Bewilderness

Clothed,
we are only clothes.

Take it from me:

It is easier to give up smoking
than shoplifting.
But shoplifting
(like financial fraud)
is also work.

"The Fall of Man" :

Was it when
Adam and Eve
mentioned property-rights
and gave God the first
of many horrible frights
and he had to tell them to leave ?

Only a few of us are left

who know the difference between
rifle and riffle
tend and attend
many and multiple
expect and anticipate
alternative and alternate
imply and infer
centre and epicentre
(there are two epicentres to an ellipse)
- meanwhile less has cast fewer
into permanent eclipse.

It is cheaper to buy a slave today

than it was at the height
of the Atlantic slave trade.

Over 27,000,000 slaves are now
an essential part of the Global Economy
[according to a report in 'The Observer'],
and
there are 37,000 'Street Children' in Kabul.

Fewer humans, more humus.

We are very little
more than the sum
of our consumption.

A quotation

from 'Hans Fallada', alias Rudolf Ditzen -
who is not to be confused with György Faludy:

'Humans get used to any situation,
and I regret to say that
they get used most rapidly to degradation.'

Gloss on a poem by György Faludy

Don't learn by heart these words of mine
Words are syllables gone mad. Opine
also is a word, and self
is an unsupported shelf,
and life is totally absurd
which is just another word.

Yet another Gloss on Emily D.

Mind is not wider
than the sky!
Both are immeasurable...

and I,
as fragile
as a Great Auk's bone,
feel less stable
than a stone.

Isn't it strange

how Happiness, like Luxury
has become Necessity ?

I remember

when black Labrador dogs
were called Nigger.
In 1940s Belfast I saw no
people of any colour different
from untouchably pale.
(Even now, there are very few.)
But there were picture-books
at Sunday School.

Dogs have always filled me with delight.
I have always disliked being white.

One of my readers sent me this

link...

It deserves even wider circulation.

On DNA Testing-kits.

Children are property.
If not, why the obsession
with paternity ?
Why the unnatural,
irrational demand
for merely sexual fidelity ?

Mystery

is history.
But dirt is always with us.
Poems are not even dirt.

A Big God

is the inevitable idea
of those pathetic people -
winners as well as losers -
who demand a purpose to life -
and consequently have no sense of the ridiculous.

Religious Syncretism

It is too easy for men

in the death-camp of their distraction
to mistake violence and virulence
for virility.

Tantra and Narcissus*

The only 'spiritual' sex is with yourself.
But remember to keep away from mirrors.


* Or do I mean PUER ÆTERNUS ?

Aliens

even slightly more intelligent than we
would not be envious.

Guerrilla Gardening

Why can we not be individualists
AND
contribute generously
to the environment
and the community ?

Alas, very few of us

are human beings.
Now we are nearly seven billion
human functions,
merely restless doings.

If there were such a state

as (more-or-less lasting) 'happiness'
it would have little to do with
mere or even communal hedonism,
but be based on Epicurus' thoughts
and be dubbed
Effervescent Pessimism.


EPICURUS (third line added by blogger) :
The wealth required by nature is limited and easy to obtain;
but the wealth required by vanity is infinite -
and costs the earth.

O Nietzsche,

you were wrong.
It was not Jehovah
the God of More
who died, but
(catastrophe!)
Dionysus long before.

The Nice Guys

They hadn't the slightest interest
in the Golden Fleece,
but avoided certain neighbourhoods
at night
for fear of the police.

It's in our nature...

The more possible that utopias become
the more likely it is
that distopias will result.

Word-order

can also make a big difference
to meaning. Consider the term
hunter-gatherers, given
by meat-obsessed Europeans
to people who were, rather,
gatherer-hunters.

The whole world

is become property,
saith the preacher.

Whereas religion appropriated
the numinous,
and property is vanity,
and we are the property
of kingdoms and republics,
so all, all, indeed, is vanity,
even poverty.

Scampi

Where are they now ?

Homage to Daniel Kharms

Oh, to to be as loved
as a statue !

Insignificant,

I try to write
significant poems
and fail doggedly.

Noisy, noisome

blowing-machines
strapped to men's backs:

now the middle classes
object to leaves!

'The Fall'

- was it when
Adam and Eve
mentioned property-rights
and gave a tired God the first
of many horrible frights -
so he had to ask them to leave ?

[Haiku]

An autumn leaf falls -
very likely the Big Bang
all over again.

Modern woman

'As she entered the kitchen, Eve (who wanted to be called Athene
since nobody would address her as Melpomené)
saw the three things most threatening to her consciousness :
food, babies and fat old people...'

Re-blogged* from jindra-myblog.blogspot

What is so good about growing old
is that it's a welcome change from being young.

*Of course, being me, I have altered it!

The systematic sabotage of children's lives

Perhaps the extremist American
view of the nation-state is correct.
It forces children of even the most needy

to waste their eager years in school
learning nothing useful, nothing relevant
beyond that they must be functions of Society,
the jellyfish State which fails
to control the powerful, rich and greedy.

It's not hard to figure:

Jean-Paul Sartre
(amongst other bad philosophers)
was a mass-murderer
by proxy.

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..."