Take me back to
As I walked around the deck of the Marco Polo and thought about the immense changes that have taken place in the last two hundred years I kept reworking this poem.
I’ve travelled through oceans that once teemed with life and are now empty.
I visited islands where British ships replenished their larders by bludgeoning to death all the indigenous creatures.
Two hundred years ago life teemed. Now it is hanging on by its talons.
I am aging in fits and starts on a slow decline towards an inevitable death. The planet is on a similar trajectory.
In the next two hundred years we will have paved it all, caged what’s left and be living in an artificial, plastic paradise, as free as any good consumer can be.
Take me back to where I can breathe and wonder. I want out of this nightmare.
Take me back to
Take me back to the African plains;
Away from the bombs of the insane;
Away from the craziness of god’s refrain;
Away from the missiles and blood stains;
Away from every human brain;
All the bones of the animals we have slain;
The trees that rot where they’re lain.
I’d send the whole lot down the drain
And start over again.
So I could wonder at the universe
In one sand grain
And find the will
To refrain
From slaughter.
Opher 22.2.2016
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Very nice but it can’t happen. We all have our dreams and sometimes it is what gets us through the day when one can see no future.
Hey Anna – it’s me writing the poem of despair! What we have to do is keep positive, join with the ones looking to make things better, and not let it get us down.
We can put it right. That’s why I write. Otherwise life is pointless.
You are missing the point life is bloody pointless for so many of us. We are not all smiling happy bunnies talking about peace and love, I am not being sarcastic I am trying to let you see that some of us look out there and don’t see the “happy clappy love and peace” you see, some of us see it for what it is.
Anna – you’ve read my blogs. You know that I am fighting against all the wrongs out there:
War
Poverty
Overpopulation,
Wild-life slaughter
Fundamentalism.
I don’t think it is all ‘love and peace’ out there. I’ve been round and seen it first hand. I don’t believe the doom and gloom in the news. They distort it. They have an agenda.
I’m not soft, daft or happy clapy. I am a realistic idealist.
There are things worth fighting for.
We can make the world better!
No you believe Love and Peace can sort it all why else would you say it so often. No one knows how they can make the World better, all have become so greedy too many want power at any cost – you tell me what the hell is there to look forward to. I know how lucky I am in many respects and perhaps if I had been brought up to laugh and have fun and be loved I might have thought different but I was not. I fucked my life up that’s my fault no one else. Everyday is a battle every day to what, I know the end you don’t I do.
Peace and love is part of the solution.
Equality and tolerance.
Fairness and justice.
Intolerance of hatred, violence and intolerance.
Fun and enjoyment.
Creativity and fulfilment.
An end to poverty, misery and war.
Environmental harmony.
Freedom.
Standing up against bullies, rapists, thieves and scroungers.
Ending terrorism.
Ending sexism, racism and fundamentalism.
Don’t reduce me to a simplistic hippie. I’m not that.
I was not aware I called you a “simplistic hippie. The above is just a bunch of words to me, sorry but I have to be more honest than that, words won’t solve this.
‘Peace man’ – is a bit insulting.
All the interchange are words. All this is words. Words are symbols. Action comes out of words. Before you do anything you sort out your philosophy and strategy.
How can you be more honest that clearly stating the philosophy on which you base the whole of your life and actions?
Above is what I believe. It is what I fight for and live by. They are not just words. I can’t be more honest that that.
I stand for that list of words. Those words are important to me. They underpin everything I do. That is honesty.
Words solve everything. They give the orders. They underline the ethos. They are the law we live by.
“Peace Man” is not insulting you went through the sixties you lived in San Francisco was that not the biggest saying “Peace Man”. Do you know what Opher you use all this clever talk to wear one down. Thanks you have done what I suspected you needed to prove that you are the Teacher you were better educated, you did more than anyone else – in fact I am just the stupid bloody bitch who did not pass the exams, did not go to University started work at 16 and made a bloody mess of my life. It’s not personal Opher it’s being honest.
Anna – I put out posts on my blog and I argue my case. I’m not an arrogant twat trying to prove I’m clever or educated. I say what I believe and I have not been putting you down. I want to make the world a better place. I say what I believe.
I lived through the sixties and was part of that scene. It was great. We did stand for a lot of things. Peace was one of them. I opposed the Vietnam war.
You sound very bitter. I never implied those things about you. That is not what I feel.
Did I call you an “arrogant twat” I did not and I resent that, I resent it even if you thought that is what I said. I have better manners than that, thanks. You were not the only one to oppose the Vietnam War, I did too. I am not bitter and if I am it is within me about myself not others, I am not jealous or bitter at what others have/had or done that is not me and never would be. What I have or have not done with my life has been my problem, I am the one that fucked up, I am the one haunted, no one else. You are so clever you make me feel that you use that to prove just that, now I may be wrong and I apologise if that is the case but I have been there where clever words used bring one down. You called yourself earlier “an arrogant bastard” and I told you I could be a bitch.,
all women are.
Anna – I never said you called me an arrogant twat. I said I wasn’t one – at least not knowingly – though sometimes I suspect I am.
I’m not trying to be clever or finding ways to put you down. All I am doing is trying to explain what I think, feel and see as the way forward.
I don’t like hearing you being so upset by the past or what is going on. I want you looking ahead and finding happiness and fulfilment.