Desperate for some real change!!

Posted on by Opher

I hope Starmer has the energy and the Tory media don’t find a way to distort everything. They are sure playing safe! I hope….. I just hope!!

How I wish for a Corbyn-style manifesto – renationalising, mending the broken public services. But I guess we have to cut our cloth accordingly. Fourteen years of chaos, extremism, austerity and greed has completely wrecked our public services and broken Britain. It’s going to take some repairing. I’ll vote for anyone who will get rid of the corrupt, useless Tories and begin that regeneration.

I dare say the Tory media will do their damnedest to undermine Labour and sweep all the Tory greed and corruption under the carpet. That’s why they are playing safe.

I despair at the stupidity of the electorate. They are so gullible!

When the hell are we going to start talking about the disaster of the Tory Brexit, get back in the Single Market and Custom’s Union and get Britain’s economy back on its feet?? We’re nuts!! Surely the racists and xenophobes can’t set this agenda? Common sense and compassion are British traits!! We are killing our economy!!

Keep going Starmer!! You’re not my choice but we need you!!

Poetry – Change will Come!!

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Change will Come!!

I smell it on the breeze –

The changing of the guard!

A new age hanging on the wind,

Soaring on the thermals,

Swooping to infect us with its hope!!

Can’t you smell it?

An age of compassion! An age of care!!

It is galloping down the valleys,

Thundering across the plains,

Rampaging through the cities,

Sweeping all before it!

It is sweeping away the canker,

Washing faeces out of minds,

Driving away the aroma of greed,

Smashing the icons of selfishness,

Striding forward with a tsunami of hope!

Like a hammer!

Like a bomb!

Like a nuclear burst!

Like a galactic explosion!

It roars in our minds.

It is the force of change!!

The force of change!!

Nothing can resist!!

It has woken minds from their slumber!

It has unleashed a dragon!

It has opened the door to the magic within!

It is screaming equality!

It is shouting for fairness!

It is blaring love!

It is yelling for change!

It is signalling hope!!

It is pointing to a new future!

A new deal with nature!

A new beginning!

Change will come!!

Change will cleanse us of populist hypocrisy!

Change brings new hope!

We’re building the future!

We’re building a better world

Change will come!!

Change will come!!

Opher – 8.6.2020

I can smell the change – the end of populism! Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro are on their way out!

Their lies, racism, ineptitude, division, fear and hate is going to be replaced by a new age of reasoned thought, compassion, empathy, tolerance and love.

The zeitgeist is changing!!

Hope has been born.

Trump and Johnson will soon be history.

Poetry – Loss and Gain

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Loss and Gain

Every step is loss and gain.

Progress is never painless

We always leave some things of worth.

Choice is often brainless.

Relentless drive towards a future

Losing respect for the past.

Grasping out in one mad rush

For things that will not last.

Opher 29.7.2018

I wrote this in response to the madness of Brexit – people lusting back for an age that never existed when everything was wonderful.

Yet there are things in the past that were valuable and have been lost. Progress is never all for the better. But nostalgia never sees the terrible reality of the past either.

Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle… Black Elk

Posted on by Opher

We are all part of the circle of life!!

‘Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle… The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were… and so it is in everything where power moves.’

Black Elk [Heȟáka Sápa]

The populist cycle of division and hate, based on fear and racism, is coming to an end. We need to build a new arc of cooperation, compassion and empathy.

We are entering a new phase of the endless cycle. Everything passes.

Poetry – Long Ago

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Long Ago

Long ago my brain was sharp,

                Memories were clear,

                                Nothing was lost.

Every book, film and name,

                Every incident,

                                The facts tripped straight to the tongue;

Words appeared by magic.

                All so easy.

                                I could picture all of life

In cinematic colour.

Now,

                                Now I take photographs.

Opher – 14.1.2020

I always thought those memories would last forever. Now I know different. They fade away and leave holes in your life.

We recreate our memories.

Our memories are who we are.

Yet they are not real. We make them up as we go along.

I now wish I’d kept a journal. It would recreate the past; help bring back the lost memories.

But the person who lived back then was a different person.

Nowadays I don’t trust my memory at all. I know it is a lie. So I take photographs of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

But I suspect that photographs change with time.

I have no way of knowing.

Poetry – I Do Not Believe That!

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I Do Not Believe That!

It is the way it has always been.

You cannot change it.

I don’t believe that!

We will always have the poor.

You have to look after yourself.

I don’t believe that!

Build walls to protect what we have.

Keep them out.

I don’t believe that!

Some nations are better than others.

We are better than you.

I don’t believe that!

Some people are better than others.

They deserve it.

I don’t believe that!

Some believe profit before people.

That the world is there to abuse.

I don’t believe that!

21.11.2019

I believe we have the power to bring about change. We can control our numbers. We can stop destroying nature. We can live in harmony. We can have a prosperous global society with far greater equality, where nobody is abandoned, nobody lives in sewage, nobody is a pauper.

We have just got our values wrong.

We do put profit before people.

We do not protect nature.

We are too greedy.

Billionaires and paupers – it is not the way to live.

We can change it.

We can.

Change

Posted on by Opher

Change

Got any change Mister?

Change is all there is

In this fragile life

Nothing real can stay

Our atoms stick

Then melt and part

And travel on their way

Opher 27.5.99

Poetry – Peace and Comfort

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Peace and Comfort

Peace and comfort –

A mere interlude.

Yet it feels permanent

Though it is fleeting.

Change is reality.

All that is calm

Is destined

To become turbulent.

But every storm passes

And can leave

A glorious serenity

In its wake.

We have spent our life in the eye of such a storm.

It is incumbent on us

To appreciate every moment,

Make the most of every opportunity,

Appreciate every last instant,

Of our good fortune.

Already hands are at work

To stir the winds

And smash our ships

Upon the rocks.

Reality is nearly upon us,

For we live

Within a fragile eye.

Opher – 14.10.2019

For seventy years our cities have been built in peace. They have not burnt.

For seventy years the imperfections of the UN, the EU and NATO have maintained a delicate peace.

Through trade, collaboration, travel and partnership we have held back the xenophobic racism of our own nature.

All around the turbulence rages and has not touched us.

Now the glue is being melted and all that has maintained this fragile unreality is dissolving.

Poetry – Choices

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Choices

We stand at the apex of choice.

The road ahead forks.

The main track is clear,

More of the same,

As the trees dwindle

And the bird song dies

It becomes quiet.

To the side

There is a route that is verdant;

Alive with wings and rustles.

We have a choice.

Each decision has a cost.

Opher – 24.7.2019

We are trundling along on a juggernaut whose maw is gobbling up all before it and churning out plastic goods in its wake.

There is a decision to be made.

Poetry – Living in a fulcrum.

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Living in a fulcrum.

It feels like the world is turning.

We’ve reached the tipping point

We are being pulled in different ways.

The universe is out of joint.

On one side the Trumpists and deniers

Telling us it isn’t so.

On the other there’s Extinction Rebellion

Pointing the way to go.

We’re being fed the propaganda

From the Brietbart prophet.

Whose only god is power

And whose sacrament is profit.

The politicians are floundering

All they care about is votes.

What happens to the orangutans,

Is measured in bank notes.

Yet the young are rising up

And making their voices heard.

They want a brighter future

And will have the final word.

The world is turning on a fulcrum;

No telling where it will go.

For sanity or complacency?

Only the future knows.

Opher 6.5.2019

I’m listening to the young who have their fingers on the pulse. They are not believing the lies put out by those who are profiting from the destruction of nature.

They know the pesticides are causing mass destruction of all insects from bees to butterflies.

They know our beautiful iconic species – the rhinos, elephants, gorillas, chimps, giraffe, lions, whales and tigers – are being hunted to extinction.

They know our rainforests are being chopped down.

They know our ice-caps are melting.

They know our climate is changing.

They know we are selling the future for today.

They know who is profiting from this wholesale destruction.

They want it stopped.

We are at a tipping point, sitting on our fulcrum. Which way will it go?