From Iran

'Untitled' by Mohammad Hadi Fadavi

At The Wedding Feast

to begin life outside of time the guest's starters
are warmed, ready to be served by waiting angels.
The Orchestra of The Great Apocalypse have tuned up
and the Eternal Choir have finished warming their voices,
as the winds that are ravaging the earth have proved.
When the heavenly overture starts, the pre-ceremony show,
the catwalk of piety and shame through every age will follow.
The followers of The Bride and The Groom who have not arrived yet,
for them being in their flesh, can take their time. They are not late,
their places are reserved. For them the apocalypse is the rainy day
that nobody can  prepare for, other than performing ordinary
good deeds which seek no repayment. The support for which
is given by the M.C. of the wedding to come; Patience Personified.

Sight Is Required

to be a guide for both the blind and the sighted,
 as this photograph from East 3rd St New York
 in 1975 shows. With thanks to thisisnthappiness 

Homelessness

 is dangerous because it is not just thinking,
but actually living, well outside the box.

Long Term Unemployment Is.....

...having skills that are officially unrecognisable,
which can't be transferred, because they go unseen
for not being recognised in money terms.
The long term unemployed do have USPs
that are unique, to the point of being unsaleable,
for which they earn their rejection from employers.
This often leaves the rejected in limbo
Their unique capacity to accept rejection
has no use except for being further rejected.  
But somehow in the rich west we are still kept.
All the while they experience the distant waves
of disapproval from those whom Mammon
and his friends find for more.

Was It Me?

Or was childhood, when I was young, made to be
like viewing life through the wrong end of a telescope?

Certified

With the right of gays to marry
the straight jacket of marriage
has just got improved padding.
It is now even more all-encompassing
in Europe, and every first world economy.
As parliament after parliament rolls out
the right of rich same sex partners to marry.
I still hold to the line by Groucho Marx
'Marriage is a great institution but who
wants to live in an institution?'
I know marriage equals madness
and I my own insanity is enough for me.
I don't need another certificate to prove it.

Charley Brown Is My Therapist

because he really will 'walk the extra mile'
 on behalf of my worries...

Darkness Compounded

When St Paul wrote in I Corinthians Ch 13 V 12
'for now we see through a glass darkly' we don't know
how much he knew of how he was part of the darkness he wrote about.
Originally The Word was light and life beyond compare.
No more work needed, but man wanted choice.
By creating choice he forced everything to live via language.
Many things died instead.
We do not see words and laws for what they are,
fractured audio shadows, not even echoes,
of the original diversity of life.
To hear the Originating Ripple Of Life
our minds have to be silenced. Even now
if we saw beyond ourselves, then we would still be blind guides.
Words are what keep us alive in our darkness of words.

Man Is The Loneliest Of All The Planets

The only newness in an opiate is in it's renewing effect,
-opiates are as old as of the planet that makes them,
along with the creatures that take them.
What is recent is how humans make environments
solely for themselves which subordinate or exterminate all other creatures,
which is why we take opiates-to survive the isolation,
and keep us thinking we are alive because we are in orbit.

'Perhaps When We Remember Wars

we should take off our clothes, paint ourselves blue,
and go on all fours all day and grunt like pigs.
That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory,
and shows of flags and well oiled guns'
-Kurt Vonnegut (from 'Cat's Cradle')

When The Queen

honoured  Kate Bush with a C.B.E.
Kate dodged the cameras of the BBC,
and gave no passing comment from the palace.
But later, more composed, she issued the quote
to please anyone concerned minor honours 'Now I have
got something special to put at the top of my Christmas tree'.

11 Years, 4 Months, 11 Days And Counting....

• Detainees in Guantanamo now: 166
• Detainees facing active charges: 6
• Detainees cleared for immediate release, but stuck in the camp: 86
• Guantanamo inmates on hunger strike: 103
• Hunger strikers strapped down and force fed: 30
• Prisoners who have died in custody: 9
• Children the US has held at Guantanamo: 21
• Detainees tried in civilian court: 1
• "Unreleasable" detainees who can't be tried for lack of evidence or torture: 50
• Prisoners released by the Bush administration: 500+
• Prisoners released by the Obama administration: 72
• Current annual cost to US taxpayers: $150 million
• Days since Obama first pledged to close Gitmo: 1579
• Days since first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo: 11 years, 4 months, 11 days

Thankfully some people disagree
 and work at closure over  the war in Iraq.

Nimbyism Is Something Only Other People Do

I remember the party politics and domestic life
in the England of the 1970's. It was most remarkable
how the fear of a shortage, once broadcast on television,
begat the very shortage feared of, as housewives,
on hearing the threat, attacked the supermarket shelves
as if they were lady locusts going to war for their families.

I also remember how with the spreading fear of recession
many government ministers advised each another in public
about how other ministers ought to cut their budgets
for everyone's needs to be met. Naturally no minister
ever publicly admitted to living out the advice they gave to others.
The media, three television channels and mostly BBC radio,
had their field day but the public (who were broadly apolitical anyway)
tuned in to light entertainment instead.

The gridlock multiplied into discontent
when nobody accepted change or liked lectures.
The public execution of the mining industry in 1984
was the hangover after the party that everyone denied
was coming at the time. If we could have learnt
from Mahatma Ghandi on individuation it could have been very different;
 'You must be the change you wish to see in the world'.

Second Hand Futures

are not so much out of date fashions
and rejected ideas for living
as what happens when old trends
get retrospectively reappraised,
and refurbished, to become the new style.

The Trip We All Take

because the past is never far away
and none of  us is ever above being fooled.

Facebook

just got more interesting.

Like Property Rights,

technology helps the most helped already,
those most able to help themselves.
Those that have most always know better
than the rest how to keep chance in their favour.
And yet due to 'the trickle down effect'
technology is sold as an advance for all society
-to make communications easier for all.
But still what dribbles down with the greatest of ease
are fantasies about distant hierarchies.
Provision from a distance -like the mobile phone
technology itself-rather than any authentic
self-made and shared equality.

Promises Promises

When barter was the currency
with which people paid for transactions
what was exchanged was not just the goods,
but the talk through which the deal was secured.
Verbal strokes were how we set up exchange rates.
The skills people had in their hands
was equalled in their choice of words.
They had to use all they had to extend the limits of life
In the poorest countries life and refugee camps life is still that way.
Amongst the rich, of whom I'm one, money and technology
have vastly extended the definition of  life. But increased ease
has reduced our life skills, and reduced the vitality of experience.
Instead of citizenship through trade, war, and everything else
as reasons for negotiation, our transactions are reduced
to paying each other off with government promises.

From Horses To Riders

New Acropolis Museum, Athens,Greece.

Storm Thorgerson 1994 made from aeroplane wings. 

Families And Fences

When Robert Frost wrote the line
'Good fences make good neighbours'
in the poem 'Mending Walls' in 1913,
he wrote it about nature, and two men
who met only twice a year.
How I wish that the line were not used
to idly describe agreeable distance,
and obscure rites over property.
I would see it used, instead
to describe the grace under pressure
that families need to repair their divisions,
via gender roles, hierarchies and open secrets,
as they all  meet and avoid each other
for sharing a house, daily.

When I Approached Fifty Years Old

I felt terrible for no clear reason.
Everything I'd done that had once seemed fine
now looked like a wardrobe over filled
with ill-fitting clothes that did not seem like mine.
Worse followed-I lost all memory of why I had come to own them.
I recalled how Quentin Crisp marked his half century
by changing the colour he dyed his hair, from blue to violet.
Given my balding pate, and a beard greying at it's own rate,
that was not going to be my option.
Something less violent was required
to help re-acclimatise me with my aging.
I started to enjoy trying new recipes and making cakes
-getting into the process of quietly laying out ingredients
and following each step of the mix almost meditatively.
Until the baking tins went in the oven.
Then filling the waiting time by tidying away the ingredients,
cleaning the surfaces and washing the dishes I'd dirtied
-the better to find the inner calm to life that was missing.

Disability And Self Awareness

A pirate at the local bar discusses his past

A seaman meets a pirate in a bar, and talk turns to their adventures on the sea.
The seaman notes that the pirate has a peg-leg, a hook, and an eye patch.

The seaman asks, "So, how did you end up with the peg-leg?" 

The pirate replies, "We were in a storm at sea, and I was swept overboard
into a school of sharks. Just as my men were pulling me out, a shark bit my leg off."

"Wow!" said the seaman. "What about your hook"? 

"Well", replied the pirate, "We were boarding an enemy ship and were battling
the other sailors with swords. One of the enemy cut my hand off."

"Incredible!" remarked the seaman. "How did you get the eye patch"?

"A seagull dropping fell into my eye," replied the pirate.

"You lost your eye to a seagull dropping?," the sailor asked incredulously. 

"Well," said the pirate, "it was my first day with my hook"

Be Careful Of Sudden Stops

with an unsecured load, unless of course you want
 the loose load to be warning for others.....
    On the other hand..... 

You might extend life by accepting  the long term career
of posthumous organic gardener

With thanks to dissidence.

The Weakness Of Peace

I can date when I became one of 'the unworthy poor',
as opposed to being poor but worthy. The tipping point
where my worth declined had more to do with psychology
than money. Aged eight in 1969 my mother stood over me
and shouted  "I suffered in the war for you', to rebuke me
after some temporary ingratitude I had committed in her house.
My mistake was misunderstanding my fault: I was so poor
that there was no war where I could suffer for her, in the way
she had suffered for me. I was an ingrate with no experience
with which to reciprocate her sense of grievance. She wanted
a soldier to rescue her from parenthood, relative poverty
and the loss of her autonomy. I should have told her then,
because now I know, we all have to be our own soldier.

Hysteria Is Us

When the BBC explained the process of the recent Pakistan elections
I was shocked at the lengths to which pork barrel politics,
could be stretched via a public life and an expanding media.
Every candidate had to be rich enough to get into the severest financial debt.
The winner of the election, and anyone they shared office with,
recouped their losses by sharing out the government money pot
through a tax system only Lewis Carroll would understand.
For the rest, their loss was for the gain
of the commercial broadcasting companies.
The firms who gained the most were the bus companies
who were competitively well paid to bus every candidate's supporters
from rally to rally, so that everyone's supporters were televised
cheering the speeches of their candidates in a show of hysteria
for the cameras, the like of which had not been seen
since the last election and will not be seen until the next.

I am A Unique Product Of The First World,

which makes many unique products,
some of which are better made than others.
That world also says it treats every human being as unique.
Though it doesn't. I am privileged beyond belief.
The choices I have in own right are more
than all my fore-bearers combined.
Of all I have inherited what I value most
is the choice to not have to breed on their behalf.
For fear of shame if I don't.
Nor do I have to own things outright, to use them.
If I am to be the end of everything they ever thought
bought, and fought over, then let their hopes be restful.

Is Your Outlay Really Necessary?

Recently an insurance company cold-called me for umpteenth time,
to test my politeness with their firm hard sell. They wanted my money
through my sympathy with their pursuit of profits. It was as if
I was expected to be as much out for the profit of my relatives,
through the insurance, as the insurance company were out to make their profits
through me. When the female operative shouted over the noise behind her
'Do you want have a policy with us?', without  thinking I cheerily replied
'Well, I am currently reassessing whether my life is worth living, or whether
it isn't, and I want to thank you for your input towards that process'.
Catching my inference of suicide she spoke even louder, squeaking
'That's horrible'. I hope they don't feel the need to ring me again.

Misanthropy

is not necessarily living outside community,
but in relationships it separates want from need
and reduces how exploitation breeds indifference.

Mowing Grass,

I cut the mint growing through it, unseen.
I paused, enraptured by the released scent.

A Plum Quote

-P.G. Wodehouse

The Index Of Decline

And the more secure the past seems to be.

More Than Fifty Years On

from when women were first issued the contraceptive pill I wonder at it.
The conception of millions of children has relatively painlessly cancelled
and for both men and women the Freudian line 'anatomy is destiny'
has been broken beyond repair. But what has become destiny instead?
Romance and sexual fantasies continue to be written and revised.
And women now claim a social autonomy
that was once exclusive to rich men,
and with that their choices gained glitz and glamour.
The more our choices have expanded
the more we have to be seen to have our cake,
and then watched to make sure we eat it, particularly
when it tastes of nothing, it makes us fat and then leaves us
hungry ill and in debt. That is our consumer society.
The freedom to bond, but not breed remains to be cherished.
But for that we have to ask, and expect, much much less.



   

The Arab Spring

is an idea cooked up by the Western media
to summarise protest from across 'the developing world'.
Due to both western disinterest and local censorship
the backlash against this protest has been poorly reported.
But now it can be made plain, in the many sects of Islam
homosexuality, like women's sexuality, is a powerful cause
for shame, since both threaten the myth of The Absolute Patriarch
by undermining him and all men from underneath by doing as they will.
It is perhaps inevitable then that the Islamic Military Police
choose the sexual abuse of arrested protesters of both genders
as their weapon of choice. The silent vacuum that follows the shame
follows sexual abuse is self compounding and definitively destroys
the individual's resistance to the state, and spreads the fear of arrest.
Thus the sexual abuse of protesters of all genders comes to justify,
and perfectly embody, the democratic deficit preferred by all-male oligarchies.

Might Can Learn How It Is Wrong

and still  find impossible to discover what is right.

An Artist Contemplates The Luxury Of Solitude

and goes against the majority view of how consumerism
increases exponentially through 'community' and cohabitation. 

Gustave Flaubert Meditates On Writing

and finds that it is more fun getting lost in punctuation. 

If Only We Could Make Chickens Talk And Be Computer Literate

Then employers could pay them in chicken feed to work
 in call centres instead of laying eggs, and increase human indolence.

Then employers would call it progress, for effortlessly
raising the chickens' social status, and reducing their
suffering, by changing as little as humanly possible.

Why Good Poetry Is 'Unpopular'

and  the attempted refreshments
of pre-recorded music, video,
and prose, are always short term.

'A grain of poetry is suffice
to season a century'-Jose Marti

The 1980s Explained

and that is without quoting John Wesley to cover up
 the capitalist dynamics of  redistribution upward to the few.

Ownership-

it creates monopolies, normalises selfishness,
puts life for those who are the property of others
in any tense but the present, and finally
through lies it puts the greed into agreed.

Tailoring Time

There was a lecture I used to hear ad nauseam,
when I was young and had a reduced attention span
(some would say I have not changed).
If I appeared inattentive then the lecturer would reduce
my listening skills further by being more condescending.
The phrase that quietly gutted me ran
'You have to cut your coat according to your cloth'.

It was said by speakers who wanted to shape my future
as if it were their past - where once they worked hard
in order to be poor and be sold the idea of the future riches
that they would never have, but they could settle for less.
They believed their past should be my continuous present,
and they were deaf to my unvoiced belief that somebody 
would want to keep me for who I was not what I cost.
That said I like living within my means, and my truest riches
are always going to be control of my time and choosing
who to be lectured by. I am happy to be accused of sloth.

In The Longer Term

progress enables life on earth,
and the most progressive acts
enable life for the longest period.

A Crash Course

in  ART.

A Realistic Prayer

Dear God

Amen.

For An Easy Short Termism

let every ism
become is a schism
which makes every division
a build up to individual dislike,
until the only unity in society
is through a shared enmity
which quietly makes chasms
that cannot be bridged.

Popularity Begins With The Self

One of the quieter joys of blogging
is that whilst every blogger can compare
themselves with other bloggers by counting
their followers, nobody knows the number of hits
the blog entries that other bloggers get, without asking.
And because it is just numbers it seems a pointless question.