The Immaturity Of Space Travel

For all our advances
we are as fit to colonize
other planets as a feotus
is fit to leave the womb
it can't comprehend
that keeps it alive.

The Lighter Life

creating debt is human,
cancelling debts is divine.

Gluttony

Many a family is poor, and of necessity
they inflict their poverty on each other,
not least to make sure they remain family.
Those who escape through second chances
will always have little left to share
with the families they leave behind, beyond
'We must have been gluttons for punishment
for wanting so much of the less-ness of life,
and for wanting each other live like that',
and the real trick is in hiding
the whiff of accusation
behind a sense of observation.

How Easily We Deny How Near Nature We Live

Recently my cooker had to be reconditioned.
As the workman took off the different casings,
he removed the cover from the transformer,
and found a nest of semi-fossilized mice.
With the cooker on and transformer warm
they had made their winter home there,
using insulation as bedding. They died there,
together rather than starved and frozen. Outside.
I took the casing and cleaned it out for the workman
and put the mice in the hearth-ready for burning
when I next lit a fire, whilst he spoke of the alertness
of the cats for vermin around his family's farmhouse.

With every news bulletin the media whispers
'Only in the First World are you free from harm'
as if the media are our insurance
against the idea of nature overwhelming us.
I don't believe them, the mice confirmed
what I know in my bones, that poorer
and ruder conditions continue to hide
behind the present facade of prosperity.

Dublin Bars

were famed in their time
for their lunches of Guinness,
bread and butter and oysters.
For the poor it was a treat,
the best of foods,
served in the best of places
there was to be had.
Such times are long past,
How has such food
become the luxury
it seems to be today?

The Comforts Of Kafka

Franz Kafka, the story goes, encountered a little girl in the park
where he went walking daily. She was crying.
She had lost her doll and was desolate. Kafka offered to help her
look for the doll and arranged to meet her the next day at the same spot.
Unable to find the doll he composed a letter from the doll and read it to her
when they met. "Please do not mourn me, I have gone on a trip to see the world.
I will write you of my adventures." This was the beginning of many letters.
When he and the little girl met he read her from these carefully composed letters
the imagined adventures of the beloved doll. The little girl was comforted.

When the meetings came to an end Kafka presented her with a doll.
She obviously looked different from the original doll.
An attached letter explained: “my travels have changed me… “

Many years later, the now grown girl found a letter stuffed into an unnoticed crevice
in the cherished replacement doll. In summary it said: “every thing that you love,
you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.” by Sierra, here.

A Difficult Truth To Share