Monday Poem: Sheets

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

Sheets

Such easy days, and the time
drips by, like rain off a leaf.
We stand and laugh,
sit and smile, lie and kiss.
I feel the warm easy pressure
of your skin on my fingertips.

This is no time to worry
or to be concerned about how
the world is the way that it is.
No day to call for the downfall
of the enemies of peace and promise.
We have our own world
and we keep it safe
underneath these sheets.


To do anything otherwise would be
to step out on the cold floor.
We do not want to go naked
out into that darkness.
These sheets are our home
and we turn our backs
on the world, to face each other,
to draw close together.

So all we touch is each other.
All we think of is each other.
Our world becomes simple,
decisions can be made,
actions can be taken.
Shall I touch you there?
Shall I kiss you here?


Outside this bed, the room grows dark
and the rain sheets against the window
showering off the solid glass.
The clouds; ominous, thick and heavy
thundering their storm cannons
across our once clear blue skies.


Outside, the storm begins again.

Monday Poem: Snow Storm

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

Snow Storm

Here is a moment I found
just for you.
A memory of winter days.
Tip it up and see slow snow falling.

Take this memory that can sit
fragile as a snowflake
in the open palm of one hand.

All the memories,
fading under falling snow
as the world is enclosed, limited.

It is like learning to grow older
taking a small fragment of the world
that can be our to keep,
and learning how to care for it,
to realise about edges, borders, limits.

We let it all fall around us
like slow snow falling,
like a scene held under glass.

What I Did On My Holidays

‘Last week, Tory leader David Cameron spent two days in Birmingham with the Rehmans’, at The Grauniad’s Cif site, to which I appended this comment:

Three things need to be done in this situation:

1. Dump the completely misguided, meaningless, stupid and divisive notion of 'race'. Treat all people as they are - equal.

2. Stop the notion of 'multiculturalism' which is just as misguided, meaningless etc. as above. Culture is a process, not a 'thing'. We should be building on the post-Renaissance post-Enlightenment culture that has been so successful for the west, spreading it around the world, and taking on board what those other parts of the world can add to it, as - we well know, it is not perfect. But it is the best (don't be frightened of that word) there is.

3. Only in a truly secular society can people be free to practise whichever - or none - religion they like free from external pressure. That includes school which should be secular too, treating all religions (and none) equally and fairly. But - more importantly - refusing to bow to pressure from ANY religion as to what should be taught, how the pupils should dress and so forth.

‘Race’ as it is currently defined, along with ‘multiculturalism’ are concepts created and defined by the left – both of which concepts (as with most things created and defined by the left) are seriously flawed (by way of example: the ‘race’ notion struggles with the notion of the ‘mixed-race’ person, and multiculturalism cannot cope with a collision of cultures). Both concepts – along with many other concepts based ultimately on Marxist etc analysis – have proved unable to cope with modern complexity and should therefore be dumped, even if it means a massive loss of jobs in the race-relations industry and allied trades.

Hail Fellow!

Back when I was a smoker, I used to jump on - with delight and relief - any piece of news that suggested that smoking wasn’t so bad after all; such as the notion it may delay diseases like Alzheimer’s and so on. At the same time, I was also attempting to convince myself that all the negative evidence about the many dangers of smoking was being overstated for some reason.

I was reminded about this when reading about the ‘fellow travellers’ who made excuses and gave feeble explanations when communism failed to live up to its ideals as the worker’s paradise. It seems that people do have a propensity to want to continue believe, despite the contrary evidence that confronts them. This, I suppose, also explains why people turn to religion in the teeth of natural disasters and other misfortunes. At such times, logic would suggest that such things and events disprove the very religious force that these people are looking to for protection and so forth.

All of which, I think goes towards making some sense of the subject of this pretty good article by David Aaronovitch in The Times.

Notes and Comments: 07/05/2007

Roy Hattersley on TV ads in The Guardian. To which I add this comment:
It is my firm belief that TV ads are the prime cause of obesity. This is because they are so bad, annoying, irritating or (usually car or perfume ads) incomprehensible they force you to flee the room for the duration of the break. This usually means a visit to the cupboard or the fridge with the - unless you are a sensible eater as I aspire to be - the inevitable consequences.

The Big White Lie, is a rather good examination of the doublethink that is necessary for the left mindset. I think that it may have something to do with the utopianism that underlies left thinking where it becomes necessary for you to convince yourself that what you desire is better than what is, even when the evidence suggests it isn’t.

Monday Poem: A Ghost Song

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

A Ghost Song

Days are like wind chimes
floating on the breeze.
So much that is forgotten
is forgotten.
So much that is remembered
haunts this waking dream.

This is all that was ever offered
meagre and bare
a few small moments
made precious
by careful considered memory.

Go now and this will remain
as shapes
left to gather dust,
a room no-one enters.
A door always closed
curtains drawn.

Draped dust sheets turn
furniture into ghosts
haunting
what was once a living room.

So this becomes a tune
played in an empty room
only the dust ever dances
only air moves
sound fades like the memory
of fingers brushing keys
before the plain white sheet
shrouded the piano.

Hatful Of Hollow

What are your favourite songs by the Smiths?

Being in my mid-twenties when the Smiths came along I was beginning to think I was getting too old for rock music. But they did go some way towards restoring my faith in the business - for a while. Back then I would have happily spent most of the evening arguing with you about which tracks ought to be on this list.

But now, these days, I can't stand listening to them at all and the more the media go on about the various 'anniversaries' of punk and post punk, the less interesting it gets.

It's over and gone. You - and I - are too old and nostalgia is a terribly sad disease and wallowing in it just makes it far worse.

Anyway, one day you are just going to have to face it, John Travolta's white suit had far more influence than punk, 'new wave', 'indie' and all that put together.