The Blind Ventriloquist

speaks with a certain voice,
not moving his lips
whilst his dummy does the opposite,
telling an unfunny old joke
about connection and detachment.

The audience fall about for laughing,
blind to how the joke is about them.

Making others laugh
at how they manipulate others,
not recognising themselves,
is the performers best revenge.

He who sees the least
recognises most clearly
how little anything changes.

Life On Planet B

I understand how climate change deniers
and those who believe that we need to do less,
or nothing, to rescue the planet actually think.

To paraphrase Woody Allen on death,

'I'm not afraid of the planet being saved;
I just don't want to be there when it happens.'

as if they had a choice
of life on another planet
when they haven't.

The Recipe For Life

is to expect less from it, for it to seem longer. 

The 'Wrong' Deterrent

In these days of 'populist politics'
it is easy for the public to be persuaded
that a strong deterrent stops a crime
therefore the risk of an error in justice
is worth the deterrence of a strong sentence.

But wait, when I was in school
I remember when boys did wrong
and knew what they were doing,
and denied it to the very last.

Even when they were one of whole class
detained until the teacher was satisfied
that for all the outright denial of the class
the culprit was still well punished.

I do hope class detention for doing wrong
when most of us had done nothing, 
and those who did it could deny it,
was never meant to be
our first lesson in democracy. 

Innocence Is Over-Rated

When I hear adults praise the idea
of young people knowing much less
about sex than they are expected to,
I hear a delight in ignorance
that cannot be sustained.

I hear a delight in something
theoretically not existing
for it not being discussed
where everyone holds back,
for knowing uncomfortable facts
that they are barred from mentioning.

Out of sight never meant out of mind.
The promotion of asexuality or virginity
outside of marriage merely assists
the predatory male instinct
that makes marriage the excuse
for secretive and serial adulteries
which it would be better to expose.

Wiser Later, When It No Longer Matters

One of the consequences of ageing
is that you eventually become older
that the politicians who rule the media
with the youthful middle aged looks,
the promises made to the middle classes.

You know their political baby teeth will fall out
when they lose their first lost vote in Parliament.

Then the media that once praised them
as the unofficial, but working, opposition
calls them hypocrites, outright,
as if the idea was new
and becoming that way
was previously unthinkable.

After that comes the first open split
within the cabinet and the ruling party
and as the memory of the old promises
fades like old newsprint,
their renewal begins again,
from yet another set of liars.

The Power Of Music

“Music… will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character
and your sensibilities, and in the times of care and sorrow,
it will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”-Dietrich Bonnhoeffer  (1906-45).
  He would have lived much longer had he not been arrested
and imprisoned in 1943, and then accused of being part of
 the twenty fifth and last attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler,
in the major plot of the 20th July 1944, in which the Nazi
government also believed that The Pope had a role.

But here is to the power of music to sustain us
when little else seems to. 

The Less We Have To Say

the more our ways of saying it
expand beyond all need or want
which put us off from expressing
what originally seemed to be
a neat and tart turn of phrase. 

Beyond Embarassment

Jesus was never embarrassed by anyone who met him,
not even when his followers aspired but lacked faith
and therefore could not follow his commands as he meant to.

Like Jesus, I will not feel embarrassed for myself,
for what I have done, or not done when expected to,
nor will I be ashamed for my lack of normality.

Bad or good,
I'll live with who I am,
as will those around me.   

The Wrong Orders

But even in human to human relationships
our considerations narrow each other
far more readily than we are ready to admit. 

Self Medication

Through Pink Floyd and other brands of music is commonplace now
and as consumerist an activity as can be found. 

Success Ltd

If a sense of achievement requires
is an infinite supply of persistence
then, except for this blog, I have failed.

But at least I have learnt my limits
and how to live better within them.

Bad Recycling

Just imagine if all the hate in each individual
on a particular land mass were combined,
rather than each hater being isolated by the distance
that s/he had to keep to sensibly contain their hate
from the object of their hatred.

The combination would become
far more than the sum of it's parts.
The land mass would become a country
with hard boundaries with other countries.

Whole new categories of false divisions
would be created out of the emotional anti-matter
which, originally, nobody knew what to do with.

It would be the ultimate in bad recycling.       

But For How Much Longer?

Every one of us is a massacre
of all that was once natural and Holy.

The Tree of Life is now toilet paper
for a flow too long for us to tidy up after.

The Tree of Knowledge
has been privatised and fenced off.

What it once taught now kept
for leaders to spout what the led forget.

The rich all look for bargains
and the planet is looking very cheap.

By the nature of events this will go on.
But for how much longer? 

There Is No Deception Like Self Deception

The fault lies
where the buck stops
and it should not stop
anywhere short of it.

But being a fault and lie
it wants to go anywhere
except where it will be
properly dealt with.     

I'd Be Happy For My Funeral To Be Eco-Friendly

not that I will be there at the time,
but it would please my friends no end
to see my end, my leaving,
as part of of something living;
it would be a capitalism I'd approve of.

But before I go through all that,
I'd like to have some eco-living,
not just picking up the litter
for recycling that others leave
on the ground but living well
within my 'carbon footprint',
whatever one of those is,
whether I have a job or not.

Without sounding preachy
I'd like to leave the planet peachy,
fit to bursting with life
for many times to come. 

Suspicions About Difference Are Not New

The more things change
they they remain the same.

The Patricians of the Roman republic
could not deal easily with social status,
deal with the differences between slaves,
freed men (ex-slaves freed by their masters)
and the differing levels of citizenship
where social rivalry was society's creativity.

A proposal to put slaves in uniforms,
the better to identify them, was defeated.

'What would happen if slaves were able to identify each other?
What would happen when they recognised that, numerically,
they were the majority over every other social class combined?
How could they not rebel against the great civilisation they knew?'
was how the counter argument ran.

Such fears of newly discovered human superiority
built on the inferiority of others are nothing new.

In our own time we have machines
which to serve us better we have imbued
with the appearance of spontaneous thought.
but what they can perform
is still much nearer appearance
than actual intelligence.

And yet if these machines had an intelligence
the same as our own, and clearly showed it,
would be amazed at how thought repeat itself
or frightened at how much thoughts can vary? .

Gluttens For Boredom

cannot fail to be amused by how much
humanity simply over-reproduces itself
in the vain hope of being refreshed,
and refreshing to other species.

It is not just that the humans
are a fading carbon copies
of what was once new life.
The problem is their culture.
When it is given free reign,
it repeats itself ad nauseam
until it breaks down beyond repair.

And then,
for us having been unable to hold down
what have become,
what we do to reduces itself
to a bile of varying strengths
where we resist
recognition of the future.

Never Knowing

what time or day it is,
and never caring,

is as near as we will get
to being as naked as animals,
and as welcoming of life,
with a natural body-clock,
as anyone could ever be. 

We Forget The Near Past At Our Peril

In Britain, from Victorian times to the 1940's,
when vast numbers of people lived in cramped quarters
with inadequate electric light, water from a stand pipe
part way down the street and other inadequate amenities
the 'slipper bath' (above) was one way of keeping clean.
It was so called because of it's shape.

Many of these would be kept in a public room,
with a curtain around each of them for privacy.
The room would often be above a public swimming pool.
The public would pay for the tub to be filled part way
with clean water, and pay extra for hot, and for towels and soap
if they had not brought along their own to keep costs down,
 as well. As a single woman my mother attended these places, often.

That many millions of people once kept clean this way
has become soon forgotten, with the modern convenience
of hot water on tap, wall to wall carpeting, television,
and cosy central heating systems.

  But the past is never as far away as we think.

Great Turn Offs Of Our Time (14)

When a politician says of his new initiative
'This is the start of clearing up problem X,
the end of the problem is a long way off.'
Then you might well be right to wonder
what he (it usually is a he) was doing
before they let so much get to the state
where their new clean slate was required.

I Am Happy Enough

at the waves of stories and changes in laws
that the 'Gay Pride Season' always draws forth,
every year across the developed world.

But I wish much more
that we saw the measure of a country
less in how it positively accepts
its youthful sexual minorities,
and more in how it treats it's poor,
not that it is a matter of either/or......

The Best Thieves

want little of what other people have
and always leave that much behind
that without a thorough stock check
the hyper-wealthy owner of plenty
can't tell where the thieves have been.

Until the thief gently shows them,
by which time the terms for a friendship
fit to built upon has been laid down.

Life In The dark

What we call 'Magic'
is mostly a lack of light
cast over the everyday processes
that we rely on for living.

If we saw too clearly what we were doing
then either we would choose be scientists,
a recent and very tricky vocation to follow,
or we would disown what we only half knew
in the assured hope of blissful ignorance.  

Getting Our Wrongs Right

It is possible to do right thing for the right reason.

It is more likely that we will do the right thing,
in the shorter term, for the wrong reason,
and wrong thing for the wrong reason longer term
and we will not realise that we have done it
until it is too late to remake the decision.

Good News For The Nervous

Ray Lowry seems remarkable in his foresight
for predicting the number of trigger warnings
that modern readers get with what they read.  

The Paradox Of Doctor Pangloss

Doctor Pangloss wrote
that there is no effect without cause.
In the best of all worlds
the best cause causes the best effect;
if there was/is a better cause
that causes a better effect
then we would know it and see it
as if Descartes was right.

When unpleasant effects persist
then either human reason dies
from the shallowness it's own grace
or the causes are multiple and so huge
that even as our science recognises
the roots and branches of our problems
the science leaves us blind about how to act.

Either way we are fucked
and can't escape our sight
becoming our blindness.

The Straight And The Narrow

when the straight is so narrow
that it excludes all real life
and the narrow is so straight
it might as well be a jacket
then what ever you are told,
life is going to be a bumpy road.

When Going Dutch On Your Courage

Do remember to share it out fairly.
Though you will feel divided 
from those you have shared it with, 
and a little less courageous, 
the morning after the night before.

Be Watchful Of Charity?

Recently I attended a small charity auction.
It was an event where the bids were for the cause
rather more than for the goods donated,
but the goods were what there was to see.
The auctioneer, a regular 'barrow boy' type
really annoyed me as tried to pass off
what his act as ironic, post-modern,
or at a stretch vaguely surreal.

By the end the bids and donations seemed unreal.
But since the cause was the real point,
it made the process odd but acceptable.

A certain Mr David Gilmour,
formerly of the parish of Pink Floyd,
recently sold 127 guitars
that were surplus to his needs.
He had plenty more to play with.

There was much reprising of the solos
and the classic riffs that these guitars
had played in their time.
He meant for this to be last
for these particular pasts
for us all that he central to creating.
by dragging these guitars into the present
he acted for the sake of the future.

Picture Set Of The Month

Zookeepers in Victoria, Australia

      hatch nine critically endangered Plains wanderer chicks.

A spider on a leaf in west Borneo, Indonesia.

Cloth bags containing bats hang inside a fridge
prior to their awakening
after winter hibernation at a rescue centre in Minsk.

A bee collects nectar from the flowers
of a blooming Japanese cherry blossom tree in Vienna.