Poetry -The Whole World

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The Whole World

One neurone – nothing.

Two neurones – nothing.

A hundred billion neurones in a network –

You have the whole world

And me.

Opher – 21.6.2019

I occasionally have a little awe and wonder to throw at consciousness. Our brain is a fabulous electric blancmange. Our consciousness is wondrous. It is great, every now and again, to stop and think about it.

That is amazing. A brain thinking about itself with the mechanisms for thought it possesses.

So little we understand – so much still to learn.

What is clear to me is that these 100 billion neurones, all strung together in a wondrous network, supported by hundreds of billions of glial cells, connected to a limited number of senses, perceiving a fraction of what is around us, are doing a fabulous job of creating both me and the universe!

Stupendous!

Here’s to consciousness!!

Poetry – Chimps with Large Brains

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Chimps with Large Brains

Chimps with large brains

And capricious natures

Stomping across the world

With no limiting legislature.

Out of control;

Without limits or empathy;

And for the rest of nature

There’s no sympathy.

Clearing the land

Of all that has life,

To create a plastic jungle

Where only problems are rife.

What are we doing?

Creating such ruin?

Is there no way out of this cul-de-sac?

Is there no way back?

Opher – 29.4.2019

We might have large brains but we sure don’t always do things intelligently. We are our world’s worst enemy.

With burgeoning numbers and careless disregard we are leaving a heap of problems in our wake.

Have we the intelligence to put it right?

Poetry – Nothing is Surplus

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Nothing is Surplus

Nothing is surplus

Nothing wasted

Nothing less

Nothing greater

From virus to dinosaur

It is all a piece

Within a giant jigsaw

Opher 23.6.2018

I am always amazed by the way nature interlocks. Evolution has filled every niche with the right choice. They are so complicated and sophisticated. Everything has its place.

More time than we can imagine has created such a wonderfully intricate jigsaw.

What distresses me most is the cavalier way we are dismantling it.

poetry – Every Stroke Kills

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Every Stroke Kills

In the wake of every stroke

Lies the ruins of many lives.

In the wake of every gouge

Lies a community destroyed.

Letter by letter

The epic story is untold.

Letter by letter

The greatest story is unwritten

Until the blank pages

Tell a different tale

Of what once was and is no more.

25.6.2018

We do not value the incredible miracle of life on this planet. We may be unique in this most enormous universe. Every single form of life may be utterly unique – every single cell the most amazing miracle. The utter improbability of life means that we should cherish every single cell.

Yet we treat life with such disdain. Insects, animals and plants are destroyed without thought. Every tree houses a community. Every stream and wood provides a million homes.

We chop down the trees and gouge up the soil without thought to the communities we destroy.

We are unwriting the greatest story ever written. It is becoming less by the minute. I wish we would change and learn to cherish every bit of it.

Poetry – Creativity is our only Salvation

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Creativity is our only Salvation

We have no hope

For we are brutes;

Savages with a lust

For cruelty and destruction.

We have no hope

For we would plunder

Rather than build,

Rape rather than love.

We have no hope

Because we would rather

Watch an act of cruelty

Than enjoy a scene of beauty.

We have no hope

For our instinct

Is always

Fear, hatred and retribution,

Rather than forgiveness

And a healing hand.

Creativity

Must be

Our only

Salvation.

Opher 4.6.2016

Creativity is our only Salvation

Evolution set loose a set of rabid apes to terrorise the planet. Intelligent monkeys whose deviousness and ingenuity has been deployed to kill, plunder and coerce.

Yet, in our schizophrenic madness, we are capable of love, art, poetry and altruism.

If we could only learn to master our baser instincts and give full reign to our higher attributes we could create a paradise for all; one in which all living creatures would have their place.

I put my faith in creativity.

Poetry – A Flash in the Pan

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A Flash in the Pan

We insanely think that everything will go on for ever as it is despite the lessons of history that tell us nothing ever does.

Our lives continue slowly down their path until a sudden event, a decision, a disease, a death, and they change forever.

Likewise it is with the history of the world.

Despite all the fossil record tells us we think we are here forever. We are not. We will one day be a seam of fossils in the rock strata. The thickness of the debris we leave behind will be determined by our own actions. That is the difference between us and all that has gone before.

We have the ability, through our innate intelligence, to determine our own fate.

The saddest thing is that despite that we seem intent on engineering our own demise. We steadfastly remain inept at addressing the problems that confront us. Instead of coming together as a species we remain apart as countries, companies and individuals vying, with voracity, for wealth and power in the face of the inevitable.

The Anthropocene Apocalypse looms and we seem incapable of breaking out of the selfish stupidity we are locked into.

The mantra is – ‘Expansion, growth and more!’ It should be ‘Together, intelligence and sanity!’

If we don’t change we will be a flash in the pan.


A Flash in the Pan

A flash in geology –

We came.

Held down by gravity.

We saw.

A species still in embryology.

We conquered.

With insane brevity.

Arrogant with no apology.

We knew.

Beset by depravity.

We grew.

Creating theology.

We thought

With undue voracity.

A chimp with ideas.

We flew.

Flawed with cruelty.

Right through.

Choosing a way of tears –

By choice.

Instead of what could be.

A narrow strip of rubble

We left

Hiding a sea of trouble

Created

By our unruly bubble

Bereft

On the shore of possibility.

Busy designing our own exit

With glee.

Blind with selfish greed

We ignored

The means to fix it.

The word

Was lost in the deed.

Opher 10.9.2015

Poetry – Once upon a time

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Once upon a time

A fairy tale with a happy ending.

Life’s slow evolution from such unlikely circumstance to the triumph of intelligence has to be the most remarkable story of all.

How life grew from slime to mankind without a pumpkin in sight, no fairy godmother and no wish. More remarkable than any genii in any bottle. More incredible than any story thought up by man. More wonderful than can be imagined. We are alive to look out at this incredible celestial infinity with minds enough to gasp and wish to understand.

That is my gift of a fairy tale. It is really called chance creation and evolution but I prefer to call it …. Once upon a time.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time

There was a tiny green jewel

That circled round a beautiful golden dawn.

It was on this viridian gem

That mankind was born.

Through multitudes

Of chance and death defying stance

Stretching all imagination

And every circumstance

We created this fascination.

Riding the realms of fire

Through the aeons of fury

Minds were forged that led to you and me,

Created this fantasy

And brought all life to be.

Step by slow step

Up the ladder we climbed

Blind, ignorant and by instinct primed

We sought to break the bonds

Through which we were confined.

With sight to see

We looked around with awe

At the celestial majesty outside our door

And sang a refrain upon the wind

From all the days of yore.

This is that song

Of wonder and delight

Sung to the rooftops of every resilient rafter

That we finally get it right and

All live happily ever after.

25.8.2015

Poetry – I’m a Bit of a Monkey

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I’m a Bit of a Monkey

We’re all bits of monkeys –

Monkeys that evolved into apes.

We monkey around all day

Performing the most incredible japes.

We’re the apes with the big brains and mean disposition,

The intelligence and altruism.

We’re the consciousness perfectors

And tax inspectors,

The apes that went to the moon.

We think we’re so clever, and we know it

Preening the remains of our hair,

Just to show it,

And prancing like overgrown loons.

I like melon and I like grape

I’m happy to be an ape.

Opher 15.8.2015

A Bit of a Monkey

My Mum always told me I was a bit of a monkey; little did she know.

We think that we’re so clever that we’re not even animals. We have been made by some divine hand from scratch.

But I know I’m an overgrown ape. I have all the DNA to prove it and no sign of an oversize finger-print.

I share a lot of my DNA with monkeys – we’re distant cousins.

Poetry – Monkey Business

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Monkey Business

Making love to a monkey who doesn’t think she’s a chimpanzee

Floating through the dust with a baby on my knee

Leaving signals in the wind for the other folks to see

That there’s nothing quite as smart as your average monkey

Frowning with consternation at the cosmic flow

Streaming from the arse of the ‘big bang’ below

With a monkey brain to fathom the bottomless low

And a population set to endlessly grow,

Yet I’m making love to another chimpanzee

Populating paradise with big bald monkeys

We’re taking over – temporarily

Floating monkey droppings in the big brown sea.

Opher 20.11.00

This is the age of the monkey. It looks set to be a brief interlude in the history of the planet. Most of the monkeys don’t even know they’re monkeys let alone where their arse is. You think they would. They talk out of it most of the time.

We are the fourth major cause of extinctions of species. The others were comets. We shot out of evolution like a meteor though. We’re still crashing our way through the planet.

We love sex. We love babies. We seem to hate other adults though.

On one side we are doing our best to churn out huge numbers of offspring and at the same time we’re busy pouring lead into older bodies or applying blades to the jugular.

Crazy monkey brains!

The first person in this poem refers to the race as a whole.

The short message is that there’s far too much monkey business!

Poetry – Mother

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Mother

Greens and Blues

And swirling white,

Ocean depths

Jagged heights,

Washed with heat

Bathed in light.

Spheres, spinning

Spiralling,

Worlds, evolving

Singing.

Within the

Green waters

Grew

Our sons and daughters.

Out and up

That tempting shore

Ancestors

With tooth and claw.

And we are here

To gaze in awe

At stars and space

The things of yore.

On spinning globes

In the greens and blues

We don our costumes

Of many hues,

Stare at that endless sky

And question why.

Opher – 18.11.2020

The story of life – played out all around us on the delicate crust of a tiny rock.

Nurtured by a star, travelling through space, fragile and vulnerable. We are life.

Evolved sufficiently to contemplate our own incredible existence, the wonder of an infinite universe and our own fates.