Lost in Metaphor

When 'the sticking point'
is whether 'the band aid'
will stick or not, you can be sure
that the debate is about avoiding
talk of the gaping hole of the wound.

Lighter Consumer Advice

On hot summer days
keep cool in your local supermarket
-enjoy the free air conditioning
as you browse the shelves.

 
Don't buy anything you don't need, though.

Something You Can Believe

This paraphrases 'If voting changed anything.....  '
 from here.

Nihilism and Democracy

In the last forty years
I have lived through three recessions
and two minor economic up-turns
where for having less I gained less.

The latest recession is still on-going.

The first downturn felt like it was
the sharpest-because I became
an unemployed adult through it.
I refused to see at the time how
it would make me unemployable,
I have learned that it did just that since.

What I felt at the time was
money and opportunity shrinking
for no apparent reason.

During that first recession some graffiti
appeared on a local railway bridge.
'SLIT YOUR OWN THROAT-VOTE TORY'.

It appeared because we had a Tory MP
and the perception amongst youth
was that the Tories were the party
who enjoyed reinforcing hardship
on those with the least to frighten those
with slightly more to act for the gain of the few. 

Before the next election the word 'TORY'
was erased, and the graffiti stayed that way
for decades, until someone thought to remove it....

The town is still 'no better than it ought to be',
and ninety years from the first Tory vote,
the local MP is still has a Tory.

If there were an apocalypse
he would keep his seat,
and disguise all sign of change. 

If Schools Tried To Mature Children

into a self sufficient adulthood at the age of fourteen
they would have to be closed. Such maturity would limit
future corporate growth, through putting individuals
into debts they end up passing on to future generations.

Such schooling would also reduce the future the use
of 'family values' as the path to mass infantilization.

On Thomas Hobbes

The mercy of the Hobbesian view of life
was that it was that even though
life was seen as 'nasty brutish and short',
and often solitary, the blessing lay
how brief it could be, without technology.

As anyone of advanced age knows,
the technologies that increase
our longevity also prolongs our cruelty
and deceives us as to what kindness is.

Gruesome But Necessary

is how the angels who destroyed Sodom
saw the their mission;
a tabula rasa beyond human compare.

From Jihads to assassinations,
faith in the power of cleansing fire
remains strong. Now it comes
cleanest from the barrel of a gun.

The Definition Of Old Age

-declining into the future
whilst hoping that others

can map what the old cannot.
.

What We All Need

and what we all want to be to others
if we only 'got' the are of reciprocity.

Word Games You Can Trust

Family; the people
who put the 'liar'
into familiarity.

The Soul Destroying Lifestyle

The sense of not having a soul
is no impediment when negotiating a supermarket.
It is actually an asset when it helps us
avoid the numbness that follows
our forays into these soulless places.

Mind and Matter

History Repeated Itself

Lenin asked before he died,
to be buried in St Petersburg,
next to his mother. He also asked
that there be no statues of him,
and that Stalin should not be his successor.

For the 20th century's most influential demagogue,
and successor to The Czar, Lenin expired
like his predecessor, weak and unheard.

Procrastination

Peace Talks are always more
about speech than peace,
and less about agreement.

The Best Insurance Policy

used to be a combined belief in neighbour and deity,
both for better and for worse. At it's best,
when it worked, it was called 'The Kingdom* of Heaven'.
It had as it's reward an anti-litigious
no-claim-no-fee-win-win policy
called 'forgiveness', and it worked. 


*Mathew Ch 5 Verses 3-12 inclusive

Where Is Infinity?

Where the buck

has nowhere to stop
irresponsibility has
infinite room to roam
and set our choices.

From Me-Generation To i-phone

we mine ourselves and scarce rare earth elements
to be distracted by the latest technology
as we trash 99.9% of the ecology
that 'less developed' creatures
far more sustainably share.

What is the result? 'Detached modern living'.

Which Book Gives You Directions?

Whether your destination
is The Imitation of Christ,
or The Cloud Of Unknowing,
it is important to believe
that you know where you are going.

Rock and Roll Is So Not What It Used To Be

'This one switches on  my electric blanket back home in Finchley.
You need your creature comforts when you are my age...  '

What's Your Poison?

A saint writes 'Resentment is like taking poison
and hoping the other person will die'-Saint Augustine.

The unfortunate thing is it does work,
and works best when the poisoned-by-proxy
don't die, but go on to lead reduced lives
as a result of other peoples intake.
  

The Generosity Of Scientific Publishing

All talk and writing of genes 'being selfish'
is surely empty rhetoric, given the generosity
required by the media and the publishing industry
to get the message of such 'genetic selfishness'
out to a public who see the generosity in the message.
If the public had to reason that genes were that mean,
they would expect the genes to be
secretive about it towards the scientists.

The University of Life

He was a luckier man
then he knew he was
when he got away with it. 

Castles In The Air

'A neurotic is a man is a man 

who builds castles in the air,
a psychotic is a man who lives there.
A psychiatrist is the man
who collects the rent.'.
-Dr Anthony Clare

Each Night I Sleep

I hope to clean the bottom of the barrel
of what pains me, and feel rested.
Each morning I wake with the ache
and the sense there being more to scrape
and know the life that I have to look after.

How Much Is Enough To Preserve Us?

The choices of the poor are limiting,
and hard to own as spurs to generosity.
But their choices are still more generous
within their limits than the luxuria of the rich.

History Is The Immurement

of the great and good by time,
through their deeds being mis-described
and where they are remembered at all
the deeds of the good are attributed to others.

Homo Erectus

is one of many forms of life before modern man
and there were many many phases before that,
from fish that swam to fish adapted to dry land. 
In his adapted form modern man is such a creature
of nostalgia for a past that he cannot remember
that he misunderstands how much he wants return,
not just being the fish that survived out of the water
but the fish who made the waters nearer, with global warming.

Ninmby-ism Starts Here

Good neighbours the world over
usually agree, how un-neighbourly
life outside them seems to be.

The Sky Is The Limit With The Holiday Blues

Oddly enough my dad never had a car
and never drove, and never took us anywhere.
Now I know what I was missing... 

In Ancient Times

Summer was when men took up war.
In peacetimes Summer is the time to riot,
march, or prepare a pageant.

Testosterone needs public ritual
to remain constant, ask Northern Ireland.

The Half And Half Of International Charity

multinational charities must be either 

1)agreeably corrupt for the hierarchy
required to run them to work with
the rulers of the host country they work in,

or 2)benignly unaware of the terminal contradictions
within their mission statement for them to be able to continue.

For a charity to be even half effective in it's aims
it has to be less than half corrupt and not know it.