Karl Marx

  ...as revised by the worlds richest citizens....

'To each according to their property
and legal ability to avoid paying taxes,
from each according to their credulity
and relative poverty-the better to reduce
voting to a choice of which variant
of management jargon to choose,
and make the vote nearer a bad census
than the common people choosing a government'.

The Backhander You Can Trust.....

After all, it is a recognition of self sufficiency.....

What Is The Worst Thing That I Have Taken?

Probably the time that was needed
to get me from being a clearly a child
to somebody who resembled an adult,
-as long as nobody knew me well
looked to closely at how I behaved.

When folks said they gave their time
'for free' what some thought but none said
was 'And if I were paid for my time
I would be worth a lot more
to people of status who mattered,
but the money just ain't there'.
But those words were as absent
as the yearned for money and choice.

Absence, whether of thought, wealth
or opportunity, was the ultimate measure.

We Give The Dead

more flowers than we offer the living,
or leave to live on the stem and in the field,
because gratitude for how things are
is much harder to share then regret.

The Threat In Heaven?

....not that we are short of gun sponsored violence on earth.

Inverted Values

Any parochial  people that tries to deny
the lack of choice they offer each other
will mature the denial best
by dividing from each other
into ever smaller units of disagreement.

Born Again?

For millennia Believers with narrow minds
have taken the phrase 'You must be born again'
as a license to lecture all that they should be like them.
Through this injunction they have renewed
the accepted sense of straight and narrow.
By getting others to censor their lives
beyond their own understanding.

Meanwhile in liberal secular first world societies 
the masses experience a similar sense of elation,
a grace as cheap, that renews less and is more pervasive.

This time the kick comes through surviving illnesses
that in previous generations meant the end of life
which modern science has beaten, hands down.
The scientists who find their cures might be 'heroes'.
Patients who live longer are merely 'following orders'.

True gratitude for life will renew.
The deeper it goes the more it renews,
ultimately to the level of saying nothing about it.

Popular Cannibalism

In the 1980s there was a film
called 'Eat The Rich',
the title of which
became a catchphrase
for youths to declare disdain
at the popular capitalism
that comforted their elders
whilst discomfiting them.

A friend sent me a postcard
with the phrase spray painted
on a wall. 'Eat' became 'eat'
and below it he wrote 'vomit'.

Decades later, modern society
still throws up surprises.

The Money Shot That Just Keeps On Giving

-until those required to support it just want to look away.

The Rich You Will Always Have With you

I have often pondered the Gospel verse
'The poor you will always have with you,
the good you do them you can do anytime
but you [his audience] will not always
have me [Jesus] to do good by'.
The constancy of poverty is what makes it
constantly claim the errant attention span
of the rich-but-absent-minded.
Charity under capitalism is less
about the presence or absence of Jesus
and much more about how deeply attached
the rich are, to what makes them unworthy.  

Trouble Ahead....

Trouble behind......

When Absence Is The Measure Of Us

What did I steal that was of great value?
 
Probably the time that was needed
to get me from being a clearly a child
to a person who unexamined seems like an adult.

When I was a child they said
'We give our time freely'
whilst being constantly busy.
What they hid when this was said
was 'And if we were paid for
our efforts we would feel worth
a lot more, but the money ain't there'.

The absent words were as powerful
as the yearned for money and choice.
This made absence the ultimate measure.

Trouble Ahead......

Trouble behind.....

Utopias (2)

The best Utopia we will ever have
is to collectively comprehend
why Utopia is impossible.

No Comment

But there is a petition here if you want somewhere to have your say.

Breakfast Anyone?

But who is going to bring home the bacon?

Utopias (1)

Utopias are built on new isms
being sold to us, which we are told
will kick all the older isms into touch.
Meanwhile, unchecked,
entropy measures progress best.

Right Twice A Day

Death is time stopping.
Those who speculate
on be half of others
on the life outside this life
are often as life-like
as a stopped clock
when they explain it.

Dogs

do not need promises of life after death
or rich dog food by the kilo on demand
in order to be wonderful people.
Indeed when kept well their carers
they don't know what promises are.

Shrinkage

Any parochial people
that wants to deny
their lack of choice
will prove their denial
through division
into shrinking units
of disagreement.

The Conversations I Follow Best

are those the don't require other people.

Reason For Retreating From 'Company'

'More and more I found myself at a loss for words
and didn’t want to hear other people talking either.
Their conversations seemed false and empty.
I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing
and never made me feel alone.' - Paula McLain

When This Phone Rings

You don't know what sort of self it will take to end the call. 

The Empty Frame?

We never hear true silence,
though we trust it exists.
Noise frames all we hear
as if the frame is all there is.

Peacetide

'More and more I found myself at a loss for words
and didn’t want to hear other people talking either.
Their conversations seemed false and empty.
I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing
and never made me feel alone.' - Paula McLain

The Liquidity Of Life (2)

'I feel very transparent in my self
I’m more of an observer.
I’m interested in what’s going on.
I’m not sure that I really have a personality.
Some people think I do have a personality.
I have a personality when I am with certain people
 — but when I’m not with them I don’t have that personality.
I just sort of go back to resembling a transparent glass of water'.
- Joyce Carol Oates

'It Is Purely A Personal Matter

I have come to recognize that it is not my duty to struggle with the world, nor to condemn this or that, but first and foremost to know myself, since every conflict begins within ourselves. That does not mean that I am indifferent, but if someone wants to change the world he must begin with himself. I am absolutely convinced of this. If one does not begin with ones self, every step toward the world will be nothing but a big lie and at the same time an attack, and this hidden aggressiveness tends to go on spreading. How to do this is quite a different story, but if one starts off with this idea, everything else appears in a new light. And so I set off in search of new sounds. In this way the path itself becomes a source of inspiration. The path no longer runs outward from us, but inwards, to the core from which everything springs. That is what all my action has come to mean: building and not destroying.'- minimalist composer Arvo Pärt

Confidence

is less ‘they will like me’
and much more ‘I’ll be fine
whether they like me, or not'.

The Beach Boys

were musicians I long admired,
but with all their lawsuits played out,
only one Wilson brother left,
the least musical band member
keeping the name for his revival act,
and all their incomplete musical projects
the property of  fans turned bootleggers
they are less an endless harmony
more a suspended harmonic
that can never bear fruit again.

Memory, Presence And Absence

When people who were newly adult in the 1960s
said 'If you can remember it then you weren't there'
it was a sly one-upmanship towards their elders.

What those unctuous youths denied
is how memory varies for more reasons
than the peer/peer use of recreational drugs
to throw off unwanted parental influence.
We deny how devious the addictive nature is.

When those youths strutted forgetfulness
what they denied is that every culture
and generation shifts from the previous
in what to keep in the hope
of some 'cleansing' fresh start
that will last into the future.

We are rarely honest about our pasts, 
and progress moves slower than we think.  

The Liquidity Of Life

-when wine is young it lacks character
which makes it easy to sell en masse
on supermarket shelves. Like youth
it is oversold and rather raw on the palate.
  
As wine matures it gains character,
which makes it harder to sell.
This is why it gets auctioned off,
to be sold cheap in seconds shops
where the curious buy it in quantity
and enjoy the unpredictability of choice.
Like being elderly it is surplus
to major suppliers and manufacturers.   

Variable Creativities

Artists will have their 'fallow periods',
times when they can make nothing
because their mind stills their hands
-particularly when they are in the presence
of the materials with which to make things.

But still their minds seek the beauty
in the life going on around them
which is replete in its own creativity.

Hidden Depths

Hurting others is as easy
as throwing a stone
in the nearest sea.
When people do it,
they never know
how deep it will go.

Misbeggotten (2)

I remember well the double standard
where ownership was exclusively male
and was built on men being assumed
to have more experience than women,
where experience meant the right
to grab initiative by the groin,
and squeeze it enough to make it 'pop',
where opportunity thrust itself at men, unbidden.
.
Whereas for the young women
the preparation was for marriage,
which was to be their whole life,
consisted of a naivety,
cultivated by family-
such that they were meant
to misunderstand what to expect
when required to with-stand
stress, and becoming property.