How Real Hell is....

Depends on where you live in Europe
or the UK. That said belief an any sort of afterlife
or in Heaven/Nirvana/Paradise is either a sign
of the comfort that richest award themselves
or of extreme naivety about the world we live in.

Finally this survey tells us nothing about how much
Hell might have invested in us through making us
disbelieve in it, to varying degrees, whilst waiting
to make itself real at the end of human experience.   

 

Reverse Your Own Way Into The Future

Because the past never really goes away, anyway....

 

An Anthropologist Writes....

One group says they believe in purity,
and socially security for families,
through marriage where the father
owns all the property by himself
and directs the values of the family
because they cannot direct themselves,
all with anyone ever calling it 'Patriarchy'.

They say they believe in Creationism,
a hierarchy where God tells the man,
to tell his wife and children
that root and branch, man,
woman and their offspring 
who have to be above the animals
and the plants, of which they live
that live and die with no regard
to property, or buying or selling
not even when men trap, eat,
and and sell them to other men.

The other group are men
who believe in evolution
in order to accept the sensuality
that family values says cannot exist
in 'do not touch' type societies.

There 'family values' are law,
the whole of the law,
and nothing but the law,
but in secret these men celebrate
their (r)evolutionary sensuality, 
denying even the temptation
to voyeurism, a warping of their creed, 
that 'family values' invites,
and never admitting that what they do
has a name, where it's name is 'cottaging'.

The family values they hide from
mean that the part they share less
are their lips which respond
to the gentlest of shared movements.

Legion

 Safe in psychiatric hospital

I had placed four friendly plastic bags,
Which once held loving gifts of fruit,
Chocolate, magazines, flowers.
Firmly over my head
In the cloakroom of the locked ward.
Like Legion, I wrestled with the demons.
Tramp, tramp tramping through my brain.
A legion was a Roman Regiment of
Six thousand troops.
Show me a more accurate picture of mental illness.

After my failed cloakroom debacle on the ward,
The self harming  (….razors, needles, fire)
Young girls aged 14 to 21,
And I were irresistibly drawn together,
Our hollow eyes locked in a nightmare of understanding.
They mothering my ageing self with
Hugs, toffees under the pillow,
Carefully drawn pictures,
The delicate offering of painting my fingernails
In shocking pink.
Caught tears at two in the morning.
Legion, in among the tombs, watching his demons
Crashing via two thousand pigs over the Gadarene cliffs;
The relief of it! echoed later as he sits,
Clothed and in his right mind,
Calmly.
By the side of Jesus.
Who is to say that an echoing miracle was not begun in my mind,
(But slowly)
By that small regiment of unlikely,
Oh so young, self-scarred angels
In the locked ward?
After all
Here I am sitting, calmly, writing poetry once more.

By Belfast author, poet and Christian activist Sylvia Sands, about whom I wish I knew more from here. 

An Articulate Comedian Writes....

 

Bowled Over

 It is years, decades, since The Grateful Dead
sealed their reputation and invented 'Americana'
long before other song writers took up the mantle,
now attributed The Dead, where songs described
where they lived and who had lived before them.

The Grateful Dead were long gone by the time
'Americana' became shorthand for lazy reporters,
they were worn out from from touring and decay

Now they are more a memory
in the frazzled minds of the punters
of gigs they put on, gigs where
as one attendee of their 1972 tour
now memorably described them
as 'The rock and roll equivalent
of a cricket test match, lots of lulls
with unexpected flashes of excitement'.

It is forty one years since I was first bowled over,
and there have been many lulls in my life since,
but the band have been the constant to me
through many dwelling and relationships
they will see me thought many more...

As Jesus Never Said

about Judas, a disciple he liked, and his accountant,
'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer
and for God's sake make sure you know the difference'.

What Jesus thought about how to trust 
an accountant was never recorded.... 

Picture Set of The Month - August - The Album Artwork of Sir Peter Blake.

A watercolour image of John Peel (1939-2004)
for the 2006 compilation of tracks that were
identified with him as a DJ, from the first
decade of the punk era.     

 

Fresh from the debacle of his most famous
brush with celebrity via The Beatles, Blake
completed this just as bright but more compact image
for then newly starting out folk musicians Pentangle.  

Sir Peter Blake's association with Ian Dury
goes back to when Dury was his pupil and Blake
taught art, at Walthamstow Arts School.
What chance Dury returning the favour? Done!   

Ian Stewart (1938-85) was the member
of The Rolling Stones who hid in the background
because 1-he was probably the best musician among
them and 2-in the early days of the band his image
 ran counter to the 'bad boy' image that the band
wanted to project to gain traction with the public.