What Price The Future

of the world when in the USA,
one of many countries that claims to be
most free, greatness = violence backed by
detachment and technology, until unrecognised
nihilism = forethought before doing down
the neighbours in other countries, and at home.  

Winners And Losers

 Many who promote the appearance of order,
would deny that the reality they shape
and want other people to accept
hides their own lack of generosity
amongst the meanness of other people,
hiding their meanness from themselves.

I am happy to anonymise my generosity
by hiding it among the kindness of others
-let the tasks required still be completed
whilst the mean and demanding invent slurs
of my 'being unemployable' and 'not worth knowing'
for how they make hierarchy performative
and make themselves as the measure of others.

As long as there is space and means on the lower rungs
to do the good that made life work in ages past
I will not see what I do as 'beneath me'.     

Bust And Boom

I have lived with boom and bust
as if they were 'a must', for decades
until nothing about them surprised me
beyond that I could never see further
than the latest explosion and collapse
whether the leaders were my elders
and betters were praised for just that
-older where older meant better
at inspiring unimaginative deference
towards the failing leadership of the past.

When I reach the age where I am deferred to
I hope I know to not act it, but help others
see through wisdom requires the resilience
to see past appearances-including my own. 

Taking The 'Mentor' Out of 'Tormentor'

When the skeletons in a gay mans life
are the family experiences he grew up with
and they will neither keep quiet, but will disrupt
his every attempt it trying to grow beyond them
then he is perfectly right to remonstrate with them.  

But defeating them when they have the edge
and can ruin a social life in way they torment
can't predict is a tricky business, no treat.

Still the skeletons can be beaten
and their deeds undone, and not repeated.

There victory and life can taste sweet
for the victor and his companions 
where the secretive and abominable life
the family forced the gay man to live is no more.

He did not need the evil spirits
half as much as they needed him to live off.

The Consumer Index We Don't Expect

In Spain this year the item
that shoplifters like to lift most
and be unseen getting away with it
happens to be olive oil,
which is going up in price. 

One of the better measures
of any consumer society
is the quality index of products
that inspire consumers to theft. 

A Sign Of A Better Future

Men would not date women thirty years
younger than them and young women
would have the confidence to say
to these men when the men propositioned them
'Go and find woman your own age
with equal experience and greater maturity.'.

In a more gender balanced society we would not
have to know who was transgender among us,
and who was in the midst of changing their gender,
and where we knew we would care rather than
use the knowledge to excuse outrage and anger
to flood the social media with, to trigger point.

In a more gender balanced society fewer companies
would demand to know the contents of an applicants
birth certificate before deciding how to view them.

In a more gender balanced society the fact of 'being gay',
'being lesbian' or being any particular identity 
other than pair-bonded heterosexual whom the law
was designed to approve of-one of each gender-
would not be an issue and a same sex bond
can be as much for life as any other kind of attachment.

Such a society seems a long way off,
but where you see glimpses of it
add them to all the other signs 
you share of hope for a better future.     

Picture Set Of The Month - June 2025 - Andy Warhol's Oxidisation Paintings

In 1977, Andy Warhol turned a new page
in randomising his artistic practice.
He started using bodily fluids in his art.
Asking his assistants to urinate and ejaculate
on primed or copper-coated canvases,
he created a series of abstract works known as the Oxidation, Piss and Cum paintings.
Explore further the story of these artworks,
with a particular focus on the Oxidation paintings
here.