The Lethal Life

Shot, burned, stabbed,
bludgeoned, gassed
drowned, crushed
and buried alive,
all these were ways that
Jews, Roma, Anarchists,
prostitutes, warm brothers*
and Communists amongst others
were those who died at the hands
of the Nazis in the many concentration camps
that they built in Germany and across Eastern Europe.

Nothing said and done now can return those folk
so they can lead the lives they once expected to have,
but what remembering the way they all died
does achieve is to remind those living now
of how lethal the human indifference to suffering is.

The Soviet Union was one of the Allies,
rather than among the axis powers.
Was this why the West said so little
about the forced labour/death camps
that the Soviet Union kept open,
1945-60, years after the last Nazi camps
were emptied to at best become museums?
Asking now how many lived and died
in the Soviet camps when the Soviets
were usually such good record keepers
is a good question that won't get an answer. 

Go out in peace, and make your peace active.

*the term that German gay men chose
to describe themselves to each other,
it was coined/chosen in Weimar Germany.  

Some Wooden Metaphors

We all grow up off-balance,
each degree to which we don't see
how unbalanced we all are is unique,
awkward proof of our individually.

We are more alike than we recognise
as we disguise the chips on our shoulder.

Shouldering that chip of guilt
at failing other people's hopes of us
is what makes the slope of the shoulder
that each of us has* ours to recognise
well before others point it out to us.

It takes patience to hew the life
we should have had, and still might
out of what we are given,
and improve our balance,
as does removing the motes** of sawdust
that cloud our vision  as unknowingly,
we advise others how to see themselves
in partial and unhelpful ways.

Pardon my dust when it guides other people in error.

*hence the expression 'a chip on the shoulder',
both as a psychological burden that somebody carries
and as a reference to wood stolen by a joiner
when their employer has not seen them steal it,
the slope in the shoulder coming from either
the weight of wood stolen or the guilt for same.

**From the gospel of Mathew Ch 7 v 1-5.  

  

Dangerous Times

If I were paid a royalty
for every time I have heard
variations on the phrase
'In these dangerous times'
from social commentators,
fearless in their use of cliche,
I would be a very rich man now.

That life is dangerous
and mass extinction
is never just a threat
is what makes it life.     

Memo To The Winners Of The Next Election

Because when the poor of the world are drawn by
the stability of wealthy countries, it is a stability
they would like to see in their own country,
and the stability they feel they would see
if their country had been as rich as yours 
has been for the length of time
that it has been wealthy.
    

 

Anti-Social

My gmail account has three headings
for communications directed to me,
Primary, Promotions, and Social.

Part of me feels that Google
missed a vital category; Anti-social.

I am unsure about the messages
that Mr Google would leave there. 
Communications from my family?
More likely over-familiar advertising
for companionship that was temporary
enough to keep me wanting more.

But then any message that met me
at my point of need would not be advertising, 
adverts inflate and promote want,
rather than define and meet needs.  

In The Midst Of Life We Are In Death

I admit it, I attend my village parish church
of an irregular Sunday. It is the only place,
locally at least, that I can hear live music,
and join in, in all the right places.

The ragged harmonies and missed notes
that I add to invoke for me my earliest,
and longest admired musical heroes,
God bless them, The Grateful Dead.

In all they did they had faith in each other.
Through the music they wrote and played,
they trusted in the power of humility
as they sought an audience for life,
for the music they made, and an afterlife
where their songs would still be played
long after they could play them,
too many of the band were dead.

It seems strange to find life in an place
so outwardly moribund, but a hereafter 
of some sort waits for everyone of us.
I can only hope mine is led by Gratitude.   

Greek And Latin

'Holocaust' and 'television' are both words
that are half Greek and half Latin,
Germany was the first country
in the world to have a national
television broadcasting service,
and to have sets sold nationwide.

I am sure that there are huge numbers
of words that are half one root language,
half another, but how many of them
describe processes that have diminished
the attention spans of whole populations,
along with shrinking their sense
of what is personally moral and humane
as much as The Holocaust and television?