Looking Back

I am here,
but he whom was me has gone
from all my memory
but for these pages.

Deep, deeper, deep down inside
the dim shadow of that spark hides.
A spark once warmed by spring and fuelled by summer,
languishes in this damp cool greyness.

I am not unhappy, but I am not on fire,
and the annual ritual of shining forth
is squeezed between two clouds,
one that rains words on this page
and the other that shies from big skies.

Smile and Cry

Little baby so looked after,
Learned to smile to be looked after.
Some days found itself alone,
And thought it was going to die.
But little baby could not cry,
for it had learned to smile
and not to cry.

So little baby trapped within
Smiled and smiled and smiled again.
The smiles could never be heard from afar
And seen up close they looked morose.
So still baby found itself alone,
Afraid it would die
And wanting to cry.


Oh little baby,
cry, cry, cry,
Free yourself!
Try, try, try!
I will hear you,
I will behold you,
I will show you.
You will hear me,
You will be held by me,
You will learn from me,
To listen and look
And wonder why you cried.
Wonder at the fear
That welled up from inside.
Wonder at what you can do
When I am not with you.

For you may be alone
But you are now grown.
For those who have died
You have already cried.
Use all that you know
And more you will grow.
When to smile
When to cry
And when to get up and go.

The Remains of the Hunter

The muse is with me today, so here is a fresh new poem on the fly, copyright to me, owner of this blog at Loveandtheplanet.

Deeply within the vessel out of the light
the surface of the liquid faintly shimmers.
The Hunter alone is stalking his prey,
Foot-weary from tracking mile upon mile
Through Copses, glades and hilly scrub.
Hunting since the birth of dawn in the eye of his mind
So many taken, so many meals won.
The death of dusk never feared for the well-deserved dreams
The day just one more after yet one other.
Alone the Hunter grasps his bow,
looks to the sky as a flush of spirit flows
Upward,
While on the path his foot too close to the edge
Slips and the rocks slide underneath
And too slowly he glances
downward
to see but he is already tumbling down the cliff
The rocks with him and landing at the bottom,
shocked yet knowing that he is injured.
He cannot move.

The vapours rise out of the vessel into the light
escaping into the obscure mist enveloping.
The Hunter lies there and closes his eyes while night
Passes over. In its darkest hours pangs of consciousness
stab at his dreams but already the new day has come.
He cannot rise but crawls to a bush with berries.
Chewing these he lies another day until he spies
what may be a hole in the hill.
The pulling of his arms despite the dragging of his legs
takes him into what is not quite a cave,
And he waits.

While he waits the world does not
so days pass and then are gone forever.
The flies land as the carrion birds find him.
The maggots and the rot take the rest
So soon the Hunter's bones have their final rest.

No more hunters ever came to be,
and the Farmers never had cause to go near the cave,
Remaining like the liquid in the vessel
that escaped into the air,
The remains of the Hunter are bones
that might as well not be there.

Found A Poem Written Long Ago.

The copyright for this belongs to me, the owner of this blog, as it is Original Material. I came across it today, having completely forgotten that I had written it, probably around 1998-1999. It represents a past that is so forgotten, so distant, and most of all so irrelevant today, that it is interesting for that reason alone.

I am not a piece of glass
Another for your collection
But I am a dark wall
Like some of those within you.

You would smash out a hole
brick by brick
Until you could see right through me
You would widen my whole
kick by kick
Until I become your window.

Then you will take your pane,
Fit it to me and fill me with it,
So I keep out the cold and rain,
While still our daze is brightly lit.

You may choose to break me from time to time
But only if you stand by your shattered window
To feel the sky's breath fling its tears
Against your skin and soul,
And then to find a new pane
to fit me and fill me with.

Our loving will be this

Powerful stuff, the feelings of which are today extinct and cremated, not just buried. I think I remember why I was moved to write it, and I pity the person that I once was.

That Global Human Economic Machine

It is a juggernaut.
It is the largest thing ever to exist.
It is just one living thing.
All over the Globe
Those Humans connected
Working, producing, consuming
In a Single Economy,
A single Organism
A super-organism greater than any ever seen
Upon this Earth.

Its advocates are clear.
Its advocates are confident.
Its advocates are wealthy.
Its advocates are the high-priests
That maintain and repair the machine.

Its prey are scattered.
Its prey are confused
Its prey are poor
Its prey are consumed
To feed its growth

That Global Human Economic Machine.
The biggest thing ever made that now makes itself.
Grows inexorably to consume all before it
All the Earth before it,
While its high-priests indulge in its tawdry boudoirs,
enticed by its lurid perfumes,
Convinced that they and all before them
Are richer for it,
And there are no other types of riches,
that they have overlooked.

That Global Human Economic Machine,
Sucks you in
With a Contract
You will be fed
You will be watered
You will have the cars,
the luxury dwelling,
the bright lights,
the ease of never having to lift a finger,
not even off your mouse
the trips abroad,
the laughing of those who have plenty
about you,
the misery and confusion of all the others,
hidden away,
here on the internet.

The Global Human Economic Machine
Will run and run and run,
And they will oil it and add to it
And it will grow ever bigger,
For they learned to make machines,
And with machines they could make the biggest machine of all
The Global Human Machine.

If you can't beat them
Join them,
But then it grows bigger
If you won't join them
Avoid them
But then it swallows you up.
You can try to hide,
But even the birds have less places to hide
And so too will you,
And all the time from your hiding place
You will watch fearfully
As it the Juggernaut comes ever closer.

You can take up a Faith
And protect yourself with some Words
And believe that you are only here on Earth
To be tested
And the test will be
how easily you are assimilated
Into the One
The Only,
The Single Global Human Economic Machine.

Oh Wail, oh wail, oh

Ooow...Aarrhh Oh!
Wail
From the Bed to the Sofa.
Wail
From the Sofa to the Bed.
What have I done
Wail
It all went wrong
OwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggggggggHHHHHHH!
Whine
But not a sound's been made
the wail song has moaned silently
Sullenly for months
So deeply that it has been unseen
But wails do surface
For air.
It's been all my fault.
Wail, Waaahhhh!
It's all gone wrong.
Life's not worth living
Alone.
What have I done
To deserve the very life I despise?

The weekend of playing briefly with the old lovelessness
Yesterday came down with a heavy dull, dumb thud.
In mere hours I had shown here all there was to show
all that was green in my pleasant land
And even to me it was so obvious there is nothing here
That I want any more.

Today
Lying on the bed
Waiting for life to return to my drained will,
Love loomed again and again
Each time it was your face
Your hairy face,
Filling my field of view.

I yearned
And chastised myself for yearning
But I need to believe in love
Even if love will not believe in me.
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/offthepage
What have I done wrong,
but where was the glue
to help us to stick together?

The kiss
The perfect most loving kiss
I miss.

Social Network

Road Network:
Mapped
With footpaths
To motorways.
Yet some still need TomTom
To get from A 2 B
Social Network:
Is there a TomTom
For people and connections?
Perhaps I don't even know where A is,
Let alone B.
Those who don't know their A,
Should take no shame in it,
But they could do with some help.
Those who don't know their B,
Need a Rough Guide to a Lonely Planet.

Walk softly and carry a big roll of carpet

If I had not walked,

I would not have heard the grasshoppers and crickets, whirring away in the grass despite this hopelessly grey summer.


If I had not walked,

I would not have gone into the shop and found the best cheap padlock I could find.


If I had not walked,

I would not have picked up the roll of carpet and walked it home, much to the amusement of those I encountered.


If I had not walked,

I would have ridden my bicycle, but since the idiot that stole it has not returned it, and the police have not gotten around to looking at the report,

I could not ride my bicycle.


That bicycle is gone. Hope has a limited time offer. Despair's sale is over.

Forgetting is one of the most useful by-products of an un-inhibited emotional reaction series including depression. Depression should never be stopped or dragged out with stupid things like Prozac. Depression should be processed to its own comfortable conclusion.

That bike is gone. So are you, so you keep reminding me.

Forget, forget, forgotten.

Postscript

If I had not walked, I would not have a sore foot.

If I could forget, then I would have no wishful thoughts. Then at last, I could be just like these loveless, soulless people? If I cannot beat them, should I join them? If I cannot join them, should I not leave them?

They who cannot love, are they not machines? Should they be ridden like bicycles, until they are worn down, or should they be loved until they learn how to love?

When you remind me that we must move on, that angers me.
How much harder it is to move on when there is not even a decent bicycle to move with.
How hard it is to move without a bicycle.
All those people who refuse to move without their cars, or a bus, or a train, or a taxi, or even a horse. How lazy they are.
To move on, with only your two feet, is something that homo sapiens var. industrialis has lost the ability to do, and I am unsure that I can still do it.

Once, I too had a car, and sat in a glass workhouse, not a greenhouse,
being watered, nurtured, fertilized,
without ever having to use my own two feet.

The cars are gone, now the bike is gone, but I still have my two feet.

God help me when they are gone, for the people in London
whom to me have always seemed the bravest,
are the elderly infirm
who struggle on foot through the uncaring and pushy
who struggle on foot to cross the road against the traffic
who struggle on foot to drag their shopping.
And never does someone else of their own age,
or indeed of any age,
driving past in their car,
stop and offer them a lift.


For this is how London has been ever since the Eighties, and even now, even with all the wealth that China exports to us, and all the handouts that the government has thrown into the wind, it is the same, except that fewer of those elderly poor are English.

Dancers to the Dance

1. Sex and the City
2. Love and the City
3. Love and the Planet
4. Sex and the Planet

One, Two, Three, Four
To and From,
And once again...

There may be trouble ahead,
But while there's music,
and sunlight, and love,
and the planet...
Let's face the music,
and damn it.

Dancer from the Dance
Take these Dancers to the Dance.

Rise,
Faint flicker
of rhythm
The lost pulse of
Deeply quaking hormones
that shook to
Donna Summer's whore moans.

Rising. Risen.
Soaring. Searing
The heavens above
Spread those wings
Fold them, and rocket away
Unidentified Dancing Missile
Dancers from the Dance,
Who live to see another dance.
What the World needs now,
Is Dance, Sweet Dance.

Dance and the Planet.
Keep it spinning,
Let it tilt,
Flow with its oceans.
Move with its storms.
Be the moon in the Eternal Dance
Through the Stars.
For the Planet is the Dance, the Dancer, and the Music.

Men's paws shod with old blinkers

In that land, at that time, there was a wealthy merchant. Having been born to simple folk, the several wives and several businesses he had acquired over years of ruthless smiling gave him the status he needed to feel like a big man.

Nonetheless, at moments, such as in the stillness of the dawn light, he harked back to his youth, and searched for the feelings that he knew he once felt.

For he was older now, than his father was, when he turned his back on his father's simple ways, and ventured into the wider world in the certainty of wit-gotten wealth.

Who would have warned him that the wives would one day inspire so little? Amongst his peers there was endless ribaldry and chatter of ageless virility that could be fortified by merry drink, powdered animal parts, and little pills bought from an internet doctor. He played along in the banter, knowing since he was a child that if you were all together in the same boat, you must cheer each other along until you reach safe shores.

The women, he knew, spoke openly about their own changes. He thought about how it must be, to be they. When in their prime, they could either bring men to their knees, or they produced men from between their knees. Then slowly the decline began, and accelerated, until one day undeniably, the regularity of the workings of their womb stopped.

Surely, he thought, men are not the same?

What the World Needs Now

Humanity's need for fashion
in every aspect of its culture,
from Politics to Toilet paper,
Wearies me
From Head to Tail.
There are just too many people,
And they have evolved
with humanists
and religions
and science
and technology,
so there will always be too many people.
There is no wilderness left,
real or virtual,
to give any more escape
to all the living things that need it.
This vacuum that is the blogosphere
has less life
than a square foot of rainforest soil,
than a cubic foot of coral sea.
It is all bland
humanity.

Singing singing Buttercups and Daisies

The English, just like so many people around the world, have lost their culture. And just to confirm it, trying to find this on Google took almost longer than going to a library!

Meanwhile, they have been assiduous at preserving the Bricks and Mortar of old buildings that sit stodgily and empty of the living people and culture that built them. The buildings of England are like pickled dead things in a Nazi scientist's laboratory. But you can sell that to a stupid tourist very easily, because there are always more tourists from America, Australia, India, China, Japan, etc., etc., And the tourists never read blogs like this. They are far too busy shopping.

Because indigenous cultural diversity in England has disappeared under the Juggernaut of Globalism, is it any surprise that the English are always desperate to fly away on holidays or to emigrate? It is no longer easy to get a thrill from just going to Strawberry Fair. No, nowadays you have to fly around the world to Kerala while complaining about the crowds on the roads, at the airports, and in the holiday resorts. So Ri-fol, Ri-fol.....

As I was going to Strawberry Fair,
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies,
I met a maiden taking her wares, fol-de-dee.
Her eyes were blue and golden her hair,
As she went on to Strawberry Fair.

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"Kind sir, pray pick of my basket," she said;
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"My cherries ripe or my roses red, fol-de-dee.
My strawberries sweet I can of them spare,
As I go on to Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"Your cherries soon will be wasted away;"
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"Your roses wither'd and never stay, fol-de-dee.
'Tis not to seek such perishing ware,
That I am tramping to Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"I want to purchase a generous heart;"
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"A tongue that neither is nimble nor tart, fol-de-dee
An honest mind, but such trifles are rare.
I doubt if they're found at Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"The price I offer, my sweet pretty maid;"
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"A ring of gold on your finger displayed, fol-de-dee,
So come, make over to me your ware
In church today at Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

Laugh In Laugh Out

Last In Last Out
Laugh In Laugh Out

He who laughs First laughs Last.
(First In Laugh Out First Out?)

He who laughs not at all?
Is not getting his share of Laughter.

So that's why socially cohesive populations permit themselves only timid giggles and restrained chuckles?

Contemplation of Hermitage

Is hermitage good or bad?

Has the individual become a hermit through choice, or not? Is it good for the hermit, or good for the Group, or not?

Man is a Social Animal.
So shall Animals be as Man..

In Nature, what there was once of it, the lone wolf was cast out by the pack.

What combination of individual choice or external circumstance caused a wolf to become lone?

The casting out depends on the season as well as on the explicit inavailability of food. The alpha male will drive out other males whom: threaten his mating rights; will not grovel; or do not contribute adequately to the pack's hunt. The alpha female will drive out other females whom: have lost the attention of the alpha male; do not contribute adequately to the raising of the offspring or to the hunt.

There will be others whom will become lone voluntarily even though it appears that there is no apparent pressure for them to be cast out.

Given that there are Hermits, and there are Lone Wolves, and that some are Outcast, and some are Voluntary:

in Man, the Voluntary Hermit will be the individual who either:
- foresees and preempts the eventuality of the casting out
- through randomly inherent difference, seeks his chances separate from the group.

Is the Outcast Hermit lesser?

What are the evolutionary opportunities for the different options?

The voluntary hermit will have the advantage of seeking new territories while there is still adequate food locally and while there is no competition from the later hermits. The voluntary hermit has the disadvantage of enduring risk that might never have become forced upon him.

The outcast hermit has the advantage of having nothing left to lose, but at a time when there might be nothing else left to gain.

*******

Can the voluntary hermit rejoin the Group at some future time? Yes, if conditions are suitable for him to rejoin. If the conditions are not suitable, then these are likely, but not certain, to be the conditions where he would have become an outcast in any case.

********

The condition of hermitage is sometimes voluntary, sometimes not.

Where it is voluntary, there is at least the option of checking if the Social Group is more beneficial.

Where it is involuntary, hermitage is a challenge, which might as well be seized as an opportunity.

That's Life, in a snail shell.