Paradox Drive

Many men in same sex relationships
let each other stray for short distances.

They know that their eyes will wander
and find relief when they are accepted where the eyes go.
The heart and mind, and gonads, will surely follow,
but will look back and return
to where they started from
when they have had their fill.

But in matters of the errant heart
gay men are as prone as heterosexuals
to deceive themselves,
the better to deceive others,
that they can let each other wander
'as long as they are honest with each other'.

Gay men may seem 'more forgiving'
of each other than their hetero counterparts,
who for engaging with the nature of the opposite sex
misunderstand others as much as themselves.
.   
But lies are lies,
and when well told they are very popular.
Gay couples  are as prone to pride
as everyone else under the sun.

Nobody can be truly prepared
for the paradox of the lies that hide
inside when the license to roam
presents them with unforeseen choices.  

Bad News

and lies have always travelled fast
-much faster than truth.and positivity
This is true for the present and the past,
before the days of Twitter and electricity.

Unasked For Forgiveness

is often a surprise, and it can be a delight.

It can seem quite nice to be forgiven
-particularly for errors
that we never knew we had made.

But really I would rather that others didn't bother
with recovering the distance from wrong and right
purely on my account. 

Growing Pains

When what satisfies us keeps us immature
then Truth might well be far more healthy for us.

But it will leave us more bitter and distant from each other in the end.

Who's Laughing Now?

In the dim and distant past rulers were absolute.
History made the rulers' subjects
appear to be abject in their submission.

Rulers found light relief from decision making
through the  character of their jesters and fools,
and the many pets they kept as familiars.

Now, in the rich west, 'democracy'
has replaced the ancient autocracies.

Our leaders and representatives
are near enough to us for us to write to them,
and read lots about them in the popular press.
We can join the parties that produce these great leaders.

But there is little to be gained
from being just one small voice
among many in local party meetings.

In truth 99.9 % of us are are now more distant from power
than the clowns pets and jugglers were from the king's ear.
.


      

Putting The 'mental' Into Environmentalism

On my flight, as I prepared to leave,
I took the barely drunk from bottle of water
left behind by a fellow passenger.

I would never buy that sort of thing,
not least because of packaging
uses up three times more water
than I would be drinking.

It was packaged by Coca Cola
under the Northern Irish brand 'Deep River Rock'
as manufactured in Lisburn, Co Down.

The final absurdity-on-top-of-absurdity
was seeing that it had a 'best before' date,
as if such a figure was the best way
to measure the world and all it's resources.  

Picture Set Of The Month

Mohamed Melehi (born 1936) is one of the rarest of people

a modernist Moroccan painter 

who has scaled the heights of the international art world

with his 'wave abstracts' with their clean lines.
Read more about him here