The problem with 'science'

is that it is entirely logical
but far from entirely rational,

because conflict, not peace,
is the foundation of
civilisation.

They label you

élitist
if you dare to criticise
the cretinisation of
whole populations
brainwashed by mass-
education, and of course
the press, and especially TV
- not to forget the universities
of age-old stupidities.
Elitist I am proud to be.

Poetry Festival

Touring
young men
soon become
boring
old farts.

Death and healing

are not opposites.

When you're born without

an armoured heart
you turn to petty crime.

Good religion

doesn't grow.

My sensational new internet business venture

Black condoms embossed
Blow up the Vatican.

There are only two Human Problems :

the first is overpopulation;
the second is refusal to confront it.

With all the words in the world

and time beyond life
we are incapable
of self-description.

It struck me yesterday

that hypocrisy is not just
a terrible condition

but a deadly weapon.

If you think you live in reality,

just wait until you die...

Cotoneaster

berries fall onto the frost:
hearbeat of winter.

Solipsism

My own anger made wonder-
ful is what I hear in thunder.

Winding Forward

I'm losing me
I don't care
I'm losing care

At last: to sever!

Only the stupid
live forever

Faith, hope and fondness -

these three
tend not to fall away:
the first is stupid, even cowardly;
the second a little less stupid;
but the third is real.

Philip Larkin :

one of the greatest
letter-writers
since Kafka
had pretty astute
opinions about his almost-terse
but undemanding verse.

He was too self-knowing
to call it art.

He preferred MacNeice to Yeats,
so had handicapped himself
right from the start.

Life

is an umbilicus
connecting me
to nothingness.

I'm going to fix

my dinner.
But it wasn't broken.
It didn't even exist.
Maybe I'll drop dead before it is fixed.
It will then belong to the
Kingdom of the Unfixed Nothingnesses.

Don't we all ?

Truth

The bedrock of social cohesion
is nothing but a quagmire.

To those who whinge

about taxes, pensions
school fees, and the
Cost of Living
I suggest
you get a life

Go out and beg

Enantiodromia

Happiness, faithfulness, love :
three concepts
which contribute importantly
to their opposites.

Just deserts

If Gaia was so misguided
as to evolve us,
then, I have to say,
reluctantly and sadly,
she pretty well deserves
what we're doing to her.

with no apologies to Ian McMillan

Today, for the first time
I heard someone described as
a Stand-up Poet.
It made me think
of the urinals in Florence's
magnificent railway station
and urgent men
in commodious cubicles
without locks
and with flamboyant
erect and generally
boring cocks.

You couldn't make it up

a True Nonsense Poem about hunches and guts
found on the BBC News Website.


An ambitious project to assemble poets from all of the Olympic nations in 2012
has been launched in London.

Simon Armitage, the poet behind the idea, said: "My hunch is this will be
the biggest poetry event ever - a truly global coming together of poets."

The unique congregation, called Poetry Parnassus,
would take place at the Southbank Centre for a week during the 2012 Olympics.

It is hoped more than 200 poets - from all continents - will take part.

"It's insanely ambitious," said Armitage, the Southbank Centre's artist in residence.
"There are political issues, geographical issues, linguistic issues all to be overcome."

He said that for Tuesday night's launch, part of the Poetry International 2010 festival,
poets from almost every continent had been invited to perform.

“We couldn't get a poet from Antarctica.
My gut feeling is that there are poets absolutely everywhere.”

In Memoriam P.A.L.

Sex
- for men at least -
is Doing the Business.

O for a life
without business!

Reality and legend

As belief in unicorns waned,
Denmark, which had enriched
herself by selling, at still-unmatched
prices, Greenlandic narwhal-horn
(of which the royal throne is fashioned),
became ever less significant
as an European nation.

Dogs are so much cleverer than we

They have no myths
no legends or history
to stupefy them

and correctly consider
cause and effect to be
merely circumstantial.

Insanity:

infinity.

Dogs control their feelings

far better than do humans.
We'd rather control dogs
and each other,
the weather
and the world.

I have learned far more

by reconsidering
what I don't like,
than by wanting or getting
what I like.

(But of course, I don't live
on a giant rubbish-tip
in Nigeria.)