How 'The Fall' Actually Happened

Eve was at her ease in the garden.
Mistaking her rest for boredom,
the snake quietly whispered to her
'Cheer up, Love. It may never happen'.
and in that very instance whatever 'it' was did.
Her curiosity was piqued by his comment.

She wanted to know what 'it' meant.
Adam avoided all her questions,
but could not stop her asking.
He wanted to be in the image
of his maker, who back then
was more into labeling things
and did not ask questions
nor answer them either.
He has rarely done so since.

Eventually God,
who was by his own definition
plural, infinite, unified, and replete,
quietly gave Adam and Eve their notice
to leave the ease of his exclusive company,
for them and their descendants
to pique their curiosities by themselves.

Stretching Hope

Why does modern life
seem like the credit tab
in the most popular bar
on the RMS Titanic,
just before it sank? 

Testament Of Middle Age

For many years I believed I was an introvert,
but it was much 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 about the world rather than myself.
In this new depression I can be the 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 peoples faces, but not their names.
But somewhere on my way I lost the shame
my family needed to keep me as one of them.

I remain uneasy about anyone
being another person's property.

Now Wash Your Mind

I probably won't be trying their most select menu....

Banal Potentialities?

Many such urges seem quite resistible.
If truly irresistible urges to life do exist
then procreation is one of them.
The women that carry children to term
are likely to understand these urges
more than the men who have to be there
to start the process but rarely  think
far enough ahead to be able to plan
how to insert themselves comfortably
into the creative process, for the child
and the mother as (in theory) they all grow together.

That said I wonder, how well non-procreative sex
compares with procreative sex in it's potential for banality?
For repetition disguised as circular hope?

It has to be said;carrying infants to term
is not something to do 'for fun', whatever
the message women get from their hormones. 

Winter Is Afoot...

and we all feel the cold in our extremities.

Something For The Autumn From The Spring

 'Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap
 nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.'   (Mathew 6; 26) 

It Is Meat And Drink

for grown-ups to talk with detachment
about 'changes in the systems of management',
in work, in I.T.,
and in life generally-
particularly when the changes
apply to others more than them.

When they speak like that who listens?
Who takes in what people say in 'emit' mode
believing it never applies to them?

On The Impossibility Of Genuine Generosity

All societies are consumer societies,
the more they consume the more they dream.
After having briefly finishing consuming
we all they have dreams further consumption.
which palely reflect our consumptions past.

The more we mine our unconscious
through drugs alcohol and entertainment,
to avoid seeing how far we are from basic need,
the more our dreams become the vomitorium
where all we can smell is our own greed.

'Bad Laws

make outlaws of good people.'-Virgil Elliot

In Praise Of Primitive Societies

All societies are consumer societies,
the more they consume
the more they dream of further consumption
and after having temporarily finished consuming
all they have are their dreams
as pale reflections that will be lost
of the vibrant life that there once was.

The more we mine our unconscious
through drugs alcohol and entertainment
the more infinite the seam of greed
that we collectively live by.

Even the best of the outsiders to all this
can never get far enough outside of it
to both survive
and be in balance with their environment.  

Youthful Attentiveness

Though how much those who stop learning may well
 feel old for the static life they have is not mine to comment on.

Fear And Fiction

stalk all of human life,
devouring who they may.

Disbelieve them
where you can
if you want to stay.

I'm Not Like Everybody Else

They all think so alike and are all so different from me....

Connection, Speech, and Gender

The telephone was invented by a man,
and from the candle stick of the 1920's
to modern times so many of the appliances
into which we have to speak into
have been firm and somewhat phallic.

The lead in their pencils makes men
always want take the lead in life,
unaware of how this makes them controlling,
and this include the design of technologies
to assist future communications.

Were women to take a greater hand
in our collective designs for future living
I wonder how much more feminine,
and inclusive the shapes of their designs
for sharing speech at a distance in future might be.

Would talking into phones
that reminded users of a more
female approach to sensuality
help people talk and listen
at greater depth, more readily?

Maturity Is Always Relative

Sometimes maturity requires us
to live apart from others,
particularly our families,
the better to be clearer
about the nature of our vice.

Through separation
we can resist the charms of co-habitation
and refine ourselves into something nicer.
 .

On My Own Planet

Comparing being alone with being lonely
sails so close to cliche
that I don't want to go there.

The times when I felt most thorougly
ill-at-ease were in the company of family,
or with teachers or other instructors
barking orders, who said they cared
but acted as if they were on another planet
whilst engaged in their constant activity.

Timing Is Not What Used To Be

Some folks say 'It's not over 'til it's over'
-what ever 'it' might be. Reprentative Democracy?

What is is more true is that fewer things in life
ever start when they are promise to,
and when they end they always cost us
more that we were prepared to pay.

The Discomfort Zone

Since 1979 more walls have gone up
than have ever gone down, erections
made out of money as much as bricks.

The Construction Industry is in robust health,
with all the new divisions that it is expanding!
The new walls are better than the old,
they are less physical, and have less barbed wire,
with very few machine guns required for hire.

The 'no-man's-land' in between the divides
is now maintained by black ops manouveres
backed up by hidden security cameras
coupled with plenty of noisy propaganda.

From behind our wall we accept what we are shown,
democracy where the highest level performers
get the most bread, the rest just watch them perform.

Our screens define our histories as battles
between causes that haunt us like old ghosts.
Who did what and when they did it can no longer
be remembered well, but comes to us in fragments.

Our turmoil is both within and without,
there is barely the need for the knife in the back
to openly prove what the conflict is all about.

In the dying light our media shout for the shadows
of those in whom we once put hope,
looking for how to 'rediscover our traditions'.

When the walls seem high enough we stop listening,
and sit and mutter to ourselves instead.
No enemy can penetrate a mind so well divided
so in our madness we feel safe from all invaders.

Secrecy Is Not A Disease

it is more a common necessity,
whether we are intent on good or evil,
and everything inbetween.

When we do evil
we have to cover
what we do with good,
to make it presentable to those
we want be evil towards.

When we do good
we have to disguise the good
from other people's unbelief
that good is real, and the labels
that it comes with can be trusted.

Please be careful
when choosing your motive,
and level of tact.

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. 

The Wayward Pulpit (1)

Jesus never said 'By their management systems shall ye [all] know them'*,
but there is something prophetic about poor management skills.

They are the most reliable guide to human error
that we could ever devise for ourselves,
to the exclusion of all other competence and tact.
Often they will do this and understate the fact,
until the system speaks loud enough to deafen us.


*an adaptation from the gospel of Mathew Ch 7 V 20.

Brahms-The T Shirt?

One of the many oddities of modern life
is to see so many images from the 1960's
onward, from modern popular music,
being re produced on 'limited run' T shirts.

Seeing the faces of now wrinkly old rockers
in their youthful form, adorning to the torsos
of modern youth is somewhat disconcerting.

I get it, but I lived that past and seeing it reheated
in the light modern clothing leaves me rather cold.

Perhaps we could look back further,
to another range of images,
one where the faces of classical composers
adorn the front of the T shirt
and notation from their sheet music
is covers the back, sponsored by Classic FM.?

Never mind The Grateful Dead, Roy Harper
Led Zep and Pink Floyd and the T-shirt artists
that sell by the bucket load, let us re-imagine
what we really want to see. Beethoven!
Bach! Bruckner! Bartok! and Brahms!
And that is just the most famous B's!
there are another 25 alphabet letters
of both major and minor composers,
and complete obscurantists, to choose from.

Let their music be heard more too,
and played live and in the open air,
to replace much that seems forced
by the rhetorical sense of fame
which is led by E.D.M. at present.

Caution; New Road Sign Required

Mothering is a full time job that can strike at any moment....

Work, Eternity, And Memory.

When Zeus finally gave Sisyphus his eternal punishment,
for his cunning and hubris, and the gods opened
the first quarry to help humans recognize themselves,
how much was Sisyphus permitted a sense of Deja-Vu
with each rock rolled up the hill that fell down again?

'Go Forth And Multiply.... '

Inside the few good ideas there are in the world
there are the seeds so many thousands more bad ideas,
just waiting to get out and propagate themselves
through the collective human consciousness.

They team and mill about
when we try to act out
those few good actions
humans are ready to do.

(Plant) Life On Mars

Everything you were unlikely to be told but would need to know 
about surviving a life in outer space for a long period of time.

This Carnal Earth

The following was quoted in the front of a book of reviews of television, 'Glued to the Box' by Clive James, which was published before the age of the internet. The quote itself was written well before the telephone had taken off, and long before the classic age of three channels of analogue television in Britain, which is the period that Clive James collected television reviews cover. But it expresses clearly how little we travel for all that we change the means of transmitting information.

'Humanity will surpass the first dirigibles as it has surpassed the first locomotives. It will surpass M. Santos-Dumont as it has surpassed Stephenson. After telephotography it will continually invent graphies and scopes and phones all of which will be able to go round the earth in less than no time. But it will always be only the temporal earth. And it will be possible to burrow inside the earth and pierce it through as I do this ball of clay.  But it will always only be the carnal earth.'

-Charles Peguy (1873-1914), written in 1907.     

Deathwatch

At the tills of my local supermarket
I returned to talk with my favourite cashier.
He is always a tonic after trawling the isles
for my few items, that takes ages to find.

He had a florescent green strap on his wrist,
on it there were lights that were flashing.

I asked him about this, and he replied
'It monitors my health, whilst telling me the time.
It was sold to me by my health insurance.
They lower the premium which I pay them
when I wear it....  '.

'Oh' said I 'I thought that it was the watch
that would tell you when you were going to die,
as sold by technologically advanced undertakers.'.

We laughed at our mutual incomprehension,
and joked about 'best before' dates for humans,
as if we were similar the stock of the shop.
The conversation ended with me speculating
which of my relatives we might send
this undertakers watch to, for Christmas.

He knew nothing of how deeply
the false cheer of Christmas sales
depresses me, beyond belief.

We both knew that he would soon
be stacking shelves with Christmas stock
but his all-year-round cheer was better. 

Putting The 'less' Into 'Blessed' (2)

Because out of your thrift and generosity
will come other people's self sufficiency

If I Am Going To Be Pointless

I would rather do it slowly,
the ease of my journey
might allow me the luxury
of finding a purpose
because of how slow I am.