The Sideways Life

As a teenager I read Kierkegaard,
not that I absorbed what I read very well.
But some time after I left the town I grew up in
I understood better than many his most concise quote
-'Life is lived forward but understood backward'.
 
I now live in rural Northern Ireland and now realize
why 'The Troubles' are so misunderstood.
It is not the partisan misreporting of the events,
though that happens. Nor is it because the phrase
'The Troubles' so aptly describes a lack
of a shared narrative history, which explains
why people resist exploring their backgrounds,
with too much vigour lest they, their family
or their 'community' prove culpable for some deed
they don't want to see their part in-everyone goes through that.

The reason is because there are so many small towns,
and small town life is always lived in lower case.
Progress only ever moves sideways.
In the sideways life deeds are smaller than it seem
and repeat themselves, and townsfolk can't look back
because in small towns life does not move forward.

Enforced Modesty

And it had controlled my ideas about it for some time as well....

A Small Loss For The Universe

Being so uniquely adaptable
in so many circumstances
is the human miracle du jour
that is also Planet Earth's
self defining tragedy.
I hope life on other planets
is less miraculous.

Government-The T Shirt

This is called called consistency by governments,
who, just like the public, prefer to not acknowlege
 that Democracy is about changing the human face
of the ineptitude, rather exchanging it for a leadership
that will genuinely reduce future ineptocracy. 

Happy Ghosts

When happy ghosts visit us
they don't feel like ghosts
when we receive then.
That is their secret.

Unintelligent Design

Only an unintelligent and highly insensitive species
with no sense of proportion would conceive of a science
to explain themselves and ennoble it as 'intelligent design',
when in their ignorance  the great mass of people
have little understanding of what science actually is.

Other Destinations Are Available

But tact always adds to value of life.