Flags at the U.N.

Rags at a well.

Jesus was a simpleton

Mohamed was a crook.
Jesus got fisted.
Mohamed got twisted.

Religions of the Book!

On nation-states (and civilisations)

When they're not
bam
they're boozle

and usually both.

The erotic

is not necessarily
genital.
And the genital
is certainly
not necessarily
erotic.

Philosophers write

for professors;
thinkers for writers.

The last thing that schools and universities will do

is to tell us how to live good lives.

So what is the point of education ?
To break us in like helpless horses;
to make us literate consumers
and taxpayers, and members of
variously armed forces.

If 'multi-tasking' were possible

we would be able to think two thoughts at once.
Most of us, however, have difficulty
thinking two thoughts in ten minutes.

The Dao of Everything

Do as little as possible
unobstrusively

for unintended consequences
are inevitable.

I think, therefore I am trapped in thought.

Wise and Foolish

It's only because I'm penny-wise
that I end up being pound-foolish!

Down with Descartes!

I think -
therefore I am a criminal.

In a civilisation of hypocritical

robots,
petty theft
is the least of crimes.

The orgasm of war

Nothing
produces
a more general
feeling of love
than
collective
hatred.

Memetic

If we assume that new words describe new things, events, feelings,
boredom did not emerge in modern Europe until the late 18th century,
and the meme or notion of normality slightly later.

This was the beginning of the 'Industrial Revolution',
when time and people were routinely mechanised
and in the slowly-rising, filthy tide of our technology
we began and not by stealth
to turn ourselves into standardised machines for the production
and consumption of products and boredom and wealth.

Dodgy statistic

A hundred years ago
the most popular first name
(until recently called Christian name)
was - in England - John.
Now it is Mohamed.
Behold! the dawn
new-circumcised
with ruddy fingers
creeps o'er the lawn.


(100 years ago the number of Johns in a relatively narrow pool of names might have numbered millions. Today the number of Mohameds in a hugely-enlarged pool of names - in a much greater population - can be numbered only in tens of thousands.)

In 'science'

it is difficult
(though not impossible)
to be a fraud.
In the arts and
phoney
'social sciences'
it is difficult
not to be
a bawd.

Freedom of speech

turns speech into babble.
Freedom of the press
turns the witless to rabble.

Optimism

The most offensive thing
about optimism is its
smugness.

A letter to the Government of Dreams

I am writing to the Principal Secretary of the Welfare
Department about the Decline in Quality
of my dreams. I have dreamt my dream-taxes
for nearly seventy years, and instead of my dreams
getting better, they have been getting worse.

Are sensible joined-up dreams beyond the
Oneirobureaucracy that is such a burden
on our shoulders ?
And why are my dreams without smell ?

It seems also that the dreamrubbish-collectors
have been on strike for a long time.
My dreams are now starting to smell.

I shall take my complaint to the International
Court of Dream-Rights, and am sending a copy
of this letter to Radio Somnium.

Yours faithfully,

The shape of things to come

'The Bourgeoisie'

is a great and proliferating mass of people who, if invited to a twelve-course banquet, eat (or try to eat) their stupid way right through - unaware that the 'dirty' plates and 'left-overs' go to the servants, and the servants' left-overs go to the beggars at the gates.

The 'bourgeoisie' are the eaters of time.

If I lived on a garbage tip

I would, of course,
not be vegetarian.

A man

in Japan

conducted his
symphony orchestra

without his
cancerous
windpipe
(or œsophagus),

and received
a standing ovation
which lasted 10 minutes.

Japan also has
an unknown number
perhaps a hundred
thousand hermits,
drop-outs, solitaries

who conduct their lives
minimally -
all in their private
penitentiaries.

Through the night

across the river
a guttering lamp

The most precious - and rarest - gifts are integrity and solitude.

What did Santa bring ?




















A hat-stand for your Astrakhan!

The obscenity of Christmas

My friend in Paris had for Christmas dinner:

"Stuffed goose
Salmon
Prawns
Crayfish
Leg of lamb
Pork sausage...
...and a little salad as a decoration."

Then there were two desserts, and of course there were several wines and brandies.
The French think of Gargantua as a rôle-model, not as a satire.
They make me think of Gadarene Swine...

At the same time, hundreds were crushed to death while receiving food-aid in north-west Pakistan.

Plastic Santa.

Invisible God.

The history of the twentieth century in four words :

Maldoror
Magadan
Mordor
Mogadon

Wisdom requires modesty,

patience, and lack of talent.
Talents, like breeding,
leave no room, no time
for wisdom.

But neither talented
nor untalented
have any wish for wisdom.

[Solstitial Haikai]

.
.
Full midwinter moon –
a new coalescence of
an ancient coldness ?

. . .

At winter solstice
I ate the last tiny bunch
of 'strawberry' grapes.

Message to a Buddhist Teacher

from an anti-teacher :

Occidentals are not even
thoughtful,
much less
mindful.

Expanding Descartes

I think -
therefore I am a strange
aberration within the strange
aberration of existence.

My expectations

of human beings
have declined as I've got older -
but still they disappoint me
as comfort makes them colder.

On the radio this morning

I listened to a
Professor of Crowd Dynamics.
What a smug lump of meat he was!

Mediæval people

would have been certain
that a perfume called
GUILTY
could have come only
from the Devil, and would
have acted accordingly.

from a letter by D.H. Lawrence

"If I had the smallest income,
I would be delighted to loaf forever."

We refuse

to change ourselves
so we change everything else.
This illiberality
is EGO :
the denial of reality.

Wouldn't Christianity be wonderful

if it had the innocence of the Jehovah's Witnesses,
the humble rationality of the Quakers,
and the celebratory ritual of the Russian Orthodox
or even of the wild Pentecostals ?

Freedom of Speech

for Liu Xiaobo
and Julian Assange

If I had been born
in China, I might
not be imprisoned
for the stuff I write

but just for being
a parasite.

In the toilet-bowl of time

shitbags with brains
and nowhere to go
high or low
(as far as I know).

I went to the city
I saw corruption
I saw destruction
nowhere to go
above or blow.

I returned to the mountain
I saw the sunset
I died at sunrise
nowhere to go
fast or slow

but the rat and the crow
and the cockroach
they know,
they know.

(for Eric Chaet)

To mediæval Christians

a significant sin
was acrobatics
deemed 'unnatural'.
Perhaps this symbolised
the Original Sin
of utterly-unnatural
mathematics.

Lucky numbers ?

The other day I heard
that astronomers now think
that there are three times
more stars in The Universe
than they thought last year.

On the next day I heard
an English academic boast
that his language had far
more words
(many of them French)
than French.

"Hello! I'm on a train."

On the train of human shame
moving shadows talk
of moving shadows
in the fog and smother
of 'Society' - which blinds
and binds us to each other.

Even I,

without the degeneracies of
central heating, running
hot water, television,
microwave, cellphone,
armchair, sofa
or washing-machine,

live better than a Roman Emperor.

At Emil Cioran's Birthplace

"Society is not diseased, but disaster." - E.C.

In the Empire of Aspiration,

celebrity and cash
the last and greatest emperor
is the Emperor of Trash.

Hypocrisy

has never been healthier,
now that it has
titanium knees.

The Low Fat Societies

skim the cream off
all the others
and the whole world.

Saying farewell to the dying

is especially fraught
when you never could say
hello - just fought.

After death

is everything
which we call
nothing.