Marcel Duchamp;

long before anyone else
he was the man who
made his success
by taking the piss
out the art market.

I Put My Trust In Ruins

of faiths and religions,
my trust in them is
that they are ruined
-foundations for societies
that will always be shadows
of the projections they
were intended to be.
Never to be completed.
I believe in ruins.

A Bhuddist Fell

into quiet conversation with an atheist,
who was desperately keen
not only to be accepted in his belief,
but that he should be accepted
purely on his own terms.

After some time the atheist's arguments
grew circular and repetitve.
Tired of being urged to convert,
the bhuddist fell quiet.
When finally he was asked for his thoughts
he replied 'My friend let us meet in my next life,
If then you are still an atheist,
let me remind you of this time-
it will help you recall your previous lives'.

At this the atheist fell silent,
the ardour of his belief faded
in recognition of a circular
otherness, beyond himself....

Intelligence And Mistakes

'Intelligence is less to make no mistakes,
but seeing how quickly
you can make them good.'-Bertol Brecht 

The Never Ending Cycle Of Urban Violence

"Don't Blame us for being violent towards rioters 

we learned how to be violent from television"

The Jargon Kings

Investment bankers
are the lunatics who obscure
themselves and others with their jargon.
Their high finance life styles are their asylum,
They are the ones who turn government
into self-government for themselves,
hiding how what it is going to cost others
is accepting a contrariness beyond belief.

Is Coca Cola The New Satan?

Given how drinking it gives so many

diabetes, and so many other diseases,
then we don't really need to ask to find out.  

Time Is Life Divided,

life is time counted out.
When we are with people
we like, then time,
like well received good
intentions, is beyond measure.

Morning Coffee That Is Too Strong Can Have Deleterious Effects

Kierkegaard knew this state very well,
he found that caffeine was what put the fizz
into his writings, in the one-man debating society
that was his study as he simultaneously wrote different texts.

The Happy Are Truly Invisible In Their Happiness

When I was young I was treated as if I was invisible,
until I was old enough for family and my teachers
to pretend to have to take notice of me,
to let me know that I had a future
as long as I did only what they wanted.

I did what they wanted until the instruction
ran out, after which nothing happened
several times over. Visits to the job centre
were like season tickets for some
never-ending run of 'Waiting For Godot'. 

Behind their desks, the staff were busy
pretending to engage with callers-in,
and pretending to being human

whilst wishing they were not there.

Now I blog, and my voice, is the page.
My statistics tell me of my audience.
Invisibility is integral to the territory.

I am happy that I make nobody jealous.
As my best friend said when he first met me,
'The happy are invisible in their happiness'.

When Uncertainty Is The Best Certainty

Modern scientific thinking
seems so Fundamentalist to me
that I can only liken it
to be hardened sclerotic thinking.

It echoes the win-lose logic
of the Old Testament-where with certainty
the major and minor prophets won the argument,
because as they wrote they locked the readers
of what they wrote out of other, unrecorded, histories
-without us ever realising how typically alpha male
writing that creates blinkered thinking is.

I am just not macho enough to use words
like 'delusion' or 'phobia' about others unchecked.
Every day I thank my maker for the uncertainty
and creativity, in the days through which I live.

Goodbye Kim Jong Il

May your son, your chosen successor
Kim Jong Un, make it his gift
to the world be that he chooses
to be the last hereditary dictator,
of which there have been surprising many.

If I Am To Be Reincarnated, This Would Be My Preffered Shared Experience

What could be sweeter and more tasteful?

In My Youth

I voluntarily read George Orwell's
'1984' five times, to comprehend
how mass-produced unhappiness
could be refined into normalising addiction.

My parents had demonstrated to me
that well how cynicism drains the esteem
out of belief such that I did not know how believe it.
Thank you George, for proving to me how it was done.

The Reliability Of Second Hand Hope

The older I get the more I prefer
to rummage in charity shops,
to find the thing with a limited life
that I believe that I can extend
which feels like it was meant for me.

I trust the charity shops more
than I trust the lotteries and lies
sold by governments, which promise,
but then defer, an instant transformation that never arrives.

Overselling Will Have It's Consequences

Hope deferred used to be said
'to make the heart grow sick'*.

Now we call it advertising
where when it's repetition makes us ill,
it's content still makes for nostalgic social history.

*Proverbs ch13 v12

Thrift Vs Easy Money

I was as surprised as everyone else
when the economy that I depend on
melted, from overheating. 

With hindsight the sign that something was wrong
came to me when thrift shops first accepted credit cards.

Thrift and over-easy money will never co-exist for long.

Irrational Hopes

The irrationality I prefer 
is less the will of humans to err,
and more the grace I cannot explain-
that draws success out of failure.

'Finish Your Cocaine Darling.... ....Before It Goes On The Ration Book''

The Most Reliable Gift A Man Can Give Yourself Throughout The Year

Apologies to any women viewing this
for the lack of information for them
at the very least they should feel free
to practice their own version. 

Occupying Armies

do well to disguise,
and keep as a constant surprise,
both for themselves and for others,
how control makes us remote

from ourselves and each other.

In The New Modern Sabbath

Lawnmowers will chorus mechanical hosannas
and the poor will trade the little they have
for equally small gain, less expenses, 

on open air market stalls,
where half the aim is conversation.

The only sin, from which to repent, will be true rest.

The Vagaries Of Diplomacy

In the early 1970's Zhou Enlai,

first premier of The People's Republic of China,
was asked his opinion of the French revolution.

His reply was “It’s too soon to tell”.
What was then seen as being far sighted,
for being a comment on the year 1789
was actually a reference to the Parisian
student revolts of 1968.

As he never said
'Diplomacy is being misunderstood
to good effect by other means.'.

Patriarchy-The Gordian Knot

which among other catch 22 situations,
supports a law in fundamentalist Islam,
whereby when a woman is raped
she has the choice of being stoned
as an adulterer (for failing to stop her attacker
as if she were some sort of heroic soldier),
or being forcibly married to her rapist,
because in his lust he thought he was right.
Even though he was blind and deaf
to how she was the property of her family,
and even if she were not then consent
was hers to offer or refuse on her terms.

The way to a woman's heart
is not through her cunt,
and it has nothing to do with religious legalese,
patriarchal culture, militarism, or male paranoia.
But old lies will persist.

Every day I find more reason
to be be happy to be gay,
or at least extremely un-patriarchal.

If I Were That Handsome I'd Have An ipod Too

Until then I am going to have quiet, 

are at least relative quiet in my ears.