People who mourn the loss

of wildlife and wilderness
should stop mowing their lawns.

In Spain, even traffic-cops are unbalanced bullies.

< click the Fasces to read the story






The Falangist spirit lives on!

Fascism is ugliest at its lowest level.
A pope can be bought with style and elegance
- but the bullying of nobodies
is highly unæsthetic.

Today the living human population of the world has reached seven billlion.

There is little that is beautiful
in human history -
so why do we think
that there is beauty
in mankind ?

MaxiMini

In a culture which provides the maximum
for living self-contained and self-fullfilled
there is a frightening amount of loneliness,
a minimum of savoir-vivre.

True luxury

comes from within.

Only fifty years

after my first and only girlfriend
dumped me, have I allowed myself
to realise that she was perhaps
less than wonderful.

A sensible Jungian

explanation of the interest
in zombies amongst 'the young'
is the inexpressible awareness
that most of us are the living dead.

Intelligence

is as unscientific
a word, and in any case
as unmeasurable
as happiness
- or love
- or God.

The reason why

the wise are not
well thought of

is that thinking
is thought by many
to be a mental illness.

The American Way of Life

Eighteen Bengal tigers
(an extremely threatened species)
who were let out by a loony
who owned a "wild-life" park
were shot in Ohio yesterday
because Americans like to kill
first and answer questions later.

America also has twice the rate of child abuse
(physical, sexual and emotional) of the runner-up
country, and of all the states it is no surprise
to learn that annexed Texas is the worst.

Americans think it's funky
to maim and kill - and so
I needn't mention all the other escaped animals
from emaciated lions to a little lonely monkey.


(PS The loony shot himself -
a not-uncommon American Way of Dying.)

Even a rainbow

appears as a rich man's smirk
to the starving.

Conflating Emily Dickinson

"Knock with tremor—
These are Cæsars—
Should they be at Home
Flee as if you trod unthinking
On the Foot of Doom—"
O flee the Gaudy Bright—
"A Toad can die of Light..."

'Knowledge is irreversible,'

نوال السعداوى‎


said Nawal al-Saadawi
on the BBC this morning.

(If only!)

What thoughtless optimism!
What ignorance of history!

Each of us

enters the world
as a key enters a lock
whether it fits or not.

Abstract Nouns

Whatever 'mental health' may be
it's certain that there's much insanity
uniquely in our species.
And whether 'society' exists or not,
there's no such thing as 'humanity'.

If

there is such a thing as
'Simple Happiness',

beyond the oppression of aspiration
and the bleakness of prosperity

it is the absence of misery
hiding in a little crack
in the wall of false reality.

The safest medical procedure

is masturbation.
Though a small percentage of men
have not survived it,
there are no recorded cases
of female fatalities.

Capitalism ensures

that, as a species,
we live on credit
that can never be repaid.
Sacred cows
inevitably butchered,
holy rivers
horribly polluted:

humans soon become extinct
through Total Trade.

No, John, no!

The truth does not set us free.
It diminishes our inflated egos -
that we keep pumping up with every breath
- and in any case we're terrified
of the only freedom: not negative existence
but the positive release of death.

How ironic

that Christianity
- which claims to conquer death -
destroyed the idea of
'a good death'.
Logically, all Christians' death
should be liberatingly good.

Now we die in hospitals
drugged chunks of rotting wood.

Possession of a dangerous weapon

Language was our first possession.
In language are both our having and our being.
Language remains our most powerful
weapon against the world - and ourselves.

Dogs also pray to Dog

click for more

It is good
to make people
feel bad
because we humans all
are bad -
though not all-bad.


(with more thanks to my friend Jindra)

The Subtle Art of Translation

'Die Dichtung, meine Damen und Herren :
diese Unendlichsprechung von lauter
Sterblichkeit und Umsonst !' - Paul Celan

Poetry, ladies and gentlemen:

- what an externalization of nothing but mortality, and in vain. (Waldrop)

- this endless speaking of nothing but mortality and gratuitousness. (Lyon)

- this infinity-speaking full of mortality and to no purpose! (Joris)

- this speaking endlessly of mere mortality and uselessness! (Felstiner)

- an expression of infinitude, an expression of vain death and of mere Nothing. (Blanchot)

- just endless and vain twittering about mortality. (Weir)


Don't poets just love wittering on about
the futility of of poetry ?
It doesn't even make us feel less futile.


(with thanks to Almina Kaselis)

Prostitutes,

like actors,
are paid half
for performing,
and half
for absenting themselves
to safety
soon after
the repeatable finale.

The brain :

a tiresome organ
that keeps me awake.

We know

only our own
worst nightmares
- if even them -
not those of others.

My brain twists into knots
coping with other people's
ordinary thoughts.

I couldn't resist 'borrowing' this from my friend Jindřich.

click picture to enlarge

Majorities

are now Vast or Overwhelming.
The Vast Majority of folk
would not believe that a distinguished
uro-genital surgeon
would collect his male patients' anal and scrotal hair
as a necessary contribution
to the construction of his unexhibited artworks.

The Overwhelming Majority of people think
that we're the acme of evolution.

The Snake

in the Garden of Ease
was an Aspiration.
If humans ever had
such unlikely things as souls,
they mutated into locks and keys.

In spite of the Gospels

The True and Only Son
of Christianity is
Capitalism,
which is Monopolism
pretending to
'Democracy'
(whatever that might be).

The 'work ethic'

is not a morality,
but a prescription for
totalitarian wage-slavery.