Poetry – Flaws

Posted on by Opher

Flaws

Every diamond is ripped by a flaw.

                Every house has a twisted front door.

Every DNA has a mutated gene.

                Every human being has a side unseen.

Every dream has a nightmare inside.

                When the flaw shows its face

                                There’s nowhere to hide.

When the game plays out

                The rules are put aside;

                                The doors are kicked in

                                                And terrors open wide.

Words and bullets,

                Missiles and bombs.

Lies and deception

                From computer roms.

Bodies in the street,

                Pawns in the game,

Power and status

                In the leader’s name.

When the flaw shows through

                In war’s unholy din

There’s no safe house;

                The nightmare begins.

Opher – 14.3.2022

I used to think that human beings are alright, that I could be friends with everyone, that if I was in need there would always be someone there to help me.

That is probably true for the most part.

But there is a flaw in human nature. It’s set in our DNA.

We get angry easily. We become violent. We mindlessly adhere to tribal views. We can be so cold, cruel and heartless.

Scratch beneath the surface and we can become horrid killers and torturers.

That flaw comes out in every race, every culture. It doesn’t take much. Religion, politics or fear can spark it off. Fear of the unknown, hatred towards strangers. We are suffused with racism, xenophobia and primitive tribalism.

It makes us nasty.

We attack each other on the merest of pretexts. We systematically, calculatedly kill and maim. We rape, torture and destroy and feel totally justified.

We ill-treat animals, play with them and enjoy inflicting agony.

We are hopelessly flawed.

The love, friendship and compassion cannot compensate enough. We are a danger to ourselves and all life on this planet.

The flaws are too big!

Marina Ovsyannikova – One of the bravest!!

Posted on by Opher

Some brave people fight on the front line. Some brave people help the wounded and carry them to safety. Some brave people seek out danger to report what is going on.

Marina deliberately, premeditatively, went and took on the Putin regime when she knew what the outcome would be. By doing so she would throw away her future, end up imprisoned for years and likely be brutally treated. That is bravery!!

As an employee of the news station, she invaded the studio to hold up a placard during the live propaganda broadcast busy telling lies and masquerading as news!!

The placard was simple-

‘Stop The War!! No To War’

‘Don’t Believe The Propaganda. They are lying to you!!

She backed that up with a prerecorded message that she put out on social media!!

This brave woman has risked her life to tell the truth!!

I hope the Russian people listen, take on board what she is saying, and rise up against Putin and his bloated oligarchs. They have been exploiting the Russian people and robbing them blind. Putin and his multi-billionaire oligarchs are about as far away from the ideals of communism as they can get. The Czars were better than this.

It’s time that Russia came back into Europe and is no longer the enemy! We want Russia in the EU as a normal country.

We want the zombified Russian people to wake up and become prosperous.

Put an end to propaganda!! Put an end to Putin!!

Thank you brave Marina!!

Poetry – Changes

Posted on by Opher

Changes

Changes,

                Fits and starts,

A sniper and a Duke,

                Planes and towers,

Invasions,

                Bodies in the streets.

The world changes

                In sudden jerks.

                                It jumps.

Things are rarely the same for long.

Like a record

                Jumping between tracks.

Once it has jumped

                It can never go back.

Nothing will ever be the same.

                Lurching forwards

                                As events mutate

As decisions made by a few

                Dictate the lives

                                Of billions.

But not everything changes

                Some things stay the same.

Opher – 13.3.2022

Looking back through life one can see everything flowing along smoothly until, every now and then, there is a sudden jerk that changes things forever.

A sniper’s bullet killing an Archduke in Serbia leading to the First World War, the planes flying into the twin towers sparking waves of terrorism and horrendous wars that still resound through Brexit and Trump, now Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

History jumps into something different in an instant.

Poetry – Bodies in the street

Posted on by Opher

Bodies in the street

The last touch

                Before they left the universe;

The last touch

                Before they are gone forever,

Was the frozen hard ground.

Bodies abandoned

                In the street

                                With no-one to care,

No-one to provide that final embrace.

Left to freeze

                In the icy street

                                With no warmth

In those last seconds;

                No human touch

                                No final goodbye.

Opher – 13.3.2022

I wrote this in response to the scenes of Russian soldiers left strewn across a city street, abandoned and uncared for.

Their body heat seeps into the ground until they become frozen lifeless lumps of meat.

They, and the thousands of Ukrainian citizens and soldiers killed by the Russians, were disposed of in mass graves dug by machines.

Death has lost all humanity.

Petra – A final goodbye

Posted on by Opher

It would have been great to see the place before it was desecrated by the fanatical Muslims who shot all the statues to pieces.

With one last look (it’s unlikely we’ll ever go back – we’ve been lucky enough to visit twice) we set off back up the cleft.

Petra – Heading out

Posted on by Opher

We clambered down from the spectacular caves, walked past the Monastery with its host of tourists, and headed for the cleft – fully sated!

What a wonderful place!

Today’s Music to keep me SsSsaaaaNNnneEe in Isolation – James Brown – Think!

Posted on by Opher

I felt like I needed a bit of Funk to cheer me up as Putin slaughters people in Ukraine and builds a new Iron Curtain. It starts with Think!!

That seems appropriate as Putin tears apart Europe!

Poetry – Incomprehensible – How Amazing!

Posted on by Opher

Incomprehensible – How Amazing!

Incomprehensible unlikelihood,

Unbelievable immensity,

Improbable developments,

In the midst of nothing,

Out of nowhere,

Going all ways

At once.

How Amazing!

Contemplating, calibrating,

Understanding, thinking,

Investigating;

With a pink jelly

Infused with electricity

Creating reality

Out of nothing;

Beyond understanding.

How Amazing!

Opher – 3.5.2020

I keep going back to the big questions. Where do we come from? How big is infinity? How is something created out of nothing? How do our brains enable us to think? What is reality?

Some contemplate these things and turn to religion for answers.

I do not.

I think religion has no answers.

Perhaps the answers are too weird?

Science only tells a partial picture.

All I can say when I look out at the cosmos, at the creation of life, the evolution of life or our own minds, is WOW!! How Amazing!

That might be enough.

Poetry – Nature’s Rainbow

Posted on by Opher

Nature’s Rainbow

Yellow, blue, white and pink,

Glittering between shades of green,

Under blue sky,

Yellow sun,

And white clouds;

As Spring explodes in colour.

In the trees, the hedgerows

And verges,

They purvey their scent

To attract and seduce

With UV tracks,

Nectaries,

And lively pallor.

Insects, birds, rabbits

And hares

Go about their business

In this new land of plenty

After months

Of slim pickings.

Opher – 3.5.2020

After the grey days of winter nature explodes into colour as the brown soil and skeletons of trees erupt in buds, leaves and flowers.

It is as if nature is providing its own rainbow.

This is a time of renewal, a time of plenty.

It is a joy to watch.

Star – A Sci-fi novel – An intergalactic Rock Star meets his fate.

Posted on by Opher

Star

 

It’s the sixties – the three thousand one hundred and sixties.

The Federation is in conflict with the Confederation.

The Troman war rages …

There is a civil rights issue with the Androvians.

Young people all across the galaxy are in revolt. Rock Music, on an intergalactic scale, is the medium of the rebellion.

Zargos Ecstasy and the Terminal Brain Grope are providing the impetus for the rebellion.

Zargos, a larger than life character based on Bob Dylan, Hendrix, Jagger, Jim Morrison and Bowie, struts the stage, putting his poems to music and rousing the spacefreaks to seek social justice.

If you lived through the sixties you’ll recognise it all.

Extract

The beginning

Hilan Hilzar sat back into the posture form sensopadding of his couch seat. He was so full of tension that the living contouring did little to reduce the tightness of his muscles. He could not relax. The huge effort of holding back the excitement was making is body rigid. His mind was clamping down on his torso like a crushing weight so that the pressure welled up inside him. His heart felt swollen, writhing around in his chest. His flesh was actually jumping and twitching as if some high voltage current was flowing through his veins. He was worried that it would trigger the seat’s resuscitation unit. It might consider him at risk and ping him with a sedative.

For weeks now his whole existence seemed to have been building up to this climax. At first it had all seemed unreal – an eternity away. It had crawled towards him at a krank-snail’s pace; like it would never arrive. It had devoured his concentration leaving him unable to think of anything else. Then it had simply rushed and the impossible day had arrived.

The journey here was a haze of unreality. He had spent the entire time peering around himself in disbelief. It could not really be happening. Reality was divorced from the evidence of his senses.

He sat back into the seat and took a deep breath as the sensopadding rippled calmingly around him. His mind refused to operate properly. Only fragments of the journey were registering. He’d been in a dream. It was a wonder that he had got here at all. He had vague recollections of boarding the ship and then the jump. Somehow the surge had only barely registered at all. Who could believe that? He had burned through the colour shifts with all the interest of a veteran traveller or some spoilt rich kid to whom hyperspace was a regular event. Instead of being astounded by the brilliance he had just wanted it to end; to arrive. His mind had not been there at all. Even the re-entry was just a dream that washed over him. It was almost forgotten. It meant nothing. His mind was already ahead of him, dancing at his destination. In his head he was already there. This entire journey, no matter how amazing, had been no more than a necessary nuisance to be endured. The terminal had been awash with a multitude of beings as aliens mingled with humans and he allowed himself to be wafted along with the flood of the crowd. They were borne along on a babbling sea of excitement that engulfed them all.

It was as if he only really awoke when he entered the arena. He stood for a minute open-mouthed as the crowd washed past him, boggling at the immensity of it. He was here. He really was. Only then did he dare to let himself believe. He allowed himself to look around as he was checked by an automated usher, conveyed and deposited into his allocated seat. All the while he had been in a trance.

As he came to, excitement welled up inside him as he accepted that he was actually here. He had made it. He bounced to his feet and found himself jumping up and down madly waving to the various groups of friends in his immediate vicinity, the same friends he had not even registered on his journey here.

After a while he had calmed down sufficiently to settle back down into his seat. He could barely contain himself. There were still hours to wait.

A sun was up casting hard sharp shadows. The sky glowed with a deep violet blue bathing the audience with its soft gleam. It would be nightfall before anything happened. He forced himself to calm down. His body would surely give out if it continued at this pitch. He did not want to burn out before it even started.

The sun set below the curved horizon leaving a crystal clear void sprinkled with a billion stars like fine salt on black obsidian. They hung like a pall of smoke over the crowd. There were no gaps between the specks just differences of intensity. It was so clear that one could imagine there was no air or Plexiglas between them. It made him aware that this was a moon; no planet could possibly have created such clarity.

Hilan decided it was time to drop his tablet of Amaz.

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