Disembling

Some folks lie constantly,
believing that by avoiding all truth
they can rest assured nobody
can lay any claim on them.
Not that anyone does,
instead they learn to ask less
and less of the person
who claims to be their friend,
lest they choke on the smoke of lies,
before being consumed by the fire
of a bitter and lasting jealousy.

I Don't Mind Role Play

as long as it is more 'play' than 'role'
and it is fluid in it's gender politics.
It has taken me a long time
to see how right this is.

Conflict Is Us (2)

I would like to have liked
my dad a lot more than I did.
We could have been fine
if we'd made the time
to respect our differences.
But always the final straw,
on which I always tripped
-going headlong-
was his clear, but unstated, belief
that World Of Sport was his idea
of costume drama. Between him
and the programme being on every week
I could not help but submit to family values
as if they were wrestling moves,
which in turn became Gordian knots
-beyond our collective understanding.

Levelling Upwards

Utopian as this quote is, it is good to have something to live up to....

'Eros is a great leveller. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society. It is noticeable how often Uranians of good position and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs and political tendencies.'

          Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex

In Some Cities

bloggers don't need the threat of a public flogging,
a thousand times, for their fingers to fall idle.
After the fiftieth strike of the whip even the witnesses
are too ill to add up the effect of each strike-and that assumes
they had the will to count them before the public punishment
of other bloggers started. The promise of a long time in prison
is just as strong a disincentive to many to publish their thoughts.
Over time many quietly lose their faith that what they write is read.
As what passes for civil society ensures that it ceases to have effect.

The Intelligence Of Cruelty/The Cruelty Of Intelligence

Charles Darwin did well to publish 'On The Origin Of Species'
before his many rivals published similar ideas.
By it's behavior the publishing industry proved
that competitiveness was more integral to evolution
than Darwin's readers like to think.
Though evolution requires at least much mutualism
for life to work, and for evolution to be credible theory.
Some folks see nature's competitive disharmony
as proof that there is no life beyond this.
With utopian pseudo-scientific sophistry
they reason that a God who made animals
and insects for them to be cruel to one other,
in order for some of them to survive, as others don't,
is not worth the effort He would take to believe in.
They vehemently deny the very idea of any judgement,
final or other, upon them for anything they merely might have done.

How conveniently they forget that we don't need
an all knowing deity supporting a flawed nature
to have proper and enduring reasons for shame.
However much animals and insects torture each other
the suffering they inflict is nothing, the bat of eyelid,
as compared with how human intelligence destroys nature.

Where human intelligence has multiplied through technology,
so have human numbers, and our combined capacity
for indifference and cruelty has gone through the ozone layer.
Our capacity for destruction is now so vast
that it has to be beyond our maths.
Human beings don't know what they do in this life,
never mind what might be done to them in the next,
and with the knowledge of of our power of destruction
Blaise Pascal's game theory around faith seems weak,
beyond belief. But I firmly accept the judgement of the earth
upon my life and body, for my efforts towards it's suffering.

Some Ills Define Our Health More Than We Like To Think

Hypocrisy is to humans what Tuberculosis is to cows-
we create apparently sterile/safe product from both,
through our consumptive communications.
With the 'cleaned up' result we deny that the disease
is life, is here for life, and it sums up of our lives.
Because as humans we don't want to see
how our whole achievement as self employed
'stewards of the planet' is so much less
than the sum of the parts of how well we live
for being the top species in the world food chain.