Sideshow

We compare coats
wear imitations on our feet
and borrow sympathetic voices
for sideshows
until insight is a stranger
and tomorrow but an echo

People get upset

Britain, right now, is a little bit shit
And most of the news is so grim
But people of humour do relish their wit
And relieve themselves quipping on things

They’re clever and silly with memes and fresh banter
So wry in contempt, it can get rather mean
But just look at the farce of the national cantor
And wonder no more that they’re letting off steam

The Bexiteer Right and the humourless Left
Hate the refuge of weaponised humour
But this is the British way civic life checks
Against rumours and bloomers and tumours

 

Here’s The Increasingly Batshit Story That Eventually Led To Priti Patel’s Resignation

Is this the night of the living dead? No, it’s Britain’s Brexit team

The joke’s over – how Boris Johnson is damaging Britain’s global stature

If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry…

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Heartifice

A Brexit-deep state of mind:
Heartifice, by design.
Truth be told, a waste of time
When fiddled faith says
”This is fine.”

Cathartic reflex

Yesterday I had a rant
And then I felt much better:
Cathartic reflex, cant on cant,
In every naughty letter.

Later on the guilt set in:
How mean! How rude I wrote!
But quickly too, forgave myself,
For venting at the dumbass rote.

When clichés are the USP
Of Brexit motive and defence,
There can be no surprise to see
A furiously ripe contempt.

People can make-believe of anything

People can make-believe of anything: an idea; a time/place; a person; the worth of Brexit. It might be founded on sheer strength of feeling or on the perception that a logical position is providing a complete picture. Checks on reasoning are subsumed into the comfort of confirmation bias. It becomes a feedback-loop of superiority and victimhood, working as a shield against all opposition.

The greater the investment in a position, the greater the requirement for its justification and, the more one justifies an investment, the more one becomes consumed by the need to. This is an ideological dependency developing a religious-like zeal for its own protection. Seeing is believing where believing is seeing: these are now the same thing. Chicken and egg. It doesn’t lead to truths, except by virtue of coincidental overlap – luck – or by lessons learned through the observation of its example – judgement.

And because the cold, hard truths of Brexit are self-evident, either you admit your error, to yourself, at the very least, or you double down and brazen it out, in the hope that denial will buy time and yet save your face. Thus, through fear or cynicism, you set yourself to the mission of converting and recruiting others because, well, safety and righteous correctness in evangelical numbers, right?

Autumnal Equinox

God is pressure;
Life is movement;
Will, attunement,
Conscience measured.

Light, its friction,
Shadow sifting,
Soul uplifting,
Love, its treasure.

[August 2015]

⚡️

Parity glimpses
Light dancing in harmony,
Wise of consonance.

[March 2016]

Dear Brexits

Dear Brexits,

I am not talking our country down. You voted to leave. That decision is actively bringing our country down. I am merely observing, reporting and commenting on the myriad dismal consequences of your “will”.

No Brexit is better than a bad Brexit and there is no Brexit that is good.

If this was not sufficiently evident, to you, before the referendum, whether because you were tricked or just did not bother to inform yourself, it bloody well should be plenty evident, by now. It is not my fault that you either cannot see or will not admit this.

I love our country and you have endangered her. It is a poor patriotism that would seek to demand my silence.

Regards

Prickly

Sharp tongue; blunt instrument:
Light twice.
I never said I was nice.

Oh, snowflake

Oh, snowflake, how unique your delicate heart
That glistens in communal blizzards
Of parched intellect

Whose crystalline shards
And feathered spaces
Shape imperfect synecdoches

And bring your frozen deserts
Into sharp relief against the dust
Of desiccated humours

And confusion of
Unfathomable hatred, until
All is powder; like and like

Steal nuance and lay waste
To inconvenient subtleties
On platforms, uniform, attend,

As granular as common sand
And no one is that special
In the end.

 

Nothing very “centrist” about that.

Laissez-faire
Less fair
Fewer fare
Welfare

Nothing very “centrist” about that. I remember when the common complaint of the Left was that Labour had moved to the right; that it was ‘Blue Labour’ and I remember how the Conservatives had the nerve to claim that they held the Centre when it had clearly shifted the country to the Right. Those were the days when the idea of a middle/the centre, though politically subjective, was understood to be relative; a moveable feast, eagerly sought and fought for – when to be moderate was not condemned as wishy-washy and most certainly was not used as a euphemism for ‘neoliberal’.

I wrote loads, here and on twitter, about the centre and the middle. Some of it was creative mischief or naive reactionary hyperbole, of course (just scroll up and type “middle” or “centre” into the search box) but the connective thread through my arguments was not and the topic was ripe in the Press and on social media. Back then, I was tweeting such sentiments as: “Labour stop fuss-assing with this insipid centre ground tosh. Take us Left & call it “The Centre” like Thatcher & Blair taught us 😉 #bbcsp” [April, 2013]

Those were the days when the middle/the centre was a desirable direction for those who are now calling anti-Brexit and not-keen-on-Corbyn people “centrists”, as though to hold such a position were right-wing and, therefore, anathema to Reason and decency. They forget that, like austerity, moderation is more than just a socio-economic philosophy. It is also an attitude; a reflection of an inner worldview response, mindful of extremism and hysteria, constantly taking responsibility for checking itself. There is nothing Thatcherite, neoliberal, Blairite or any other lazy labelling about that. There is little about our current political climate that is.