Highly Driven ?

When I was growing up
men coyly said, in ways
they would not expand upon,
'Oh, I have a high sex drive',
to excuse their infidelities,
which they hinted at,
but then refused to list;
they were married. 

It was comments like that
which made marriage
difficult to understand.

What was the point of an institution 
which did not meet their needs?
I  knew what institutions were
after my family sent me to one.

I understand it now,
the same men who hinted
at being highly sexually driven
also furtively suggested
that they were 'well endowed';
They had a strong drive
but it was only to tell lies
and best other people.

Men liked boasting with each other
about who they believed they ruled over,
though their rule was often empty minded.  

The Want of Queerness

To be queer is to be an honest outsider
in a world where from the outside
of other people's worlds
what you see is how dishonest people are
-from their insides out.

Would than I had been queerer
when I was younger,
I would have been honester
about who I was
and who other people were. 

Shock News

A new universe is nigh
through the black hole
the other side of the plug....

 

A Life Through Words

A living writer is a read writer
-even when the writer is dead
their words being read
will make them come alive.

Being remembered via language
is the eternity they least expected, 
when they expected not to survive. 

Undone By The Media Once Again

I have written before  about 'sore winner syndrome'
where a right wing populist not only wins an election,
and wins it by apparently fair seeming means,
but then complains about all the parties and forces
who stood against him, as if they had no right to be.

Now the world is faced with a country
that not only slaughters the citizens
of it's neighbour and brother in history,
with a venom worse than that
with which Cain slew Abel,
using weaponry more lethal
than Cain could conceive.

And not only does the country deny every action
that it has taken with said weaponry
(perhaps understandable given the obscenity
of the imbalance of military might, and motive,
not mention with all that, they still have not won)
but it now blames the invaded country
for 'invading itself' and for 'being Nazi's'
when a totalitarian government, and war,
is what the smaller country is now resisting.

And the bully country denies it outright.
To quote a once a once unpopular song
life in Ukraine is 'Hell without the sin',
and there plenty more of it to come...

The Want Of Playfulness

One of my weaknesses
is to combine understatement
with a dry irony when describing
this or that problem, a mix
which more literal minded people easily miss.

It is not as if I seek to to be misunderstood,
more that I seek to see amusement in the world
where it seems to be less present.   

Grey Is The Colour Of Hope (3)

'We did, however, hold a New Year celebration. We managed to keep back a box of toothpowder when we returned our washing things, and used it to outline a full sized Christmas tree on the black metal surround of the unused stove. I did the top and middle part and Natasha, lying on the floor (she was unable to get up at the time) drew the trunk. Actually not one trunk, but two, wearing zek 'come now, come now' boots. We had made a paste out of the toothpowder with a bit of water, so the whole thing came out really well. It was such a happy little tree. And lying on the floor - Natasha on her sixth day of hunger strike, I on my eleventh - we rejoiced when when we looked at it, like a couple of children.'.

An excerpt from 'Grey is The Colour Of Hope', a KGB prison memoir written by Irina Ratushinskaya which was first published in 1988.