Give It Up

I don't know how completely anyone can abandon
the hope of 'being loved' and still like themselves.
It is like abandoning vanity. However close to zero vanity
anyone might get there is always further they have to go.
And who knows what their freedom is for if it is not
to make their vanity seem useful, or for them to be loved?

This freedom from love is surely more about
making absurd announcements with confidence.     

 

A Poem By Christy Brown (1)

Come Softly To My Wake

Come softy to my wake
on pavlova feet
at the greying end of the day;
into the smoke and heat
enter quietly smiling, quietly unknown
among the garrulous guests
gathered in porter nests
to reminisce and moan;
come not with ornate grief
to desecrate my sleep
but a calm togetherness of hands
quiet as windless sands
and if you must weep
be it for the old quick lust
now turned to dust
only you could shake from it's lair.

Come softly to my wake
and drink and break
the rugged crust
of friendly bread
and weep not for me dead
but lying stupidly there
upon the womanless bead
with a sexless stare
and no thought in my head. 

Burnt Out ? We Will Be....

Everyone who live in comfort
and reads about the discomfort
going on in the world, materially, spiritually,
from the comfort of their chaise long
will know what news burn out is.

It is what happens when the media
reports on the needier and the report
goes on, well beyond our attention span.

The story does not change, the agenda
remains the same with a slight tweak,
and we think 'How much more of this repetition
can we/I take?' rather ask about the repeat suffering
that those who are suffering are experiencing.

When the news repeats itself until we tire of it,
and the world, as reported, seems to be a sick place
then being tired of the world being sick and tired
is the only place left to go, unless we steel ourselves
to investigate the serious darkness that shades us all.   

The Missing Statues To Those Waiting To Be Honoured

The first armistice was declared for the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day of the eleventh month
one hundred and six years ago, in 1918.

That armistice was broken, dishonoured, and ignored
until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles 28th June 1919, 
five years to the day after the shot that started the war,
and assassinated Arch Duke Ferdinand, was fired.

The Allied signatories of the treaty
were France, Japan, Italy, Russia,
the UK and Northern Ireland, and the USA;
they all signed the document together.

The Central Powers/Central Empires, on the other side,
each signed individually. They were The German Empire,
Bulgaria-which had a Tsar until 1946, The Ottoman,
and lastly the Austro-Hungarian, empires.

The statues that mark the end of the war
that I want to see, but I know I won't find them,
are dedicated to all the unknown women
in the Allied countries who worked in the jobs
that the men left behind when they became soldiers. 

Those jobs had to be done, and when done by women
were done for much reduced pay. Those Women
'were not householders' and could not vote,
could not be recognised as citizens of their country.

Where are the statues to the women who nursed the men,
wounded on the battlefields, and did so much more besides? 
The statues to those women who held up half the skies
where the men flew to bomb the enemy underneath?
All whilst as women, hoping for more but  expecting less
sought to earned their part in the peacetime society
they believed would follow from their efforts. 

Reversing Into The Future Will Mean Crashes

What modern voters know, 
and modern governments fear
their voters understand better than they do,
is that for every attempted renewal of governance
through large scale IT projects, the instructions
for 'going forwards' may not only be expensive
but in their implementation may do the opposite
of what their promoters said they wanted to do.

Mistaking 'forward' for 'reverse' is easy to do
with society-wide social change projects.

I only have to think of Margaret Thatcher
who widened The Road to Serfdom, so more folk
could be made to be the serfs to democracy she wanted
them to be, for me to believe that many a leaders aims
become their (and other people's) undoing, when implemented.

But with technology in the drivers seat
there always has to a new back seat driver/
new leader and party to give them directions
for where to not go, only for us to end up there....

Who Could Ask For More?

I don't know whether I am more,
or less, than the sum of my appetites,
or what the total of what I am might be,
as compared with others.

The ancient Egyptians invented the idea
of 'the soul' which the person refined
through their life and behaviour,
so that if it weighed less than a feather
the soul could enter Heaven.

I an unsure of how far to follow
that belief, which in it best explanation
might have many contradictions indeed.

As long people don't look that deep
and accept me as I appear to be,
that is all I ask..... 

Up For It, But Where To Go?

 "Enthusiasm for life is like a hanged man's erection" - Albert Caraco*

*Albert Caraco (1919 –  1971) was a French-Uruguayan philosopher, writer, essayist and poet. 
He is known for two major works, Post Mortem (1968) and Breviary of Chaos (1982).