Halloween Special

For the days when life seems at its most grey.....  from here.

2 x 2 = ?

Does every couple lead a double life
-one with and one without each other?
Does each have a life apart,
of thoughts unshared and hopes unmet,
which get filed under 'fantasies'
and then masked off
for them being seen by others as 'an item'?

The partner who dies first
at least allows the other
room to live the dreams denied
denied reality in the masking.  

Ennui Is Us

I understand work now;
the more pointless the task
the more rewarding the hierarchy
that has to be built around it will be.
And the nearer you are to the top
the greater the reward detachment gives,
as ennui holds us all, together.

Wither The Poet?

On the eve the first publication of 'Leaves of Grass',
in 1855 Walt Whitman wrote 'The proof of a poet
is that his country absorbs him as affectionately
as he has absorbed it.'. That absorption
was surely meant to be whole, complete, both ways.

I doubt he was thinking of the fifteen nation states
who employ poet laureates today,
including North Korea which has six
-all busily essaying the life of Kim Jong un
with a breathless patriotic fervor which competes
with the media hyperbole of his country's past.

Poetry is so compressed a form
that whatever is written today
will always seem far too rushed,
too keen to impress, for it's own good.
So whatever is published now,
will be like the nation it is meant to reflect.

Any wisdom in it will be future conditional.

Habit Is Not Commitment

On Sundays male believers
sit in pews with their families,
booted, suited and tied to the nines.
Their wives stop the children fidgeting
by giving them sweets every so often.
The wives are competitively dressed up,
in formal pastel colours, like witnesses
at the wedding of a distant relative
rather than alive as part of the Bride Of Heaven
-who according to professed belief,
lives by looking for the groom
in the lives of everyone around them.

If ever they reach their destination
their Sunday itself will be consumed
in the never ending present,
and their once-best clothing
will seem like a faded joke
where they forget how their lives
once fed into the punch-line. 

Only Ever Half In Love

How disappointing,
to go to bed each night
hoping for a natural death
from a surfeit of dreams of ease.

Only to wake up the next morning....  

Oppression Will Expand When Disguised as Choice

The richer the society
the more it will divide.
The rules will expand
and vary to enrich the rich
at the expense of the poor
-who when faced with rules
which imply a choice
which they know is false
and are actually designed
to close down their options
then they learn to work around
how they have no chance of winning.

For not knowing what to trust
to avoid being scammed
the poor will lose the relatively little
that they have-to arrogance and greed,
well disguised as 'intelligence'.