Amid the Wreckage – A poem about the death of Nature.

Posted on by Opher

Amid the wreckage

 

Amid the palm oil and the stumps;

Amid open mines, plastic in clumps,

Concrete and lawn, culverts and dumps,

No place to eat,

No place to drink,

No place to nest,

No time to blink.

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

It seems that we no longer have room for nature. We swat the flies and put up our electrocutors, we manicure our lawns, mow the grass, sanitise the landscape. We chop down their habitat to grow our crops and shoot them if they dare to intrude. We hunt them for food, pleasure and ivory. We dig them up and bait them with dogs.

As our world expands theirs contracts.

Soon there will not be room enough for them. They are hanging on as tourist attractions. How long can that go on?

What a miserable plastic world we are creating. Nature has to try to claw a living between the wreckage we have left behind.

There Is No Time – a poem of loss

Posted on by Opher

There is no time

 

Amid the anguish and the blame,

Amid the anger and the shame,

Between the laughter and the fun,

Between the torture and the pun,

There is no time.

 

The time when antelopes ran free,

The time when gorillas had trees,

The time when elephants had room,

The time when whales were not doomed,

Has past and gone.

 

What is gone cannot come back,

What is past is history,

When time runs out,

There is no room,

When room runs out there is no space,

For even mystery.

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

Not very long ago nature was dominant. Humans were few and their impact was less. Humans roamed the world in wooden ships. It was dangerous and took months and years. They explored jungles on expeditions requiring hordes of porters and discovered the heart of darkness.

Life teemed over the planet in its myriad of forms.

Yes we’d already had an impact. It seems the first sign of humans moving into an area was the eradication of the megafauna. They were hunted to extinction in no time at all. We will never set eyes on a giant sloth, giant kangaroo, mastodon or mammoth. They and the rest of their giant cousins were hunted to death.

For the rest it is taking a little longer.

Now we have planes and roads. What once took months and years now takes hours.

In such a short time the impact is massive. Time is running out. We are working our way through the tiny, medium and rare. There is no time left for many of them and the rest wait their turn.

Caught Between – A poem of loss

Posted on by Opher

Caught Between

 

Between the profits and the greed,

Between the money and the seed,

Between the madness and the war,

Between the illness and the sore,

There’s no room.

 

Between the pillar and the post,

Between the devil and the ghost,

Between the hard place and the rock,

Between the explosion and the shock,

There’s no room

 

Between the funfair and the ride,

Between the hunter and the pride,

Between the arrow and the gun,

Between the baiting and the fun,

There’s no room

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

It seems to me that something is missing from this modern life. We’ve lost it somewhere along the way. It has been squeezed out.

Now, with our life of fun, comfort and ease, between the leisure and entertainment, between the purchasing and throwing away, we have lost something that was immensely important.

Now that most of us do not need to struggle for survival, when the food is on the table, the fridge bulges and we just have to turn the central heating or air-conditioning up, something has been lost.

Now when the trip to church, mosque, temple or synagogue and the reading of the verses has no impact on our daily life or the way we act, something has gone badly astray.

Somewhere in the het up struggle between NeoCon and LibTard, where all minds are clouded with tribal fury, a real sense of purpose has been waylaid.

I think I know what it is.

I think we have lost our connection with nature.

8 Billion reasons – A poem of despair.

Posted on by Opher

8 Billion Reasons

 

8 Billion reasons why the gorillas must die

8 Billion reasons why the elephants will die

8 Billion tragedies

For all of them.

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

8 Billion Human beings chopping down trees, spraying pesticide, burning wood, hunting animals, eating ivory, culverting ditches, producing sewage, filling dustbins, buying goods, mining, peeing, shopping, driving down roads, building houses, flying around the world, eating, drinking, playing and having sex.

8 Billion reasons why the rhino and elephant have no chance at all.

Stalked – a poem about overpopulation.

Posted on by Opher

Stalked

 

Stalked by our own virility

The cthonic monster of fertility

Will drown us in our own flesh.

 

The Malthusian oceans of humanity

Riding swells of pleasure and vanity

Have snared us in its mesh.

 

Like a flood

Inundating

The Earth

Sweeping all before it.

 

Like a fire

Consuming

The land

Turning it to ash

 

Like a plague

Infecting

The body

Dissolving the breath

 

Swamping everything

Reducing everything

Killing everything

In the pangs of pleasure.

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

The flood of humanity is consuming the earth, destroying the forests, slaughtering all creatures and leaving smog, pollution and devastation in their wake.

We are busy turning this beautiful green planet into a sterile ball of concrete, plastic and bacterial slime.

It’ll take us some time but the project is well under way.

Unless we put an end to this capitalist religious impetus for more, for growth and expansion we will destroy the very thing that gives us life and nourishes our souls.

Strange Days – a poem about life, trolls and purpose.

Posted on by Opher

Strange Days

 

It is a strange week that has tracked me down –

Full of poignancy and sadness.

The death of a friend, who had already long gone,

Cast adrift in the fog.

The news that another has but weeks to open her eyes here –

Who blithely jokes that at least she is spared

The agony of that same fog –

A fog that like a creeping funeral pall hangs over us all

Like the latest modern scourge.

And amid the ruminations and sad reflection

The words of strangers intrude,

Whose pleasure is to be found in rudeness;

Who play the same playground sad game

Of bullying and ridicule

And seek amusement in hurting others.

And I’m in no mood to respond

Or counter in kind,

But merely wonder at the sickness

That lies in the mind of men

Whose pleasure is but to destroy?

Ruefully looking back over the long furrows of time

Where the many seeds were sown with such great hope,

Seeds scattered in such love and joy,

Such expectation,

Now plants struggling to reach the light

Through the clutching grasp

Of the many weeds.

Yet still we trudge the land and plough

Though there are fewer of us

And no expectation of a good crop.

Wearily I pause to look back

Through the haze of distance

To the furrows ploughed

By my father and grandfather before me

Now smoothed by wind and rain

And returned to nature.

It is time to unwrap the sandwiches,

Take out the flask of coffee,

And sit a while

Else we miss the singing of the birds.

 

Opher 1.4.2018

 

 

It has been a week to make me think and reflect. The death of a friend from Alzheimer’s and the imminent death of another from cancer certainly focusses the mind on the worth of one’s life, the values one lives by, the nature of life and what we leave behind.

It was a week punctuated by the nasty unpleasantness of trolls on my blog seeking to upset, annoy and destroy. Their vindictiveness is symptomatic of these times. There is license to bully.

It puts things in perspective for me.

The reason why we do the things we do – for pleasure, fulfilment and altruism. So little will remain after we are gone. What is most important are the memories we hold in our heads and they will no longer exist. That is what is so terrible about dementia – it robs us of our greatest possession before we are even gone. That is why it is so feared.

All we have is the moment. We have to strive to appreciate it and not fill it with hate, destruction and nastiness. We have to live it to the full, seize all our opportunities and the hope that we can pass on something positive of our experience to the future.

There’s No Room – a poem about nature

Posted on by Opher

There’s no room

 

Pruned trees in rows,

Furrows in rows,

Houses in rows,

Brows in furrows,

There’s no room.

 

Pesticide clouds,

Smoke clouds,

Particle clouds,

Mushroom clouds,

Clouds in shrouds,

There’s no room.

 

Weeds eradicated,

Pest eradicated,

Vermin eradicated,

Eradicate the fate,

There’s no room.

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

There’s no room at the inn of nature. We’ve taken every available space.

A million weary creatures are looking for a place to lay their heads, find sustenance and give birth. They’re scratting around between the neat furrows of our lives and pawing over the detritus we leave in our wake.

Life is hard and getting harder.

Once they were part of a great cycle. They had their place. Now they are reduced to the position of pest and hounded for their lives. Each new year that passes brings another weapon to assail them with.

There is no place where they can belong.

The Human Tide

Posted on by Opher

The Human Tide

 

The human tide is springing high.

The love of babies a reason why.

The love of sex a pleasure for to die.

The family a disaster.

 

Opher 13.4.2018

 

 

I love babies – we all do. That’s the trouble. There’s too many of them.

We humans need things to live – room, food and water. In order to meet our needs we are chopping down the natural world and killing the wildlife. We use pesticides to protect our crops and maximize food production but it is killing off our bees and insects causing problems with pollination and starving to death the birds and animals that feed off them.

Our numbers are such that our impact is immense. Not only is it killing everything else off but it is altering the climate of the planet.

I love babies but it is time we reduced our numbers and became more responsible.

Northern Lights – a poem about a lightshow in the sky.

Posted on by Opher

Northern Lights

 

Psychedelic cascades

In scintillating clouds

Streaming through the sky

With mesmeric majesty

In illuminations of gaudy display

Of glorious flourescent waves.

Magnetic colours

Wafting on the solar breeze,

Crashing on the seas

Of the moon

As electrons shine

Particles charge from the sun

To excite the eye

And flow across the retina.

 

Opher 17.3.2018

 

 

 

Living in the North of England we are fortunate to occasionally get to see the Northern Lights. The sky puts on a lightshow of scintillation with sheets of fluorescent colour like a psychedelic lightshow. The sky glows and shimmers as the solar stream hits our outer atmosphere in a rage of ions, electrons and magnetic fury displayed in beauty.

The Pleasure of an Album

Posted on by Opher

The Pleasure of an Album

 

The excitement of anticipation as the heart rate speeds,

The eyes narrow at the eagerness of anticipation.

Sifting through the racks with narrowed eyes;

Lifting a discovery for closer inspection of the cover,

Flipping to check the track listing;

Gathering a selection with contained fervor;

An assortment of possibility from which to choose.

Then the angst of decision –

Followed by the despondency of loss

As the discarded are replaced with many a reflective vacillation.

Clutching the winner there is now impatience pervading the purchase,

As the money is paid and the album professionally wrapped within its paper wrapper and sealed with sellotape.

The return home is hurried and filled with nervous indecision.

Was the choice correct? What about the other fish?

Within the sanctum the treasure is unwrapped and the prize clutched and reexamined.

It is time to perform the ritual and extract the paper sleeve from within its cardboard resting place.

The black vinyl disc is extracted from the inner sleeve,

Held reverently, by its rim with two hands, up to the light to inspect the sanctity of the grooves, and approved.

When satisfied the disc is lowered so that peg and hole are aligned in erotic summary preparing for consummation.

The arm is raised with delicate concentration and deferentially lowered to apply needle to the outer blank vinyl, so carefully.

Breath is released as the success – a click followed by a satisfying hiss.

Then to sit back as the faint noise wends into the sound

And as it fills the room to immerse oneself in its thrall;

To study the artwork,

To flip the cover and read the track listing, then the liner notes.

To lose oneself, to submerge, to examine, to breathe in, to absorb the full package of art, information and sound as it embraces you in its multisensory, concentrated reverie.

For this is the pleasure of an album.

 

Opher 8.3.2018