Calendars Can Change

As the public reliant on the internet,
in the liberal west are discovering,
that they can't find black history month
and gay history month online, when both
were fixed to appear in February, then anyone
who is interested in none-white minority histories
have to compose their own and celebrate them
in the real world, after Google have erased
the new liberal issues calendar at a stroke.

But Christians have known about their calendar
a/k/a the liturgical year, lapsing out of public awareness
since Victorian times. Likewise the calendars
and the history and liturgy of the Islam and Judaism
are 'private affairs', that the media need not be troubled with.   

With the rise of Godless Capitalism no moment is sacred:
Every day is a sale day where the public are taught to ignore
how much they live in debts that they will never pay off,   
where life has no beginning, no meaning, and no sense of loss when it ends. 

My religion, and my calendar, used to be BBC speech radio,
which I used to listen to by appointment via the schedules
which timed my world. There my 'listen again' feature
was the cassette tapes that I made of programmes
to share with friends, and think I would value in future.

I didn't know then that taping would die as a habit,
supplanted by sharing MP3 files, long before
I wanted to live in comforting and reliable past.    

What Does 'No' Mean?

I was raised in a patriarchy where
not only did the richest, whitest, men
write the laws in their own interest and gain,
but whether men were rich or poor
-by law, they owned everything.

As heads of families, men rarely stopped
when they realised they were being shouty.
But when they stopped to rephrase their demands
at a lower volume that still meant that when
others said 'No' to them, the men behaved as if 
'No' meant 'Yes', and 'Yes' meant 'Yes Master.'.

Shows of obedience hid in plain sight
how much acting out being cowed
both depressed those who made them
whilst making engineered consent 'work'. 

Those who were ordered so
might as well have been automata
in some patriarchal fantasy family life,
for the difference their sense of choice gave them.

As we enter another age where machine-think
feeds authoritarian politics, and billionaires
led fantasy lives where reality meant 'more money',
more praise, more power, and the final detachment
I see the return of ''No' means 'Yes'' thinking
in a world George Orwell once defined
by the right to assert 2+2=4. It now seems
as if the new freedom is the slavery to arithmetic.

Be affirmative, and make 'No' mean 'No' again.    

Swallows Swoop

 and dive for joy around the church;
the nests in its eaves are their shelter.
The transient are fed
the homeless are housed,
the spirit takes form on the wing.

Well beyond all worry about money
a world lightly pays its own way.

New Definitions (1)

'Fake News'-a description for a story
that a speaker, often some right wing nut demagogue,
knows is true in key aspects of the detail,
but the background is partially false as well.

Because the conclusion disfavours them or their party
the speaker does not affirm what is true or false,
and accept the partial disfavour, but rather
shuts down all of the story, and the newspaper
it comes from, by saying that where the story appeared
'Has been sharing totally false news since 1939.'.   

All Hail The Thief

People who admire spectacle have been quoted
as saying that 'organised sport is a good thing',
and more - that 'sport is war by other means',
where wars could be pursued by many means
other than direct military conflict. All of them
less acceptable to large television audiences
who watch team sports broadcast on large screens,
funded by advertising, as if sport on TV
with adverts between content paying for it
is good because they don't kill each other.

As if televised sport is the most peaceful time,
the safest opiate for the maximum audience,
that a wealthy consumerist society can give itself.  

Trump, physically unfit and mean of spirit as he is,
has made his sport rhetoric of poisonous sort,
which he shares in half filled stadia he will not pay for
as if the wealth he shows off with,
live on television, gave him his right to be there.

Wars will continue with President Trump
who will fight them with tariffs, rather than arms.
He will proclaim peace through bluster from stadia
at a distance from his fans, through television screens,
where he doubles the distance he keeps from his followers. 

As jaw jaw jaw morphs into war war war
so the world will be confused as to how to respond.

Spend Now, Live Later - If Ever

-is surely the best summing up 
of the new online shopaholic culture,
with it's 'influencers', infinite credit,
perpetual manufacturing surpluses,
and other flummery where the goods
become sacrifices in a cargo cult without a deity,
where asking any question about the circularity
of the motion of the pointless activity
is to invite being ignored, in favour
of the latest distraction in advertising.

  

Self Portraiture

Need not emphasise our self importance,
for all the world to behold, and recognise. 

Nor need it be declarative, it can be playful instead.
And in its complexity give out different messages.