So... ...Women Are From Venus and Men Are From Mars

And we are the aliens, on the planet which we occupy
 -for how we have risen to the top of a food chain
that used to make the planet as self sustaining as it could be.  

April Is Long Gone

and I don't want to be a fool
for just one day of the year
-and only before Noon.

I'd rather be the fool
who works his way
out of being an idiot too,
and works towards reason,
or something that feels like it,
regardless of date and season. 

Are We There Yet?

We all have habits which we might be better without,
but which it will take time and effort to refine out of us.
If anyone wants to radically purge themselves then fine
-use the means at your disposal, take the time you need.

Beware; many of our self imposed purgatories,
and the self important improvement regimes
that we accept without question from without
will leave us feeling like we are catching up
on living in a future/present that we can never reach.

Giving Marriage The Finger

The symbol of a ring
must be a fine thing
but it will create baggage
that you can't take with you.

False Eternities

Did we invent plastic
believing it to be soulful
because, like us, its life
seemed to be infinite?

How Bad Rhetoric Makes For Political Weakness

In 'dog whistle politics' politicians craft speeches
designed to appeal to the easily displeased,
to make sure they get a strong public response.
Less 'Grab 'em by the pussy', more grab them
through the hot air time of the hyper-media world.

What this politics does is integral to the art
of sustaining the appearance of useful activity
by the journalists who operate the 24 hr news cycle,
through which the politicians prove their popularity,
and seek to validate their relevance,
whatever it costs and regardless of their values.

When their speeches become more
about what can be inferred from them,
than what can be plainly declared
their arguments are bound to generate
more heat than light. And the art
of skilled popular oratory is surely dead,
killed by what can't be said-which politicians
decide is all the public ever want to hear.

Lead And Follow

Unless you are a dog who likes the lead,
and the hand of the leader on the other end
then the most difficult life to follow is the one
where Nobody will be your master.

Freudian Theology

Why do men imagine
that the whole world is aroused
by their fantasies of big willies?

Why do men talk
as if soul were equivalent
to not merely having genitalia
on the outside of the body
but also the bigger the member
the more generous the soul?

It can't just be hormones and testosterone.
When you find answers to these questions
please write them on the back of a used planet,
the one nearest to you that is being ravaged,
and save the planet by sending the men into orbit. 

Laughing Matters?

When we can laugh at our mistakes,
along with the many errors of choice
that others unknowingly thrust upon us,
then our humour is what gives us the best release.

And with life as large and dark as it can be,
particularly when parts of it hide unawares
of their own nature, waiting to ambush us,
the humour has to be larger and darker still
to bring is towards a sense of lightness.
Finding what it is easiest and best to carry.

Sharing laughter about error
is practicing forgiveness our of our pasts.
Good and therapeutic as sex can be,
the laughter that comes from one soul
to another as each soul bears itself, naked,
is a far more sustaining release than sex.

Giggles allows us to forget,
and start afresh hoping for better.

Living In The Past

Never mind modern literary prizes,
the greatest prize for a poet
is being read after they are dead,
long after they can know it.

The living should value more
the wise words of those
who have passed before them,
whose utterances have survived
the editing of History.  

Slap, And The Dash Towards Destruction

One of the popular measures of modern feminism,
and the feminine take over of developed economies,
is comparing a countries annual gross amounts
that women spent on make up and surgery
against the amounts spent by a Masculist military
on technologically advanced hardware,
designed to frighten other macho regimes.

Few humans have ever died directly
from the overselling and overuse of make up,
though invasive cosmetic surgery is more risky,
and there is a long and unpleasant history
of pointlessly testing products on animals
that women should take into account.

Whether it is guns or make up,
both are signs of aggression which further
the humans being top of the heap
in the war of consumption
where they destroy what they depend on.

Futile Potential

We all retreat from being thought of
as human cul-de-sacs by others.
That is the less obvious side
of human consciousness at work.

But how much does that retreat
ensure that our being known,
whether freely or with conditions,
is the surest route to us unknowingly
becoming a dead end for other people?

Everything I Touch Turns Into Technology

Technology always amazes the naive,
but then again it always will....

The more computers invade
the everyday service industries
the fewer the shop staff become
and the more exhausted the service
that they provide becomes also,
the better to numb the consumer.

The more widespread technology becomes
the more the wealthy live hi-tech bubbles
where every means of communication
mirrors back to them their high level of wealth.
Until everything they have becomes a wall,
something they don't realize that they can't see over.

As a mirror, technology hardens the divide
between the experience of great wealth
and common poverty more than can ever comprehend.

Life As If It Were A Soap Opera

Fifty odd years ago the satire on suburbia
was as tidy as suburbia itself.
'Little boxes, little boxes....
little boxes full of tick tacky.... '.

The listener knew that it as an attack
on how twee suburbia could be
the sing-song voice of the chorus
was all too cute for it's own good.

Now as householders age
so they can take comfort
in the new digital tweeness,
videos of cats doing things
om facebook, and make themselves
a newer, even more hermetic, bubble
than that of old, out of such light fare
that not even the satire
of a saccharine chorus can pierce it.

Misanthropic Potential

The less a man wants to know of his neighbour
the less he wants to know of himself.

Philosophical Super-Heroes

They are not quoting Nietzsche as you'd expect
 any well respected ubermench would, but Dostoyevsky.

The Trees Have Eyes

And they can tell by other means as well
when we are careless, and too tired to help them
 give us the rest and sustenance to keep all things well.

Reversing Into The Future

Wanting to be both popular and right
has always been 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
through the different religious beliefs

It has always been impossible to combine
Omniscience, Omnipresence and Omnipotence.
Any two of them combine together quite well,
but getting the third to fit 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 having to see
that there is a life in the world to come.

Heaven Is....

a place where everything is direct,
there are no displacement activities
nor are there weapons or aggression.
All needs are met in mutuality and ease.

There is no advertising; no hope deferred
the more to be multiplied into wants
that prove impossible to meet.

In Heaven there is neither debt,
nor ownership, nor is there hunger.

We will rarely find the ease of Heaven
on this earth, and where it is presented to us
we surely know, but don't like knowing,
that what we see is surely a disguise
for a chain of dis-ease that we can't see
which we know goes on in other places.

But with the strengths for today
that we have we can meet the needs of a few,
without knowingly dis-serving many more.

That is if we really want to......

Grey Light

Everyone suffers personal crises,
sufficient to test their resolve to live.

After they happen the sufferer will describe
the event as 'a test', or a darkness, and further add
that for the time after they were 'led by a light',
as if sensory metaphors for living come in pairs
when we struggle with both life and language .

The light that leads them on need not be that bright.
And the lower it's power whilst leading folks on
then the more efficient the grace it leads us in.

Where the lights direct us well,
let their smallness be enough also.

Survival is living beyond the need to brag. 

The Push-Me-Pull-Me of Journalism

In which even the most inclusive communities are both more pushed 
and pulled in more different direction than they can ever account for. 

In Any Given Society

the middle men are the decision makers,
the people who engineer the dodgy deals
between society's extremes of wealth and poverty.

It is natural for them to be shy
about telling those they do down,
and those they flatter through lies,
how much their advantage matters.

That would be giving the naive
an even break to become liars
in their turn, and their offspring
to become future middle men. 

World Leadership Is Rather Like Washing Up

Everybody thought that Somebody could do it,
Somebody thought that Everybody should do it.
Anybody might have done it, for part of the time at least.

Everybody thought Somebody ought to do it.
Eventually Everybody got angry when Nobody did it. 

Marxism Today

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble,
 finding it everywhere, 
diagnosing it incorrectly 
and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx 

A Rather Scary Smile

From a man,William Seward Burroughs, who made a reputation
out of writing about the fear the unknown. He said he cured himself
 of a Heroin addiction.whilst denying he spent forty years on Methadone.

Signs Of Greater Age (45)

1-Seeing cultures and artifacts
that you once prized as distinctive,
particularly technologies that seemed to last,
not just lose all their market cashe,
but then become fit only for dressing the windows
of trendy retro/pseudo charity shops
of the type that last one summer and close.

2-Losing patience with the news,
beyond the headlines. Every story
seems to be a retread of past events
which in the more analytical media
you trust more they are always discovering
that the same thing happened before
-going right back to the earliest times
that there is still evidence for.    

If Respect Were A Currency,

much more than money is at present,
how much would trust be it's gold standard?

What sort of utopia would it be,
with a currency so abstract and basic?
So difficult to quantify, materially,
that it hardly seems like a currency at all?

And yet this is how hunter/gatherer societies
actually work, they are what happens
when skills vital to survival are retained
which means a society maintained
and, finally, ecology naturally sustained
for the many future generations.

No Acting Required

True charity, however small or vast the sum given,
abjures all acting, flummery, and pretense
on the part of both the giver and the recipient. 

Those Were The Days

Because the memory of a poor quality of life remains
long after the surety of financial probity through thrift has gone. 

The Impossible Peace

In the world wars of the past it was well known
that many people ate well when rationing was effective,
not that populations liked being told what to eat.

So in the peace before the next world war,
assuming it is not going to be thermonuclear,
can we collectively devise a diet that seems attractive
in spite of the world of choice and advertising,
which makes peace with the planet for it's resources?

Drink Less, Think More

I don't know which is the cause
and which one is the symptom;
the society wide abuse of alcohol
or the bland highly processed food,
and kitsch decor of modern housing.

Either way reversing into a future
in which a sense of greater distinction
in how we live and share what we have,
arrived at through relative sobriety,
is going to be harder than we think.

Putting The 'less' into 'Blessed'(1)

Less activity means less reward and less interference, less of everything,
 the more to be nearer our true selves, and help others do the same.