We Are All Rather Small

and we are very slow home birds, compared
 with the speed and distance light travels the universe.  

In Space Nobody Collects Their Rubbish

Space could be like Heaven,
both are places where there is no gravity.
Because of this the bones of anyone
who stayed there very long would
go soft and leave their muscles weak
which is fine for heavenly inactivity.
Both will cost you your life to get to
and change forever your sense of time.
Nor will you won't know what either is like
before you get there. As destinations
go both are the prerogative of few.
Theoretically* in both our actions have
more consequence for us than for the places
involved. Last and far from least, so far
-fingers crossed-they have both resisted tourism.



*alas this is where the comparison weakens. Heaven
would be a perfect vacuum with no waste, and how we
got in would be a pleasing mystery to us. but there are
an estimated 19,000 objects, most of them no more
than a centimetre wide, orbiting the earth. They are bits
that have fallen from spacecraft and satellites which
were not retrieved as they fell away. They make
space travel more dangerous than it might otherwise be.

What Else Would You Paint On The Side Of A Slaughterhouse For Chickens?

And is it a surprise if that building tries to be anonymous?

With thanks to Banksy and Streetart

In The Beginning There Was Silence

There are now so many gurus and teachers in the world
that we can't do anything or go anywhere
without going against a message that one of them has left,
which contradicts another message from another guru.
Nor can we keep the law-modern law is written to please
governments and lawyers more than their subjects.
Our world is made of utterances such that no clear
and simple salty morality will preserve us.
The lights by which to live all seem rather dim.
The teacher I would follow if I could find them
would prove their truth through their message being silence.
Through the expanding ripples of their silences
we would all be quietened, from the inside out.
The only ambient sound would be the faint echo,
a murmur, of subdued shared laughter which never quite dies out,
which nobody can tell where it comes from.
Like the lilies of the field, which don't labour
because they do not misapprehend,
we would be returned to the full rest
from which we have been for so long departed.

The All Year Round Halloween Good Housekeeping Guide

Even flies have an 'eat by' date,
as anyone who leaves spiders webs
in their house alone for long enough will learn.
Any fly that is left in a web for too long
will most likely not be eaten,
but left, benignly neglected in a sticky bundle.
If you like your spiders, and want them to bless your house
with their weavings, then clean up after them
when they leave their meals too long.
For as much as life is life there is always more....

Dear Morrissey

...and the less it does for your muse, reputation, or peace of mind.

It Is A Truth

universally acknowledged that sticks are to dogs
what mobile phones are to humans;
a most engaging displacement activity
that invokes a sense of trust and engagement.
The more both are smitten by the object,
the less attentive either is to what surrounds them,
as their attention span shrinks around the focus of their delight.