The way Farage laughs
As though what he is saying
Has embarrassed even him
Or when Corbyn sniffs as if
What he is saying
So impresses him
And how Trump gesticulates
That intimates what he is saying
Second-guesses him
All ways the first tell
Is like the last knell
Before the din
Tin ears and foil hats
Around Schrödinger’s cake stand
Hand in hand; spellbound
On her back; on her knees
At the sink in bare feet
On a pedestal, silent, please
Dangerous angel
Too frigid; too bossy; too keen
Was his story; his glory
His magical chattel
From baby to wife
To invisible burden
Embattled; embargoed
Her scorn and her fury
Her life
As she rattles the bars
And beats hard on the ceilings
Deducing his god rod
Confuses his yardstick
The fairer sex feeling her Mars
As she’s peeling his story
Unsealing her future
In all types of footwear
And favourite bras.
Life is too short
to get caught up
in dragging it out;
too short
to get caught
in its wake.
We’re all winging it.
Once everybody knows, does the poison fade or grow? Where do the pumped-up paranoia and the daft denial go?
Does common knowledge get a welcome in the hillsides and the streets? Enough that moderation wakes to see and win the light of day? Does forgiveness and a sense of humour meet and greet the anger and embarrassment half way? So that vitriol and vengeance dissipate? Does it sweeten up the atmosphere? Does superstition disappear? And do the floodgates spring apart to send a purifying tide to heavy head and fizzy heart or make the distance side to side become a roiling sea? Does the constant churn return us, endlessly, back to the start, where faith and proof demand to function separately? Does some truth unite the factions or divide to further fractions? Will it eat us up or will it set us free?
If seeing is believing and believing a feeling is virtually all, does it matter that the emperor has no clothes? Is he even really naked, since he has been gifted with a thousand and one projections of bespoke attire?
Gaslighters are telling themselves that they are the victims of gaslighting. Well, yes, they are: turns out you can fool the absolute heck out of yourself.
“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.” ~ Stuart Chase
Coursing through Life
Nature’s force
Busy being
Busy being
Nature’s force
Coursing through Life
The alpha child
with street-wise bleats
like a teen got squeezed
in a nine-year-old’s seams
weaned onesie to romper
me me me me
groupthink, resonate
tub-thump
Brexit, Corbyn, Trump
click
bait, reverberate
better you believe it, mate
twist, stick
narrow shtick
make it fit, contortionists
what are you on about, now?
No: she didn’t say “cat”
how did you manage that shape
when everybody else heard “cow”?
Oh wow! I didn’t know
you’re allergic to their milk since
your great-great-uncle got trampled
when he scrumped some farmer’s apples
for the poor
and he still fought in The War.
Backpack bursting
with overwhelm and boredom,
happened upon the parallel tracks
where light and shadow back on to
no man’s land and Inertia offers
all-inclusive or self-catering
for the price of a lucid dream.
[August 2015]
Brexit aside, which party is more malleable: a party led by a seemingly unassailable yesteryear ideologue or a party caught out and haunted by the overt flaws in its libertarian mindset? Which is more palatable: a party that seeks social justice by means of a chippy levelling down or a party that is so admonished and exposed that it may yet have social justice thrust upon it by sheer necessity and command?
One party merely seeks to scapegoat different demographics; the other is seeing its scapegoats bite back. One is on the upturn of the wheel of self-righteousness; the other is coming down. Which is likely to be the most adaptive: the one coming up on hubris and rose-tinted zeal or the one that is increasingly pulled down by its rich certainties and chastened by the consequences of its overreach?
Now add Brexit. Which party accepts that Brexit is, irrespective of current official positions, the priority that will determine the viability of the whole United Kingdom and the well-being of every individual on these isles? Which party is most likely to listen and learn and accommodate realities and new information? Which party’s approach might be more readily altered by sensible persuasion? Which party seems more sensitive to the scrutiny and pressure of the wider public and the Media? Which party looks as though it can be more easily called out and reined in by its own?
What a horrible state of affairs.
juxtaposed 