Beyond Inauthenticity

There is still a life to be found
from having nothing to be true to.

But the worth of such a life depends
on cheapness being the catch all
and where self deception
is the starting point for mass deception.

In such a state all truth lies
in The Voice Of The Leader,
where he never says what he means....

Tables And Fences

Because the wind is less likely to blow your table over
and fences will feed our ignorance of those we ignore.  

The Unacceptability Of Modesty

If we going to tell lies then it is more self effacing
to tell them to help save other people's faces
more than our own and to tell as few lies
as we need to, to make life bearable for all.

But we all know how these things pan out
the smaller the lie, the less likely it is
that anyone believes it; even with lies
we just can't accept the idea of modesty.

What 'empowers' us is other people's shame.  

The Loneliness Of A Tidy Life

Only Child

A lady from a woman's magazine wrote and asked me what it felt like being an only child. Well nothing. Just a number. But then I started having a little think. Maybe the only child is wrongly named - maybe it is the Only Parent. Most of the only children I knew (and there were a lot of us about in the suburbs of the thirties) made no claim to special status - but one or two did, and looking back I realise that they belonged to parents who did not look like parents. 

  When you bent down and pushed open the letter boxes of these Only Parents their houses smelt barren, like the houses of spinsters - something to do with the lack of physical movement, as though dust never got stirred up into the general atmosphere as it does when a child is in the house, but lay heavily on the carpets generating a separate presence. Whilst ordinary children were robbing orchards, Only Parents took their offspring for Walks. When you saw them, you felt they had just met. I wonder if there aren't people who have children who never  - in some deep or desperate way - relinquish a virgin status?

Quoted without permission from BBC broadcaster and author, Robert Robinson (1927-2011), from his book of short pieces of journalism 'The Dog Chairman'.  

There But For Disgrace Go I....

In my Auschwitz head
are five 'nice' Nazis
four murderous Jews
three angry anarchists
two sad gay men
a Jehovah's Witness
and six very sexy
but unreliable gypsies.

Changing Seasons

China has named this year
'the Year of the Rat'
but not just there, but everywhere,
from now on every year
is going to be the year of the virus.

Thought For Holocaust Memorial Week

A German journalist
at the Frankfurt book fair
asked Art Spiegelman
on the publication 'Maus'
'Isn't it in bad taste to make
a comic book of Auschwitz?'
'No' Spiegelman replied,
'Auschwitz was in bad taste'.