I Want To Be A Recycler

When human life ends for me
I want to return as a tree.

My soul wants to be the essence
of something that gives life to life,
near and far from where it is fixed.

The length of my giving
will be fixed by when I am cut down;
that is what humans do to trees,
as sure as humans are death to life.

When that fate befalls me and my soul departs again
I would like it that what I have grown into
may be the material for many human coffins.

My remains will house the husks of many departed souls,
like my soul by then will also have been is displaced,
only part of my work done,
.  

Two Of A Kind?

I am well used to middle aged men
being unaware of the sexual innuendo
in the language that they use as they talk.

Down the ages this has made satire
far easier to make,
and more informed about it's targets.

But still I am surprised to find
that slogans that pass for Politics
in the front pages of the press
would also pass as chat up lines
in the dating ads near the back.

It is as if in commerce
the political is the personal;
What leaders do to/for the country
we also want to do to each other.
There is no difference between the two.
 .

Unfit For Competition

I would have been happy to have enjoyed sport
in school if only it meant mentoring,
where I competed against my previous selves,
and the teacher was there to help me 'move on'
to be confident, fit, and strong,
without ever making me into a bully.

Such fitness training would have esteemed me well.

But no such personal teaching existed.
Sport was a one-size-fits-all activity
about 'fitting into the community'.
As if whatever shape each of us was
we were all pegs to be hammered
into too few holes for our number,
Thus to be defined that way forever
as we accounted for ourselves.

Sport was run by teachers
to find out who fitted first and best,
the better to help the school forget the rest.

That I never fitted in at all
should not have surprised me.

That I should have such a full life
outside of all competitiveness
is always a positive surprise.

Never winning competitions
until it was unnatural for me
to be entered in for them
made me the person I am.

Forced Rest

A digital detox is never a bad idea,
even when we are forced into it
by our being mal-adaptive with technology.

'Dishonest To God'

Brief excerpts from Satan's autobiography....

'The management of the lesser angels
and the life of the first man and woman
were never meant to become
the soul destroying job they ended up being.....'

'It went wrong. I don't know how it happened,
through Adam and Eve pain, blame and guilt
made infinitely deep roots into the world.
I was credited with inventing death but I didn't.
I did what I should in my office as chief angel,
God was the one in actual power at the time.....'

'I am supposed to be everywhere at once;
particularly where there is something that humans
seek to excuse themselves from having done.
Humans talk of me as if I am the author of all scapegoating
but I am not, particularly when they stop listening
and accuse each other of events that could easily stop,
if they were to stop accusing each other of different deeds......  ' 

'I did not create the flesh
and did not create it's works
they created themselves
as accurate expressions
of human entropy.....   '

'I could go on but since not even God listens
and humans don't care, least of all do they care
about all the species of animals their greed makes extinct
I am going to stop and accept my being ignored.
Let them all stew in their own rotting juices..... '
  

Not So Pretty Polly

I must surely be one of relatively few people
to cover their television set when it is switched off.
The cloth has not been moved for several years now.

Originally when I started this
it was to reduce the impact of the set on the room.
The cloth also helped me resist the urge to boredom
when it stopped me using programmes as background noise
when it was on but I had no regard for programme content.

My grandparents were the same
but with greater self discipline.
The thick pleated cloth that covered their 1950's set
-which worked until 1980-drew the eye towards it,
but it made one forget the talking box underneath.

To many viewers, early television programmes
seemed rather like an alien bird imitating human life
in monologues spoken with no internal understanding.
Like the tame birds of old, the cloth went over their cage
to stop them talking when they were required to be quiet.

What sort of cover
should offer each other
to reduce the noise we don't need
when it starts from inside our heads?

A Summary Of Today's News

A narcissist, like the many narcissists before him,
as party leader has reflected only on his own values, 
and has damned his party with his indifference. 

Since he surrounded himself with others like him 
they too are seeking their own advantage 
as if nobody had ever done the like of it before.

Tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that; 
there will be more of the same 
with less variation in it than the weather...... 

Progressive Conservatism

is reviving bankrupt pasts
to discredit the future
for the benefit of the few.

Excuses Have Their Uses....

The point about excuses
is that those who use them
are usually slow to realise
when the excuses start to use them.

And for the people not seeing it,
the process becomes irreversible....
  

Protest Is A Necessary Privilege

For without the powers that be would say everything
and the public would meekly listen and do as they were told
regardless of whether it was good or bad for them.

But protesting does excuse us from 'being part of the problem'  
Now, if the protester had made each 'you' into a 'we'
then his point would have been much stronger. 

A Game Of Two Halves

The secret for maintaining a relationship
is that one half does not really know
what the other half thinks from what they say,
not even from the suggestions and hints
that they regularly find in common.

The longer the relationship
the less the distance
between their different thoughts ideas
actually matters
-the journey is the same for both partners.

Families Are Not What They Used To be

I wonder, does the father dress Port side or Starboard?  

Self Definition Is The Best Definition

Better to fail on your own terms
than to succeed on anyone else's.

When they leave your life
they will take your success with them.

Part of how people change themselves
is changing the terms they live by
which they have most right to choose.

Remove the right to fail
and we make all success
seems somewhat hollow.

Trying To Be Quiet

When I want to find somebody else's voice
I have to spend time to their footsteps.
How else can I see what they saw?
Hear what they once heard?

Even then what I get is an echo.
For my travelling later
their footfall is harder to find.'

I cannot be sure what being there,
when their prints were freshly minted,
might have been like......

But at least I try to be quiet,
the better to understand.

A Far Out Economic Theory

I used to believe that if Man ever got to Mars
his motivation to go would be tax avoidance.
The rich would want to hide their money there
when it became the safest tax haven in the universe.

I know now was wrong,
when man gets to Mars,
by way of the stars,
the point of the takeover
will be to makeover
the gambling industry.

Mars will be used to launder the money
gained from weakly licensed gambling
and the mass sales of popular drugs,
sufficient for the money seem clean
before its return to Planet Earth.

The gravity of Mars
will draw money from afar
in a perfect financial vacuum.
The most courageous
will be the most steadfastly corrupt;
they and they alone will control
the return of the money
to create an earthly paradise

Carefully Observing Change

When we wipe clean our slate of other people's deeds,
we know that they very likely to repeat the deed
which for many makes arduous work of forgetting.

But forgiveness is not the Sisyphean labour
that many cynics and disbelievers make it out to be.

However much we and others repeatedly err
we make different errors each time.
So forgiveness becomes our absolving
of much how we vary, our diversity.

Whereas if we were singularly perfect
we could never change;
we would be pickled
to the point of boredom
in our own perfection.

A Sense Of Disappointment Recycled

I remember the tone of resignation in my mother's voice
every time I used to phone her, when I was younger.
As if to say 'What trouble has he got himself into now?'.

Her weary suspicion was what I kept trying to get past
to reestablish trust, after years of being able get myself
out of any trouble I might have gotten into by my own means.

But I could never defeat her suspicions,
or her disbelief that I could ever be trusted now,
after, by necessity, having been reliant on her.

Now, I am older than the politicians who seek my vote,
and I understand how and why Mother felt the way she did.
The politicians wheedle and charm me to get my vote,
and my attention. Both are inherently hard to earn quickly,
except by cheap publicity which quickly reduces it's user.

It would more wholesome for them to embrace
the weary suspicion and scepticism of the public
who before they hear about what is done in their name
feel duty bound to ask each other  'What new trouble
has [insert name of leader here] got our country into NOW?'  

Today's Saint; Saint Hubert

St Hubert (658-727) was born in Toulouse 

He is the patron saint of hunters.
His wife died giving birth to their son.
In his despair Hubert gave himself up
 to hunting and saw the sign of the cross
in the antlers of the most magnificent stag
 that he had ever seen.

The Lord spoke to him, saying 
'Turn to me or you will go to Hell'.
He prostrated himself before the stag
and sought the Lord's Direction.

Would that more of today's hunters
could be similarly afflicted of the heart
and seek to kill less and live to let live better.

Would that in Heaven's name 
he would damn to Hell
all the pharisee-like inversions
 committed in his name.  

Keep On Peddling.....

'The Journey of life
is like a man riding a bicycle.
We know he got on the bicycle
and he started to move.
We know that at some point
he will stop and get off.
We know that if stops moving
and does not get off
he will fall off'
-William Golding

The Lighter Touch

Since when did speaking from experience
come to be seen as smugness?
When it lacked the lighter touch.

Picture Set Of The Month-Vintage Embroidery

Circa 1880. Wool embroidery on cotton foundation.

1837. Silk and cotton embroidery on cotton foundation.

 Early 19th century. Silk embroidery on linen foundation.

19th century. Silk and metal embroidery on linen foundation.