Poetry – Hate

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Hate

Hate for the heretic.

Hate for the non-believer.

Hate for the apostate.

Hate for the deceiver.

Hate for the foreigner.

Hate for a colour.

Hate for everything

Makes the world so much duller.

There’s a world run on hate and fear.

Love and tolerance for the different –

Celebrate – and why not?

For who preaches all this hate?

And what do they want?

Opher 18.4.2016

Hate

It seems to me that behind all the hate are people stirring it up, feeding in the lies, poking for an opening.

They have their reasons.

Perhaps it is about power?

Perhaps they enjoy cruelty?

Perhaps they gain pleasure out of chaos and misery.

The psychopaths and sociopaths are full of self-importance and hatred.

It is so easy to create. Yet what does it achieve? Division, war and cruelty.

So who are these preachers of hatred?

Isn’t it time we told them all to simply desist?

Tolerance, love and brother/sisterhood – that is what I preach.

Poetry – Hand full of gimme.

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Hand full of gimme.

I was talking to a banker

                On a train

                                Into the city.

I asked him why he did it

                He looked at me

                                With pity.

Looking down his nose

                At my

                                Colourful attire

Like I was burning all his principles

                On a flaming

                                Sacred pyre.

His face was a screwed up

                As if I’d killed a holy cow.

He had a hand full of gimme

                A mouth full of now.

Opher – 17.3.2021

I am always bemused as to why anybody would want to spend their life simply trying to accumulate money. It seems so pointless.

Yes – I can understand why someone might want to have wealth in order to afford luxury, but this is something else.

It is not that they wish to live in comfort or enjoy life to the full; it is an obsession with accumulating more.

They do not work in order to live; they work in order to gain more wealth.

I think it all comes down to the basic principle of what one chooses to do with one’s life. We all live by a philosophy.

Simply accumulating wealth is cold and empty.

Life is for living. Money is simply a means, not an end.

The Corona Diaries – Day 360

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An overcast day with a hint of rain but it did not deter me from walking up my hill. I heard my greater spotted woodpecker hammering his drumbeat in the woods and my pair of red kites flew low over the trees.

Back home I’ve been dithering about, writing a little poetry and listening to Love’s Da Capo. I can’t seem to settle to do much today.

I think the mess the country is in with Brexit, the way the Tories are getting away with murder and this covid fiasco all rather depressing. They’ve loaded the media, have the tabloid press under their thumb, are doshing out money to their chums while cutting public services and nobody seems bothered. They are still 6% clear in the polls. That makes me fear for the intelligence or morality of the electorate.

What do they have to do for the electorate to wake up? Where is Starmer?

I simply can’t settle to do any writing. I might go and read.

Here in the UK we’re preparing to open up and come out of lockdown. That’s a worry. Although the rates have come right down they are still stubbornly at 5,758 new cases. That is a large base for the virus. It could very easily start spreading quickly is there is a lot of contact. Our pathetic T&T is nowhere on top of it. I suppose they are working on the principle that the most vulnerable are now vaccinated and safe. The NHS are no longer likely to be overwhelmed with severe cases even if the numbers of new infections go through the roof. They are throwing the antivaxxers to the wolves.

It’s the same in the USA.

In Brazil the virus is still going berserk. Cases have risen to 83,926 with 2,648 deaths yesterday. I do hope that isn’t this new variant taking off. From what I understand the vaccine doesn’t work on it. We don’t need that coming over here!!

New Zealand had no new vases and Vietnam just 7. They continue to show how it should be done. And no – it’s not just that they are off the beaten track – it’s because they used the right strategies.

The vaccine passport is already taking shape. The EU is getting a passport together. We’ll see it more and more.

The toxic relationship that Johnson has generated with the EU has already decimated our trade and ended up with us being taken to court for breaking international law, is now looking like messing our vaccination programme up. The EU is not doing well on vaccines. Their silly stance on the AstraZeneca vaccine (more political than medical) means they have millions of doses sitting in fridges rather than it arms while the virus is taking off again. Politicians are stupid. They are planning to stop us getting the vaccines through.

The red tape is putting up the cost of cheese and wine. Livestock can’t move. There are queues and checks. What a mess.

Meanwhile, our clown is trying to set up deals with China and India to plug the gap. I’m wondering what Indian wine and cheese tastes like??? I suppose that with global warming we’ll be able to produce our own.

So I’m left wondering if I’m going to get my second jab????

I can’t think why I’m feeling a bit out of salts today! I need a pick-me-up!!

Stay safe.

Poetry – A Question of Priorities

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A Question of Priorities

There’s one percent for caring

And forty-four for war.

There’s a wall instead of sharing

And a world outside the door.

Millions for profiteering

Cuts for the poor.

Opher 18.3.2021

I am really beginning to dislike the ethos of this country. It used to be outward looking, honest and trustworthy. It used to offer refuge and a helping hand.

What we have now is a narrow-minded, insular, little Britain – inward looking and nasty.

We have a government that lies, breaks international law and is destroying cooperation and trust in the name of petty nationalism.

They promote inequality with blatant cronyism and disregard.

I despise their arrogance.

They offer 1% pay ‘rise’ to those who risk their lives while doling out millions to Tory donors who are blatant profiteers. They then propose to waste billions on a 44% increase in nuclear weapons.

They insult our friends and suck up to tyrants and despots.

They disgust me. The people who support them disgust me.

Today’s Music to keep me SssSAAaaAnnnNEEE in Isolation – Love – Da Capo

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I always thought of this as Love’s Punk album. It’s full of anger and passion.

7 and 7 Is-Da Capo-Love(1967) – YouTube

Stephanie Knows Who (LP / Stereo Version) – YouTube

The Castle – Love – YouTube

Love – Orange Skies – YouTube

Love – Revelation – YouTube

China – Guilin by night – Photos

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The place was lit up like Disneyland!

China – Guilin – Photos

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I used to think that the willow-pattern mountains were highly stylized until I went to Guilin.

Pelicans in Peru – Photos

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We were heading off to the Ballesteros islands and had a boat leaving from a fishing port. There were numerous pelicans hanging around scrounging fish off the fishing fleet.

Poetry – I write letters

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I write letters

I write letters.

I push the key and they appear

By magic on my screen.

I arrange them

In my thoughts,

In patterns I have learned;

In words.

And those words appear

Like magic

In my mind.

Each one a thought, an idea

A meaning.

Somewhere in my head

I find the feelings, dreams and thoughts

And reduce them into words.

I put the words on my screen

For you to read

In the hopes

That they explode

Inside your head

Into the same feelings, dreams and thoughts

That were in mine.

It is a vain hope.

So I spend my time

Hopelessly

Writing letters.

Opher 18.4.2016

I write letters

There are wondrous processes at work that are so complex.

Consciousness.

I often wonder what my thoughts would be if nobody had invented language, if they were left to be more abstract?

I wonder what a mind can think if it was cut off from the world?

I wonder if I think in words?

What are my thoughts, feelings and ideas?

I take a thought and reduce it into words. Each one of those words has a different meaning, nuance, feel and picture to you.

We communicate.

But how good is our communication?

I write letters into words and words into sentences and paragraphs. Each word is merely a symbol we have learnt. But can I really communicate the extent of what is in my head no matter how hard I try, how good I am with words?

Perhaps I am really only writing letters?

Poetry – From there to here in a breath

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From there to here in a breath

Form horse and cart

To space shuttle.

From dirt road

To motorway.

From stretched paper,

Line and prop

To turbojet.

From gaslight

To electrical appliance.

From unshod feet

To fashion shoes to throw.

From the soils of the earth

To the dust of the moon.

From an early bed

To late night TV.

From starving children here

To starving children there.

From one war

To a host more.

From a switchboard

And black Bakelite phone

To text and go.

From a letter on a horse

To an email.

From a reference book

To Wikipedia.

From a village

To the world.

It’s a long way to travel

In a single life.

Opher 18.4.2014

From there to here in a breath

I was recalling the tales told to me by my grandmother. She saw the first cars and the space shuttle. She talked of the first planes made of paper, wood, wires and a propeller that crawled across the skies.

My mother talked of children playing in the streets without shoes, having their feet bound in rags for winter; of people being sewn into their clothes for winter.

I remember the milk and coal being delivered by horse and cart, the man coming round to light the street gaslights.

In the sixties the first computers the size of rooms running on cut-out cardboard.

Will there ever be a time when things have changed so much?

For centuries people went on doing things in the same old way. The pace of life was slow and change unheard of. Then the industrial revolution, invention and capitalism; the speed increased. It was all about progress – which basically meant someone making money. The rate of change has been stupendous. You blink and the world has changed.

Is it good?