An Early Death For Some

When we die we all enter history,
that is when we start to be lied about, in earnest.
But some folk live lives built on lies
well before they die, thus killing off
how much they are known about, early.

More And Less

The more we sow in light entertainment
the more we reap avoidance,
casual violence, and moral relativism.

Royal Courts And Shops

are both places where we show our deference.
One of them licenses the printing of money
which we spend in the other,
where our appetites have licence and rule.

The tighter the Royal license
that controls the money supply,
the sharper our appetite to consume.
And the cheaper we become to each other,
as our lives become the pursuit of  bargains.

The More Ephemeral The Art

The greater the pleasure it seems to create. Original from here. 

Mis-Underestimating The Value Of Education

It might once have been the case
that spending longer in education
meant children learning more,
and as adults having a knowledge
that is more useful than education
would have permitted them before.

But with mass inflation in qualifications,
such that employers mistrust what they read,
whatever we learn it is highly diluted.

This both dilutes the practical use we can be.
and allows a media led by misinformation
to rule how we think. Our weak education
pushes us to the occasional riot over student debt,
but weakens our means of arguing against
what we know, but cannot prove, is wrong. 

Love Is Not Just Blind

it is often selectively deaf too,
which is part of it's strength
against the insults that people
like to sling at it, for it being tender.

Hobson's Truth

Whoever leads us,
including the official opposition,
their leadership is the only reason
that anything will ever be credited
as a government achievement. 

So That Is History....

Every society that merits wealth over wisdom
and the power to wound over the nature of nurture
will de facto make religion a thing of utter hypocrisy.

Any such society will laden the soul with inequality
and make robbery though dishonesty it's prime virtue.

Paws For Thought

If dogs ever took out
romantic personal ads
in the back of periodicals,
to find each other, sociably,
would their adverts always end
with the phrase 'Must have G.S.O.S.'
(good sense of smell) ?

Humour is for humans
what a sense of smell is to dogs
-both enrich companionship.

The Hope Of Silence

'The word is now a virus.
The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. 
It is now a parasitic organism that invades,
and damages the central nervous system. 

Modern man has lost the option of silence. 
Try halting sub-vocal speech. 
Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. 
You will encounter a resisting organism
that forces you to talk. 

That organism is the word..... '.

From 'The Ticket That Exploded'(1962) -William Burroughs

Four noisy words that make quietness harder. 

Post-Modern Capitalism

Is not quite a legal cleptocracy,
but it is certainly social insecurity
from the cradle to the grave.

And if anyone has a belief system
then they can have extra insecurity
-from time before they are born
into the life after they die too... 

Self Knowledge Through Distance

The less a man
accepts that he has neighbours
then the less he knows of himself.

The best neighbours
rely on keeping a distance
from each other
which we do not have to change.

An Unfavourable Wind

Criticism is like flatulence-what is common to both
is that those that who dish it out don't want it back.
They always believe it to be of more benefit to those
it is aimed at than it ever could be to themselves.  

The Science Of Insignificance

In which we are the matter that causes most harm
when we should matter less and do better by others.

How Much Worse Can It Get?

Even pessimism mellows in middle age,
and the depths of perception of life being wrong,
or off balance, reduce our once youthful radicalism
to mere grumbles for what it was said the radicalism was against...

Saying Less Is Enough

We all speak with different voices,
depending on where we are. At home,
in the market place, writing a blog,
or on the phone addressing cold callers.

We are at our best saying nothing,
but second best is when we call
those we love, by their pet names.

The Media Is Now A Virus

When the Gov't Minister for Vice was interviewed
she said that 'Drugs are like cliches. The greater the strength,
the less the speakers and listeners resist, or even notice.'
At this point the interviewer tried to intervene
but it was too late. Both journalist and the minister
were being paid too much to avoid repeating banalities.

As everybody left their radios and televisions on
nobody could turn them off, or listen closely, without feeling guilty...

Life Regurgitated?

History is the record of time eating itself,
and taking us with it, where the human fear
is that we will be no more as a species
when time has nothing more to consume.

But if we breed less,
reverse global warming
and lower our place in the food chain
who knows what events will throw up?   

The Pane Of Life

If ever I went to confession
it would be like cleaning windows
-the outside always comes more clean
more easily than the inside of the pane.
The dirt that a house, and a mind, build up
always builds slowly, the better to evade detection.

History Used To Be Philosophy

as written by historians, for whom
the main aim of writing was to prove
how right, how superior, the times
that they were writing for were
-more than life at any other time.
Particularly during times of Empire.

It was natural that their accounts were partial,
and selective, designed to quietly deny
that different presents were possible
from different accounts of the past.

Karl Marx had his short last word
on the matter of written on his grave

'The philosophers have only interpreted  the world
-the point however is to change it'.

Mahatma Ghandi did not say
'Be the change you want to see in the world',
the original was so much wordier than that.

But our dilemma about recording the change
which we embody with the planet is this;
if we change slower than our world
we have not the science for measuring
the world or ourselves. When we move
faster than our habitat and get higher up
the food chain we are equally stymied.
Our speed of change affects the planet much more
than any of our science can measure....
And our economists just won't care....

Calmatives 'R' Us

The measure of a life
is the healthiness of the crutches
that we lean on to get through it.

All crutches enhance life.
Some shorten it too.... 

Read My Lips

When politicians talk v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y,
to try to look like they are being clear,
they sound exactly like The English
condescending to foreigners when abroad.

When their speech is that forced
I, for one, don't believe a word they say.

On 'Being The Boss'

I have often found it strange
how easily we seem to accept
being told that this male
or that female are the 'Alpha'
we should always look up to.

As if those declared
to be in charge know the most.

When really it is their underlings,
who know the power of being middle-men.
They are the ones who undertake
on behalf of those both at the top and the bottom
of 'the system' to make ends meet in their own interest.

Modern Marriage

Is a see-saw with wheels to give the whole contraption
the impression of it having both speed and direction
when in fact the wheels are stabilizers which root us
 to pasts we have forgotten that we ever knew.

When Management is 'The Problem'

Is less management the solution?
Only as long as in any new regime
the new 'less' does not lead to more
problem management in the longer term.

Frown If You Agree

That the tyranny of unanimity excludes all humour.

The Varispeed Life

Many people are 'poor learners',
and seemingly take in information
less well than other people want them to.
But often when information is taken in,
then there it stays. It forms their characters
as they 'read' the characters of others
and be better versions of themselves-
for allowing other people to their selves.

As It Is With Music

so it should be with life.

'Playing a wrong note is insignificant
playing without passion is inexcusable'.
-Ludvig Van Beethoven

Testament Of Middle Age

For many years I was told I was an introvert,
but it was more that I was 'in the closet'.
I had to be secretive about a sexuality
that I was taught to feel depressed about.
But the secrecy went further than that......

For the sake of appearances I was also required
to be 'in the closet' about my being depressed.
My family lived in denial about mental health.
They lived life with a determined determinism.

I still get depressed, but less about myself now.
More about what I can't do for the world around me.
In this new depression I can be an extrovert
when I want to be, when I see the opportunity.

I can still be horribly wrong about people.
And tactless too. In so many situations
I remember faces, but not peoples' names.

But somewhere on my way I lost the shame
my family needed to keep me as one of them.

I remain uneasy about being other peoples property.

We Are Never Too Old

to learn how wrong we can be, or right we might be
if we can bring ourselves see issues differently, 
and think afresh like younger folk do.