In The Pirsuit Of Disbelief

Cynicism will outrun sarcasm every time.
With sarcasm the speaker cares too much
to be calm. Their passion betrays them.
Perhaps it is better to be open in passion
than closed by anything else,
particularly when being closed
becomes retrospective unawareness
of when we closed our selves down. 

Sociability

If dogs reinvented facebook

1-pictures of cute kittens
would be banned,
as if they were cheap porn.

2-a major feature on it
would be a 'lick' button
with a moving tongue.

3-another feature
would be a pee post
with a moving graphic
of a leg being raised
against it to indicate 'like'....

Dogs And Art

'When, in 1978, Henry Moore exhibited two dozen major sculptures on the lawns of Kensington Gardens (an ugly visual assault of insufferable arrogance), accompanying every one of them was a notice forbidding the touch of human hand, but curators had forgotten the interest that dogs would inevitably show in them, taking them to be objects on which they must deposit urine. My bitches were not alone in this; every passing dog lifted his leg to add to the palimpsest of urinary calling cards, and every bitch hitched her buttocks as high as she could to leave her dribbling trace. I have often wondered ever since if, when returned to the pastures of Much Hadham Henry noticed a change in the patination here and there: convinced that the first emptying of the bladder in the morning, richer in nutrients than the later emptyings, produced the very best of natural patinas Matisse (another occasional maker of bronzes) kept his fresh casts in his garden, sometimes for years, so that he could pee on them.'-Brian Sewell from the book 'Sleeping with Dogs'.   

Horizontal Spirituality

Worry is the mind approaching, but resisting, rest.

Absence Close To Home

Woody Allen was not thinking of dementia
when he quipped 'I am not afraid of death,
I just don't want to be there when it happens'.

But it would quite apt if he was.

Time Bends

So don't be making plans that rely on time
(or life) being something you think you control.

Hymns To Mammon

I was reared on apocryphal stories
of 1930s health care and welfare.
If those tales were merely half true
they were both appalling and unprovable.
The evidence was in the shortened lives
of the once living, now long dead. 

One story I took at face value
was to do with how free medicine
was issued by Charitable Hospital Boards.
These boards always had clergy on them.
The medicine was given if/when the patient
sang a hymn well enough for those listening.

What happened if the clergy were deaf?
if the patients, who were ill, sang poorly?
Protested from a position of weakness?
Or went mute from despair? I was never told.
I assume they did not get the medication. 

If such a board were to exist nowadays
it would highly secular, but still patients
would have to sing for their meds,
never knowing how loud their hymns
to Mammon were meant to be
until they shared the board's insanity.