Heavenly Pyjamas

I'd love to think that if Heaven is real
then everyone present there will wear pyjamas.
Perhaps some of us will even have dressing gowns
in which to lounge about the same way we used to,
at home in our former lives. The ease of such clothing
denotes a suitable Heavenly sense of ease about time,
and the well being natural to the space we inhabit
when we don't have to impress other people.

Freedom Of Speech

Why is it that when I hear politicians
bigging themselves up through praise
for the country which they say they run,
when they know they are covering up
how they are puppets on strings of money 
it always brings me out the tourettes in me?

Perhaps that is the effect of democracy....

Not So Long Ago,

and not so far away, good health
was best found through inherited wealth. 
And poverty was just as inherited,
and far more widespread, but despised.
Poverty was hidden in plain sight
and was effective in making life miserable.
Doctors were often far from helpful.
So the rural poor had wise women for births
and self medicated on herbs and tonics
with many a worldly townie turning to alcohol,
for seeing doctors and hospitals as being like Bedlam.
Both were designed to make them ill
by denying them their liberty and Nosocomephobia-
the fear of doctors and hospitals respectively
was the logical corollary of a rough life.

Beyond Value?

One of the oddities of modern life
is how rich families in rich countries
become minor media celebrities
-particularly when they prove
dysfunctional because of their wealth,
which is when said families
portray an agenda of 'We can buy
our way out of trouble and the public
will find it entertaining to pay to watch'.

Buying their way past how they don't listen to each other
by employing multiples of therapists and lawyers
to help make decisions then it does seem
as if emotional well being were an extension
of the mangerialism of Parkinsons Law,
where the more the money that is spent
the less is achieved with it, thus devalueing,
all money and all effort, and bankrupting creativity.

Were such dysfunction dealt with
more cheaply, and with greater warmth,
we might never learn about it, but if we did
I am sure we woud find it healthier
than the avoidance of wealth based solutions.


   

How To Deal With Cold Callers

When they ask who you are,
which they always do to claim your attention,
quietly tell them 'I'd like to to talk to you
but there isn't a phone in the house'.
Then quietly put the phone down.
You will have ended the call calmly,
and faster than it takes them to realise
the illigocality of your answer. 

Politicians

are like swear words
-the less we know about either
the better off we feel we are.

When Verbal Versatility Decieves Us

Due to my limited education
I rarely measure how words travel.
Language often leaves me behind
-though less so than it used to.
For instance, until I checked
I didn't realise how far
the word 'market' has shifted.

It now has six basic meanings
which in a society built on money
-and credit at that-rather than barter
or any other system of trade,
incorporating every choice we make.

It is used to describe

1-a place for the transfer of goods.
2-the trade in goods.
3-the group that is sold goods to.
4-individuals who are sold goods to.

And of money at its most abstract
the word incorporates
5-a stock market-the sale of bonds
and other theoretical economic instruments.
6-economic systems which vary
between command, mixed and 'free',
as in 'unregulated', though this extends
the market for secrecy, hypocricy and vice.

Tellingly it does not describe the sellers,
only the goods sold and people sold to,
this helps create the sense of  invisibility
'the hand of the market' relies upon.

After that there the behemoth called marketing
-the promotion of goods through advertising
or otherwise making known the availability thereof,
which like stock markets and economic systems
dwarfs the individual in this age of mass media,
-defining the individual the same way
that a maze defines a rat when it curious.....

What to do when one word describes too much?
This is something proponents of markets won't discuss
for fear of the risk of the language expanding,
which might well legitamise customers saying 'No'
in such a way that might make marketeers listen.