In The Blink Of An Eye

 Another eye was taken,
the better for the half sighted
to more dimly recognise each other.

The Less Eventful Life

I no longer wish time to go faster or slower
than it is presently does, second by second,
calibrated more by my choice of talk radio
than anything else. I am now more setttled
into the lack of events that extends my days
than I was in a previous  life.

I am grateful for how I have endured
the old, undealt with, losses and wounds
that now slow me down, to live like this.

I would not seek for life to go any faster.

The Streets Of Central Belfast

Seem curioiusly non-descript nowadays,
about a fifth full with the public, at most,
most of them looking for somewhere
worth going to, that they can't see there.

Add to that the street preachers filling the air
with noise about The Bible being pounded,
and I wonder what they are all doing there,
nobody adressing anyone else in particular. 

Are they all there to enjoy being ignored?
Maybe the preachers would attract more attention 
if they started preaching Hell and Vengeance
to all around, seeking to offend their listeners ears.

We know what happens with such provocations
-the public will tell the preacher in terms
he understands that he is being cheap
with his language and he should confine
such sermons to condemning members
of his own church who have signed up for the abuse.     

The Pretender No More

For anyone who lives long enough
one of the more positive effects of ageing
is that we rememeber what we grew up through,
better than people younger than us can realise,
and more than that memory is dynamic,
not static, the details that come back to us
change in line with our age, as we remember.

One of the recent memories that returned to me,
age adjusted, is Margaret Thatcher declaring
through 1988 legislation that a gay relationship
is 'a pretend family relationship', a declaration
that at the time shocked gay men and lesbians
as they saw those younger than them trapped
by regulations about family they would not choose.

This legislation was eventually reversed in 2003.
But what comes back to me is how the phrase 
'pretend family relatiohship' has changed.
Pretend family relationships were actually
universal in the blessed Margaret's day.
Any child who had been raised in a care home
lived with this pretense, as did adopted children,
in other state arranged pretend family relationships.

After having been there, and done that,
and found that I did not want that T shirt
of state arranged pretend family relationships
I chose a relationship my pretend family
dissaproved of, thus exposing the pretense
I had lived with for thirtry years, though
it would take me the same length of time again
for me to realise how pretend family had been.

Margaret Thatcher was right, children should be
allowed better than pretend family relatioships
which hid in plain sight all along.-In particular
better thanthe self serving heterosexual monoculture
who would claim that they are all of human history.  

Rare Birds

Do cuckoos know they are cuckoos,
more than other bird species know themselves?
Even as cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds nests?

Of course not! Not that scientists have to know
all the mechanisms by which the cuckoo fools
the bird of a different breed, in whose nest
the cuckoo lays its own, rather larger, egg.

So it is for humans who are born to parents
who when their child becomes an adult
finds the idea of being a parent repugnant,
such that should they ever become parents,
their child may be safer removed from them.

Whilst in their own terms many non-parents
have different energies and skills, and are fine
as participants in their own communities,
they should be treasured, like rare birds:
whilst they are relieved of the pressure
to join the common herd of parenthood.     

The Trouble With Modern Absurdity

Is that those who embrace it,
to make themselves well known
and become exemplars of it,
are the last, and least willing,
to recognise how others see them,  
for what they have become.

Royalty Ancient And Modern

In medievil times, and long after,
absolute rulers and their favourites
used to rule through incurring debts
they would delay paying off, until close
to their death-tying their successors
to limits the departing leader has set.

Nowadays absolute rulers rule through
breaking as many rules as the nations
they lead have ever set up. For an encore
-and to prove their popularity-they refuse
to observe any ruling from even the highest courts
that the land have set, believing themselves
and their followers to be so exceptional
as to be above law. They see it as their duty
to defile regulations they make their enemies follow.