Confidence

is less ‘they will like me’
and much more ‘I’ll be fine
whether they like me, or not'.

The Beach Boys

were musicians I long admired,
but with all their lawsuits played out,
only one Wilson brother left,
the least musical band member
keeping the name for his revival act,
and all their incomplete musical projects
the property of  fans turned bootleggers
they are less an endless harmony
more a suspended harmonic
that can never bear fruit again.

Memory, Presence And Absence

When people who were newly adult in the 1960s
said 'If you can remember it then you weren't there'
it was a sly one-upmanship towards their elders.

What those unctuous youths denied
is how memory varies for more reasons
than the peer/peer use of recreational drugs
to throw off unwanted parental influence.
We deny how devious the addictive nature is.

When those youths strutted forgetfulness
what they denied is that every culture
and generation shifts from the previous
in what to keep in the hope
of some 'cleansing' fresh start
that will last into the future.

We are rarely honest about our pasts, 
and progress moves slower than we think.  

The Liquidity Of Life

-when wine is young it lacks character
which makes it easy to sell en masse
on supermarket shelves. Like youth
it is oversold and rather raw on the palate.
  
As wine matures it gains character,
which makes it harder to sell.
This is why it gets auctioned off,
to be sold cheap in seconds shops
where the curious buy it in quantity
and enjoy the unpredictability of choice.
Like being elderly it is surplus
to major suppliers and manufacturers.   

Variable Creativities

Artists will have their 'fallow periods',
times when they can make nothing
because their mind stills their hands
-particularly when they are in the presence
of the materials with which to make things.

But still their minds seek the beauty
in the life going on around them
which is replete in its own creativity.

Hidden Depths

Hurting others is as easy
as throwing a stone
in the nearest sea.
When people do it,
they never know
how deep it will go.

Misbeggotten (2)

I remember well the double standard
where ownership was exclusively male
and was built on men being assumed
to have more experience than women,
where experience meant the right
to grab initiative by the groin,
and squeeze it enough to make it 'pop',
where opportunity thrust itself at men, unbidden.
.
Whereas for the young women
the preparation was for marriage,
which was to be their whole life,
consisted of a naivety,
cultivated by family-
such that they were meant
to misunderstand what to expect
when required to with-stand
stress, and becoming property.