Right-wing extremists

in the USA
claim that federal Health Care
and Welfare Benefits violate not only
the tenth amendment
but also the Tenth Commandment.

Meanwhile the French government
has turned to Ethnic Cleansing,

and Israel spends American aid
on Sisyphean
Cyclopean fencing.

'The Sanctity'

Human life is so precious
that millions are not just allowed
but forced to die of hunger
and disease.

Absence

can be complete,
but nothingness,
like happiness,
cannot.

When sex is a hit-and-run

accident,
love is a distant
ambulance.

Religious Education

(to a Lonnie Donegan tune)

O, Jesus was a mummy
he wore a mummy-cloth.
He rose up from a sepulchre
and flew round like a moth.

Best Before :

perhaps we were all
'best before'
we were born...

and are least noxious
after we die.

We would rather use

weapons
than our minds.

Economics

Continual growth:
the goal of every
cancer.

The most liberating handicap :

to be unable to want.

Real guns

have butt-hair.
Real men
don't shave.
Reality is
landscape.
People are
wallpaper.

Religious Conversion

is illiberation.
But, thinking magically,
to convert piss into water
would be far more useful
than water into wine.

On the Pope's State Visit to Britain

Along the rutted paths of hope
they creep like mine-detectors...
Millions would suck cock
for a handful of beans
a bowlful of rice.

Four Forbiddens beginning with S :

Suicide
Solitariness
Silence
Smegma

Towers of Silence

have all but disappeared.
Noise now marches on the world
from terrible towers
of so-called song.

Righteousness

more often than not
is the conformism
of the spineless.

Older Englishmen abroad :

rigid faces,
ridiculous hats.

Insurance :

the first truly universal
religion.

Moral Authority

a rare commodity
a contradiction in terms.

On the ninth anniversary

of the pinpricking of America:

the depths of despair
have risen to new heights.

In the Past

When there were
showy flagellations
prayers were called
ejaculations.

Education

The more information there is
the more babblingly dumb
we become.

First

we complicate life
needlessly

then try to
simplify it childishly

(and/or vice versa)

A 'terrorist'

operates crudely
against the interest
of a nation-state.

A transcendental anarchist
tries simply, vainly
to subvert the interests
of all nation-states
and the forces which
finance them.

We are born subject.

Our subjection to the nation-state
is proved by Birth Certificate.
We die as subjects
and are certified as dead.

Between birth and death,
our first and our last breath,
the State is in possession,
is lord, of our identity
over which we have only
minimal control.

Now pets have passports.

To hate the State has no effect on it
but some - or terrible - effect on you.
The Greek dramaturges knew
that the State
is Fate.

Stoolball

The ancestor of baseball
and cricket, invented by women
500 years ago, was played with
a milking-stool and a turnip,
beetroot, or rutabaga.

Arabesques

swirl and replicate
without the slightest sense
of purpose,

but each tile-pattern
or carpet is unique

and for reflective minds
a mandala.

No breeder

is harmless.

The reason why

there are no jokes
(not even irony)
in any Scripture
is that we are too
indoctrinated
to take jokes seriously
or to laugh at religions.

Nuclear Power

More destructive
even than possessions
is possessiveness.

The story of mankind

is the story of enslavements.
And now we are enslaved
by an idea of the New Enslavers:
the Employment Ethic.

The Command of Hierarchical Employment
is the latest, most refined
form of slavery.

Comfort

is not happiness
nor even contentment.

Nor does it lead to happiness
or contentment.

Comfort is the subtlest
and most seductive
kind of enslavement.