Marxism Today

Signs Of Greater Age(2)

1-finding the courtesy and
engagement of public library
staff a cause for a greater
gratitude than previous.

2-naturally disengaging
from films where the actors
are promoted as stars,
fit for media gossip, because
they are under thirty five.

3-finding the fake tension
of detective fiction more
entertaining and enlightening
than what are presented
as real life moral dilemmas.

It Takes Ambition

beyond self awareness
to want to live in debt,
which is why resisting
wanton idealism is always
damned as worthy of regret.

The Future

To find out more about the continuing influence of John Betjeman click here.

I Dream

of washing his feet
with my tears
and dry them
with my beard...

Albert Camus on Autobiography

"If Nietzsche is correct,
that to shame a man is to kill him,
then any honest attempt at autobiography
will be an act of self-destruction." - Albert Camus

Of  course Camus never got to write his.... 

Tongues And Tails

How I admire dogs
who share their happiness
with each other 

by wagging their tails
-with sniffs to follow.
How unlike the human
wagging of tongues
to form the words
with which we tell others
'ignore my body language
and four of your five senses'.

Ripples

The flap of the swans' wings
echoes off the surface
of the water, leaving
ripples in my ear.

"An Englishman's Home is His Castle"

is cliché multiplied, as much as is a lie
built up as thick and high as castle walls,
through the solidity of repetition.

Every castle in every country
in the world was built
by marauders from abroad,
to secure their new
feudal rule, post invasion.

Home governments later adopt
the building as historical amnesia
as newer locals succeed in power,
unknowingly imitating the old invasion,
the hierarchy and enmity of divide and rule.

My home is a place of rest and focus,
a temple or a palace; an invitation to share
I would invite more people there if I knew them.

Piet Mondriaan

would have been a great designer
of wonderful, if somewhat austere,
duvet covers for post-modern houses.

Team Games Incorporated

Team games always
have sides, winners
and leaders-usually
men who subordinate
others by becoming a side,
in themselves, like
corporations who rule
the rules they take
the openness of game
away from the unwary.

Old Coffee,

like old age, is best served weak-
the better to disguise it's bitterness.

The Rhetorical Battle

If Atheism ever developed
into a worldwide well funded
movement which fundamentally
rewrote all the older languages
and myths once developed
by then-discarded religions....
   ...in winning such a rhetorical battle
how, without being absolutist itself,
would it then describe it's absolutism
within a self-ascribed Liberal Diversity?

Museums

are like well kept graveyards,
for the half-living to visit,
to see how the now
non-living used to live,
through viewing the objects
they no longer have any use for.

Carbon Copy

An old stone split into two parts.
Each new surface revealed
the imprint of a pressed leaf
from long ago. Ancient carbon. Copied.

Gutter-press Newspapers

television and cheap alcohol-
the surest way to create  a
mass disinterest in literature,
mass illiteracy, poor spelling
and mass attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder.
What better way to build
obsolescence into intelligence?

The Young Woody Allen

was asked 'Is sex dirty?'
after trying to look sheepish
he replied 'Yeah, if it is good'.

I admire religions of dirt,
where the faith is brewed
in secret, like poitin,
and it renews in the imbiber
equal measures of mirth,
melancholy and passion.

The Truth In Fictions

"Organised religions create holiness,
canonize it and institutionalize it
in order that they can then use it
as a truncheon with which to herd
their little sheep into the slavery of dogma.
Opposed to that are poetry
and the imagination to create fantasia,
which open the gates to freedom.".
-Surrealist film maker-Jan Svankmajer 1999.

A Life Out Of Mind

When I was about seven or eight
I wanted to write and paint-
at home, rather than in school,
where it was done by rote.
I asked for the materials
to do just that. I had grand
ideas about self expression.

The paper offered left me
no room to write, and would
never be allowed to dispose of it
the way it had been disposed on me.

The gift of a painting book
engaged me at first sight,
until I saw the thick black lines
that outlined all the characters
from Dickensian melodramas,
lines which confined my errors
and dictated my choice of colour,
as I shaded in the blocks within the lines.

The book drained Dickens' characters
of all life, including any danger.
Feeling watched as I coloured in,
took the life out of my mind.
The black lines trapped me,
as if what I saw in my head,
distant landscapes, I could not draw
the lines were prison bars that had me.

I gave up. 

As long as I seemed more grateful
than passive to those who watched me
I thought 'That is fine.'.

Creativity always had to lose to manufacturing.

Global Warming

-to boldly go
where no man
has gone before,
by burning through
all the fossil fuels
on the planet.

For Balding Men

the warmth of a favourite hat
can be as comforting and colourful
as their teddy bears once were.

File Under Misanthropic

Life is the the art
of making want
seem like need,
and need seem
like generosity.

Innocence

Is when receiving a gift
finding that the wrapping
engages your imagination
more that what it disguises.

That is why I do not open
Christmas and birthday cards
until well after the season
that they are meant to celebrate.

Monsters Inc

If in the next life the great
and good from now shared
with each other on art vs life,
from here who's conversation
would seem the most grotesque?

Andy Warhol vs Francis Bacon,
on who made the most creative use
of being mildly mentally diseased,
for massive profit in the Art Market?

Or Ayn Rand vs Edward Bernays
discussing which of them told
the biggest and most believable
lies through the 20th Century?

Other monsters will be available,
there will surely be more to come
who have not yet been born, 
but they will do for starters. 

Signs Of Greater Age (1)

(1)when hearing modern music
complaining that you can't hear the words
for the music-you wish the music
that was backing the singer
was at lower volume.

(2)quietly mourning the loss
of doors that open manually
in public spaces, because
you miss the small grace
of opening the door
for another person.

(3)Finding that the longer you live,
and more you experience it,
the more silence increases in value.

The Unappetising Life

As Oedipus never said,
but surely proved,
revenge is like rape,
a dish best served cold,
the more surely
to make life seem
unappetizing ever-after.

In Democracies Yoked To Capitalism

The open secret is how much
society is a pyramid scheme,
The theories for which
are written by the rich for the rich,
to justify always making more
there are far more losers than winners.

Every top dog is the top
of a hierarchy of underlings.
The gain at the top
is inversely proportional
to the number of people
decreasingly gainfully
employed beneath.

The most achievable success
is to make an art out losing
that leaves you with self respect.

"Don't keep up with The Jones'-
drag them down to your level"
-Quentin Crisp.

Happy Birthday David Bowie,

who turned 65 yrs old yesterday.
To fill their pages the press reran
all his greatest publicity hits.
He did nothing:
like the best illusionists'
he knew when to stop,
the better to leave a good impression.

Liberace For President

Liberace is proof that if you fake sincerity well enough
the world will be your oyster and you will become it's pearl.
I would have like to have seen Liberace stand for President.
His smile would have ensured his election, and his policies
would be 'interesting' and everyone would be flocking to go to his dentist.

Fashion Note for the 2012 Recession

'Less' is the new 'more',
there is more less-ness
to sell than ever before,
it is very cheap to market.

Instruction Manual For The Hopeless

Give up on self improvement now;
it will save time and make failure
a happier experience in future.

Virtual Friends

-you can have as many
or as few as you like,
they are free at the point
that they are found,
and free of commitment
beyond the moment.

Online they travel light-
they are just who they want to be,
at the time, with as little
or as much 'baggage' as
seems right for their listener.

When they are finished
then they are gone,
like fairies-into the ether.
You can be mine if you like.

Eternity

is a place of stasis, free from entropy,
a place where everything is self renewing.

No wonder humans admire the idea
but find that the hope of getting there tiring.

Dogs Run Free

in St Antonin, and the cats
share the life of retired deities,
by the communal bins,
sharing sacrificial leftovers.

Like the lilies of the field
they neither reap nor sow,
but live in the 'now'
of a slower, more restful, life.

Television

is the life-in-a-box
for people who lead
boxed in lives
and don't want
to get out of them.

The Road To Hell

is built on the overselling
of 'good intentions',
from which there is no recovery.

The Unknown Calendar

Moses and Noah
were said to live for 120 years
and 950 years, respectively,
whether time ever dragged for them
remains an unknown unknown,
like the calendar that was used
to measure their lifespans.

For the unnamed women, children,
and all the livestock who lived
under Moses' protective patriarchy,
who survived the death of all
who worshiped the golden calf,
being ceaselessly being dragged
back and forth across the desert,
never to reach the promised land,  
the time spent in motion
must have felt slower  than it actually was.

The Circle Line

From hope to cynicism, to ignorance,

for the want of anything sure in which to trust,
is but a short journey, the steps of which,
once taken, are impossible to retrace.
Though many try to get around that impossibility
by retrace their loss of belief, going round in circles.

The Hope Of Unforgiveness

The Old Testament is the set of books
that seeks to prove that grumpiness
needs to exist and must be loved.
But for faith in grumpiness to be sustained
it first has to be embodied, then hardened,
and then tenderized all over again.

The terrain that gave birth
to The Old Testament experience,
is like the stories themselves, spare
difficult to appease, and very unforgiving.