The Bullet
Small, hard and metallic;
Very fast;
Designed to penetrate;
To rip, tear and shatter.
Propelled by great force;
An explosion.
Pointed, directed and triggered
Imagined,
Released and realised.
Through the air
Through skin,
Into muscle
Into bone
Into brain.
Created by man
To kill.
Opher 29.10.2023
We are very good at designing machines to hurt, torture and kill. We excel at it.
Out of the mind into reality;
A death machine.
Echoes of History
Echoes of history
Louder every day,
Leaving hungry children
Shivering in the dark.
Civilisation crumbles
Into choking dust;
Houses into rubble.
Missiles hit their mark.
Security an illusion
While tyrants rule.
Ruining the future;
Leaving choices stark.
Opher – 15.3.2021
It is incredibly disturbing to see Putin directing the destruction of a country.
Why do we do it?
We live in sophisticated cities with people working and playing, worrying about fashion and whether they can afford a better house or a new car. Every normal. Lives filled with trivia – the school run, the cinema, a trip out, planning holidays, shopping and cooking. Ordinary.
We live in countries where there are debates as to whether we can afford to repair potholes inroads or replace cladding on skyscrapers, to pay teachers and nurses a living wage, yet we can but multimillion pound tanks, missiles and aircraft.
On the whim of a despot we can turn whole cities into piles of rubble.
How many trillions wasted?
If a building collapses, trapping hundreds, it is a global catastrophe. Yet we can callously deliberately kill hundreds of thousands of women and children.
Civilisation is just a short holiday from carnage. Slaughter and destruction is the norm.
We are nasty little apes who pretend.
We are witnessing the reality of our nature. Humans are not very nice.
We can undo the damage that we are doing! There is hope!
We just need to stop electing greedy madmen like Putin, Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson.
Chainsaws and Gun Shots
Chainsaws and gunshots
Chainsaws and gunshots
Saw-teeth and bullets
Bangs and buzzes
Bangs and buzzes
Tearing into flesh
Death
Death
Death.
Opher 17.2.2021
I walk up my hill into the green manufacturing industry known as the countryside to the sound of multiple bangs and the chunter of chainsaws.
Every single day I hear the sound of shots.
The green fields have been blanket bombed with pesticide but even so, if anything dares to try to cling on to life it is blasted to hell.
I can hear the chainsaws attacking another tree. There are not too many of those left – little oasis in the green desert.
I’m walking in nature and listening to the relentless sound of death.
How Much is Money Worth?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a single tree?
A forest? Or a stream?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a single whale?
All the gorillas?
Or an orangutan, or a tiger?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a hurricane?
A flood or a drought?
Perhaps a forest fire?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a lung?
A plague?
A kidney or a life?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a single family?
Or a country?
A people or a planet?
What is the price of money?
Opher – 1.3.2020
We are already starting to pay the price for global warming. The climate is changing as a result of the things we are doing. The hurricanes, droughts, forest fires, floods, heatwaves and migrations.
Of course, there are those still in denial, who claim these are natural events and not a result of anything we are doing.
They are wrong.
The science tells us most clearly – unless we change our ways the worst is yet to come.
The deniers are leading us down a path to destruction!
History
Blood, pain and games
Down the desert wastes of history;
A struggle
For wealth and power
Where the winners
Write the wrongs
And most
Just disappear.
History:
To slay, torture and desire,
With impunity,
In a game
That has no rules;
Where compassion
Is a stranger.
Opher – 19.12.2019
History is no more than a record of the wealthy and powerful in their ridiculous games; tales of intrigue and cruelty, greed, passion and fury in which ordinary lives are of no consequence.
It is peppered with violence and ruled by the worst of human nature.
History is a record of our failure.
Futility of War
My grandfather fought in the trenches
With the gas, whizzbangs and machinegun rattle.
My father fought in the hills of Italy
With howitzers, tanks and the roar of battle.
Neither would talk of what they’d seen
Of friends mown down like cattle.
They’d both come to realise
That tales of bravery were mere tittle tattle.
The reality was luck
Nothing to do with valour at all.
I was the lucky one
I never had to fight
For Queen or country
Or see our cities set alight.
I never had to question
If this war was wrong or right.
I’ve spent my life in peace
And never had to fight.
For seventy four years that peace has held
The longest time in history.
But do we have to question why?
For it isn’t any mystery?
The United Nations
And the European Union
Have brought nations together,
Not in conflict, but communion.
Far better to talk and trade
In complex collaboration
Rather than to bomb and blast
And remain in isolation.
Opher – 1.10.2019.
Isn’t it obvious that it is better to have partnership and collaboration rather than conflict? Isn’t it obvious that it is better to trade and talk rather than quarrel and fight?
I think so.
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?
How many trees?
How many trees does it take
To make a human being?
How many fields to fill our stomachs
So we can go on breathing?
How many creatures lie
Under our tarmac roads?
How many deaths will it take
Before the planet implodes?
Yes – how many trees does it take?
Opher 26.4.2019
There are currently approaching 8 billion of us on this planet and each one of us is busy consuming – consuming land, water, air, finite mineral resources and killing plants and animals. Just by living.
The planet is not infinite. It is a finite web of life – tenuous and fragile.
We are a catastrophe.
The destruction of nature
Nature on the run
Chemical and gun
Sterilised and sanitised
All creatures despised.
Nature on the run.
Opher 20.3.2019
As we travelled around Morocco I was looking for the wildlife. You would think you’d see a few lizards. I didn’t see much of anything. It seemed devoid of insects too.
In the gardens there were some birds – little oasis of life amid the destruction of nature, but where was the rest of the wildlife?