Hell's Anthem

'Money, money, money!'

When you look

for disappointment
you are rarely
disappointed...

The Romans

(it is said) were
mainly vegetarian.

(It will take some time
for the implications
to sink in.)

Politicians

are false people
who make a career
out of parading
their sincerity.

The falsest people

are those who don't even know
they are false

while the falseness seeps out
and seeps out...

(I have always connected falseness
with clean fingernails.)

Money makes us all mean

But it's better for our integrity
to be mean to ourselves
than to others.

Let us praise al-Qaïda

for putting their hatred
and anger out in the open -
where as we
corrupt Westerners
make the crass error
of hiding real feelings
in sound-bites. We spew
out insanities such as
War against Drugs, and
The Sanctity of Human Life, and
War against Terror.

Copernicus, Darwin, Freud

The earth is not the centre of the universe.
Mankind is not the summit of evolution.
The ego is a petty and
deranged dictator.

Time

is an invention to persuade us
that things happen consecutively
and not all at once in a muddle.

When you think people are laughing,

often they are weeping.
When you think people are weeping,
the worst of them are laughing.

Weeping is better than words.

The rich

won't make you richer
but will rob you of your poverty.

Love is also

a kind of greed

But if you love yourself
you will be too loving
to bother others for love
or sex

Greed

is the opposite of curiosity.
Life is such a deadening experience!

The further back you look

the farther forward you can see.

The eternal ocean

has offered you everything you know -
and you fear death!

The tourist requires.

The visitor
like the pilgrim
is grateful.

An open mind

- an open prison.

(If you open it too much
your brain might fall out!)

The Real World

is where few people live.
They call it wilderness
and blasphemy.

The Giant Sloth

What's so terrible
about dying out ?

To dogs we are like gods.

God is a vivisectionist
and we are his
would-be resurrectionists.

Everyone denies

that they wish
they had never been born.

But we all
compulsively tell lies.

Malheur

The only afflicted species
afflicts almost every other.

The most afflicted members
kindly kill themselves.

Overcoming consciousness

Against Nietzsche's
injunction to become
what you are
must be set Rumi's
observation that
your life is not your own.

The unknown

is much less frightening
than the known.

Civilisation

is unnatural selection,
and evil
is the autistic
human will.

That means and methods

may not be justified
by ends and goals
is hardly controversial.

Much more radical
and more important
is the understanding
that ends might be justified
only by the means employed.

Elites

aren't what they used to be.
The best things in life
are often broken.
Or never happened.

Work Ethic

People who lack it
should get a
Disability Allowance.
But the strivers and achievers
wouldn't like that.
The Work Ethic is not
an ethic at all - but a means to an end:
riches, power, glory,
control of the planet until
it turns to poison and desert
beneath our hide-shod feet
before our unseeing eyes.

Metaxu

Two solitary prisoners
separated by a wall
tap pointless messages.

Life is not a dream :

in dreams
we don't tell lies.