Poetry – Life that hopes

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Life that hopes

Light, heat and love,

Water and air,

Chemicals and proteins,

Feather, scale and hair;

Dreams and aspirations,

Hope

To dare to care.

Opher 18.5.2016

Life that hopes

We are all related – all life – all stemming from one single miraculous cell.

Evolution has caused us to fan out into a spectrum of possibility. Our variety is immense and wondrous.

We call ourselves nature.

We are not apart from nature, we are part.

I was thinking about the components of life when I wrote this poem. How, from the basic elements of water, chemistry, light, heat and air, we have evolved this amazing spectrum of complexity.

We dream and aspire to build, create and destroy. We kill and give life. We nurture and we inflict pain.

My wish is that I can but hope that our caring, tolerant, wise side will prevail over our cruel and vicious mean side.

It is the eternal battle of light and dark.

I can but offer hope. I think we’ll do it.

Poetry – Naïve

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Naïve

I’ve always been naïve.

It’s my greatest attribute.

Innocent and idealistic –

According to repute.

But I possess inbuilt cynicism

That I bring to bear.

It constrains my natural idealism

And makes me more aware.

Opher – 7.11.2020

My anger at what is happening around me, the wanton destruction, the control and manipulation, the propaganda and lies, the pillaging of nature, is underpinned by the vestiges of optimism.

Surely people care enough about nature to want to protect it?

Surely people aren’t stupid enough to allow conmen and media lies to dictate their views?

My hope lies in education – good education that enables individuals to discern and think.

Poetry – The Only Game In Town

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The Only Game In Town

Starting out on the fertile plains,

Stifling, holding us down,

Like smothering glue.

Spreading – like a pandemic – quickly,

Infecting the whole planet.

Robbing us of freedom,

Inoculating us with madness,

Imposing hierarchy,

Now too late for us to ban it.

With eight billion progeny

Enslaved within the enterprise

We laughingly call progress,

We are trapped.

Worshipping the diety

Entombed in the cathedral of the WTO,

From which there is no egress.

We can only observe with mounting sadness

As the machine devours

The very earth we stand upon

Trees and creatures

Transformed into worthless cash.

With nothing left to hand on.

In goes life

Out comes plastic

Concrete and sterility.

Transforming

Life to death

The opposite of fertility.

It’s the only game in town.

Opher – 7.11.2020

When we invented agriculture we had no idea what a mess we would be getting ourselves into. We did not realise we’d be inventing kings, religions, nations, wars and money. We thought we were making life easier and more secure.

We lost our relationship with nature, our place in the cycle. We lost harmony and hope. We gained toil, debt and bosses.

The tipping point is long past. There is no return. Eight billion people cannot live as we once lived. The machine is all-consuming.

When it has devoured the planet it will consume us.

Poetry – A direction of merriment.

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A direction of merriment.

The last leaf fell from the last tree.

The last fish sank in the stagnant sea.

The last animal succumbed in great hurt.

The last human sat in her plastic desert.

The world took a deep breath

Took note of the winds of death.

Abandoned the doomed experiment

In favour of a direction of merriment.

Opher – 28.10.2020

It would be good to think of Gaia directing operations, the planet alive. But that’s a dream.

One day the last leaf will fall. I just hope it is not of our doing.

We are proving to be a complete disaster.

Poetry – The Merry-Go-Round

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The Merry-Go-Round

We’re spinning around

On a giant cosmic merry-go-round.

Everything changes

But comes back to the same place,

Slightly different.

There is a new start,

A chance to create something better.

The cycle is turning,

A new age beginning.

Time to be effervescent.

Breathe in the optimism,

The end of division,

As the positive ions

Flood the zeitgeist

Making everything pleasant.

Opher – 9.10.2020

It feels to me as if we’ve been through a terrible negative cycle – a time of war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, environmental catastrophe, climate change and mass migration. We live in a world driven by massive inequality, greed and poverty.

It has resulted in us electing populist leaders, Brexit, distrust, lies, fake news and division. Leaders stoke up the fear and hate for their own ends. There is smoke on the air from the riots and forest fires.

But I can smell something better on the wind, something sweet. It’s the wind of hope, the wind of change.

I think that we can come together to solve the problems and build something so much better.

The merry-go-round is turning. Times are changing. The zeitgeist is becoming more positive. We’re entering into a new age.

Things are good and getting better!! The old days were not as good as we like to think.

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I think we look back to the days of our youth with nostalgic affection. Those were the days of optimism, possibility, idealism and passion. Those were days of love and opportunity. We stood on the threshold and looked forward to an endless array of wonderful things.

Now we are older and our life is mainly behind us. The future does not look so rosy.

But were things really better back then? No. I think not.

I was brought up in the post-war days and played on bomb-sites. The economy was rubbish. We had just come out of rationing. But the Labour Government had brought in the wonderful NHS, schooling was improving and they were fighting for a fair wage and better working conditions. They were clawing some social justice from the establishment.

What my generation had was vastly better than my Mum’s generation. She lived through real poverty with families living on starvation diets, sewn into clothes for winter, sharing shoes or having rags tied round their feet in the snow, having terrible education in classes of fifty plus and not being able to afford a doctor. There were large families where death was a regular visitor.

I grew up in much better conditions than that. We had the NHS, antibiotics, class sizes under thirty, refrigerators, a black and white telly, but there were no fitted carpets, telephones or central heating.

Now we have better wages, a whole range of luxury goods – fridges, washing machines, computers, colour TVs, dishwashers, mobile phones, entertainment systems, cameras, and a thousand more. My house is crammed with devices and stuff. I can travel abroad and buy experiences.

I think we take it for granted. I think we have selective memory.

The past was not really so great. The future is looking bright. Not all politicians are greedy, selfish bastards with their snouts in the trough. Some are idealists who are still looking for ways to make life better.

Perhaps it is time to be more optimistic? After the megalomania of Trump and the establishment loving Tories there might be a new age with idealistic politicians who will dump the establishment and forge a better world.

Where we are is pretty good. I think we should appreciate it more. It was hard fought for.