The Hope Of Health

Politicians are to nations
what doctors are to patients-
people we consult in times of need
(with politics and media that is all the time
then...  ) and in whom we invest power,
in the hope of health.

The more we see those we entrust ourselves to
mistaking our symptoms for our causes
the more our trust in them ebbs away.

With a doctor this means being condemned
to live out your illness in a state of disgrace
misunderstanding or taboo, being existentially sick.

When politicians mistake a symptom for a cause
it reinforces ghetto walls tightens poverty traps,
and reduces social mobility to media talk and spin.

Politics entrenches an apartheid of  wealth and poverty
that castles and gated communities have always encouraged,
separated by their wealth. Why else have Portcullis* House
next to the Mother of all Parliaments?

 
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*A grating of iron or wooden bars or slats, suspended in the gateway of a fortified place and lowered to block passage.

Filmed Pornography

is the oldest form
of  'reality entertainment'
known to man,
it is the preferred viewing
for those who need
to be conditioned
into being surprised,
by Predictability.

Homelessness

is not merely thinking, but actually living outside the box,
seeing from the outside how others box themselves in.

The New Absolution

is therapy; a quiet process of pedantry and revenge
against a personal past conducted behind closed doors,
where the client and therapist collude to imitate Confession.

A Reflection On Hard Surfaces

Yuppiedom is a glossy style of living
where the polished surfaces
in which yuppies see themselves reflected
are as near as they get to interior reflection.

Groundhog Day

started for us all the second Narcissus
looked into the pool, and was absorbed
by how handsome he appeared in the still water.
Nemesis quietly drained him of the will to live.

Nemesis still curses all life through humans.
Our mirrors are politics, art and the mass media
where the only real change is our amnesia.
Given how poorly we recognise how we live,
through destroying other species, the height
of our kindness should be our quiet decline.

Marketing Is War

through words, without armaments.
Conventional belief is that
'the first victim of war is truth',
propaganda being it's persecutor.
In marketing there is no truth
-only advantage to the manufacturer.
Marketing is the war waged
with images that outlast all wars,
through their repetition
which make us all obese
self-consuming shadows.