'A True Friend

challenges the lies we tell ourselves
but leaves us to find our own realities.'
-Marilyn French (from her epic novel
'The Women's Room')  

The Crust Of Hope

Is the strength to steal a crust
from your indifferent overlords,
when you live in a death camp,
greater or weaker than the impulse
to give said crust to the person
who is clearly more hungry,
and far more tired, than yourself?  

Maim And Blame

Many have said that 'Politics is a dialogue for the deaf'
an (in)activity where it pays a partisan politician
to misquote the opposition, as if mishearing those
out of power is good for avoiding consensus.

But since most losses of hearing, sight, and other senses
are both rarely intended and rather hard to adapt with,
then these dialogues will make the Politics Of Division
seem like a series of nasty accidents,
where the few seek to rule the future
of the many through mere misfortune. 

Pointlessness Wins Prizes

I worry about the owners of dogs
who are trained to perform tricks
for prizes and rounds of applause,
in large arenas where the public
pay large sums to watch them.

In these scenes I can't tell
who is exploiting who the most,
it all seems most circular.
But I suspect that the manufacturers
of pet foods is the biggest winner
-at every one of these events.

'Loneliness

is not a longing for company,
but a want of your own kind.'

-Marilyn French (1929-2009). 

Signs Of Greater Age (43)

1-Not only have you lost the will
to keep up with popular music,
but you can't remember when
your one time favourite artists
made music that refreshed their profile
and surprised both their public and critics.

2-Forgetting who was the spokesman
for your generation, Bob Dylan?
Pete Townshend? Jerry Garcia?
or for younger people Morrissey,
or Billy Bragg. Because with age
their generation lost what set them apart
from what surrounded them.
The very idea of a leader whose music
personified their leadership died
when print media lost it's primacy.

To Be Human Is To Err

But to be humane is to allow for failure,
and to make positive use of our 'mistakes'.

Taking The Demos Out Of Democracy

Democracies are built by the parties being voted for
much more than they are made by the individuals
who cast their votes, with varying degrees of confidence.

Companionship Training

is far more about a shared awareness
than it can ever be about the kind of control
which leads the one who owns the most
to control of everything-particularly the other person.

Heaven

is having the deaths
that we cannot repay
written off for us.

Reversing Into The Future

Wanting to be both popular and right
has always the height of hypocrisy-
the words of world leaders prove this.

That is why I accept belief in God;
his inconsistencies echo all human life,
all writ large enough to be recognizable
but too large to be commonly understood;

Omniscience, Omnipresence and Omnipotence
have always been impossible to combine with each other.
Any two of them combine together quite well,
but getting the third to fit in is what makes it harder
to sustain with goodwill and logic, in faith.

I live for insight; let my mistakes be visible,
and let me know beyond seeing,
that there is a life in the world to come.

Absurdity

does not make the commonplace less true.
But it will make the familiar harder to believe
and for being disorienting may make us take seriously
matters that we we might well prefer to forget.

Clean Elites, Dirty Followers

Has been a principle of government
as long as there had been anyone
who ever claimed to be able to lead.

The more absolute the intended rule
the grubbier the followers who submit
to their leadership become
for being immersed in the shit of their leaders.

The Urge To Live

is quite resistible,
but too few people
are resisting this urge
with sufficient zeal
for their resistance
to have any effect.  

Seven Words/Phrases That Make Me Trust Less What The Speaker Says Next

'Frankly',
'Basically'
'If you'd listened to my earlier point...  '
'X's plans do not add up...  '
'Hard working....  '
'Ordinary working families...  '
and last, but far from least,
'Strong and stable government'

Signs Of Greater Age (42)

1-loathing the bureaucracies
that offer you every advantage
for the complete modern home.
Preferring instead to discover
your own solutions to your needs,
as compared with how society defines you.

2-Being quite flattered by sales pitches
for new products that meet old needs,
but never quite flattered enough
to want to buy the thing being sold much.
The sales pitch is more fun than the product,
and neither is fresh enough to persuade you.

Pay Up And Play The Game

rather than play around with the tax system 

The Triumph Of Emptiness

When whatever we try,
the bad guys are the winning side,
regardless of every effort to stop them,
then we have to accept it; life seems bad.

But life gets much worse when we deny
our true selves, the better beat our enemies.

Then whoever wins, victory seems most  hollow.   

Health and Choice

Nearly seventy years ago male doctors first prescribed 'the pill'
to the most 'liberated' of British married women, those freer of will,
free of their husbands insistence that they have more children.

Now those same male scientists have men erect for longer
in advancing age with yet another pill, and still the choices
that men give themselves make them seem more potent
than they ever were, the more to deny the choices of others. 

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

Vincent was never 'just a tortured soul', he was right... 

Beware Of Snakes

For many years I have been fascinated
by the symbol of the snake that eats its tail,
as a symbol of the circularity of life
contained in the myth of Ouroboros.

I first found mention of it
in writings about The Grateful Dead
as they made different recordings
on different illicit substances,
all of which they eventually quit
when they learnt how to write tunes.

It seems apt then to rediscover the myth
through Ritalin, a drug given to chidren
who are defined by doctors as having A.D.H.D.
What is the health of children worth
when the companies that sell the drugs
control the doctors, who the parents have to trust,
little knowing who the doctors are a mouthpiece for?

How I Lost My Fear Of The End Of The World

I realized that The Apocalypse
is merely going to be God finding the switch
that turns the world off, and having pressed it once
he will turn the world on again, just like we do
with the disposable every day electronics,
with which we surround ourselves with nowadays
when it is our only way of testing and resetting them.

Overselling Instruction In Incompetence

When I look back on the 'careers advice'
that I was offered I am more than struck
at how naive I was. Perhaps I had to be
that unknowing, to never question
what I was commended to do.

Such things could only be offered to anyone
whilst they were too young to recognize,
and too weak to refuse, high condescension,

The managers of the training schemes
gained far more from what they ran
than those they were running it for,
or for that matter future employers.

A clearer example of a sows ear
being mis-sold as a silk purse
would be rather hard to find.
  

Beauty

is merely fur deep.
Everything else is vanity,
dressed up as the appetite
for reliving glories past
-a life that those now present
cannot begin to appreciate
for how good it once was.

Many animals
(and some humans)
vaguely understand this....

Friends

are the folks who rush in
where relatives fear to tread,
the people who try to understand
what people are right to be afraid of. 

The More We Are Organised

The less we know what our being organised is for.
But whatever it is, it seems that it is more
to make us anxious than to aid logical thought.

This is particularly true for modern education.

In A World Built On 'Progress'

'Sustainability' means room for future economic growth
much more than living on less to preserve a sense of balance.

Rural Democracy

If trees had the vote, and humans didn't,
electioneering would be much much quieter
and The Green Party would be in power forever......

French Lessons

when ennui follows deja vu,
then it is time to change
what you listen to.

Freudian Politics

I read today the best quote
I have read for a very long time
re 'the new politics of disruption'.

A columnist said of certain politicians
-you to guess which....

'You'd call them all ego if they weren't all id'.

One Sided Thinking

On 'The Fall' and choice in life general-
choice always produces arguments and waste.

The greatest freedom of choice
is the length of the arguments
designed to produce one winner.

The winners of the arguments
will always conflate loss with waste,
then blame the losers for 'being wasteful'
for disagreeing with them for so long
as if their triumph might have been clearer
were the arguments before it shorter.

Faking omniscience is like faking news,
both 'game' the facts and gamble
on the credulity of the audience,
whose choice is reduced to acceptance.