Signs Of Greater Age (44)

You go to the supermarket less often 
than you used to: diminished taste buds
eating alone so much of the time,
and a shrinking appetite lengthen
the times between each visit you make.

And when you go your knees and hips
don't work as smoothly as they used to.
For what you want to buy you don't need
a trolley but where you have a handle
to grip and press down on, holding it
is more of a comfort than you at first realise.

The last time I was in the queue to pay for my food
the retired woman in front of me told me about
what a friend of hers saw last week: Her friend
saw man die whilst in a queue almost in front of her.

I had to ask the lady in front of me
'Did he choose the wrong checkout?' 

Everything You Did Not Need To Know About 'Melania'

 

Thank you to film critic Mark Kermode, for daring to pay to watch, and report back, on what it was clearly an act of sacrifice for him to pay to see and choose to watch. He watched this film so that we could know what was in it, without us ever having to go anywhere near this gilded and poisonous trash.   

Confession Of A Former Book Reader

I first enjoyed the mysteries of reading books
aged thirteen, when I first joined a public library.
My membership had to be counter-signed
by a staff member in the discouraging care home
my parents assigned me to live in for five years.

High on their list of things to be discouraged
was being reflective, and enjoying reading.

I will save you the horrors of being made to play sport
whilst being so inept and uncoordinated. Sport was torture.

My adult reading started, aged seventeen when I first read '1984',
when I was way too young to understand it, and peaked
when I read 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'
five times over ten years, the structure of which I still marvel at.
Even two years ago I would read up to thirty books a year,
and hard books at that, memoirs of surviving Auschwitz.

But with fewer friends, and more time spent in my own
or online I have tired since the days of 'Always having a book,
if not several, to read', I still read. But now I no longer write
reviews of the books to express my enjoyment of them.

Over thirty years ago reading was a thrill.
I did not know what new literary joy
I might find in the next book. Now I don't know
what will engage with me, and refresh
my attention span. It could well be silence.

Exclusion

The above is a cartoon, some minor humour
about exclusion being off the scale. Exclusion
happens to many people, whether the excluded
did not recognise their expulsion until the process
 is complete, or whether after some contemplation,
where hindsight can make you more whole, 
and more reconciled to being an outsider.

Wherever you are on the scale of exclusion,
look after it. It may be all you have to hang on to.   

 

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.