
  

The Moon meets the seven sisters
Photo by Ceyetana Siaz.
  

Crescent Moon over kissing camels, garden of the Gods, Colorado.
 Photo Lars Leber.

Super-moon rise over Wizard Island, at Crater Lake, Oregon.
Photo Chaz Shand. 

Blood moon over Egyptian pyramids.
Photographer unknown.
 

Sturgeon Moon setting over Cathedral Rock, Sedona.
Photo Heber Lopez. 

Double Solar Halo appears above the shores
of Split Rock Lighthouse State Park Beach
casting a surreal glow over Lake Superior, Minnesota.
Photo Joemare Sombero.   

 

More Or Less Human?

So often people put one another under stress,
where the one who demands more of another
expects a better performance for less support,
less input for more output than before,
where they help others less
than they expect help for themselves.

Thus the finitude for being more human is stretched
by the demands made upon it, whilst the means
required for being fully human shrink, to be
even less than the sum of their parts once again.

And pointing out how this works becomes impossible. 

Food For Thought

The processed language of advertising
is a natural corollary to the food
such advertising supports:
the lack of substance in both
normalises a lack of content in life.

In The Land Where Work Makes People Free....

Where ever freedom leads, it seems to lead
to where liberty is sorely lacking. 

 

A Choice Of Slippery Slope

The Doomsday Clock is less a clock
more a report of the deliberations
of a committee of scientists that reports
every January, where the communique
is called The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 
and this year the report for the choice
of slippery slopes seems particularly wide
and vertiginous as world leaders choose
how much they can push each other closer
towards disaster not knowing how much
they may well be being pushed further
towards catastrophe, unaware of it, themselves.

From this years report our choice of slippery slopes,
down which we might all disappear forever, is wider
and more precipitous than all the previous reckonings
set since 1947. The clock is now set at 89 seconds,
when in times past maximum safety from nuclear annihilation
was set at 17 minutes in 1991. With the end of the Soviet Union.

With President Putin seeking the return of the Soviet Empire
in some new Trump approved hegemony, we are nearer
to perilous times than we have ever been before.