The Wisdom of Mankind

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The Wisdom of Mankind

Bombing hospitals

                Bombing schools

Blowing little children

                To glutinous pools.

That’s what research

                Is aiming for

                                All Man’s ingenuity –

                                                The wiles of war.

Opher – 18.4.2025

Isn’t it incredibly sad that we use science, technology and all our creativity in this way?

All over the world, in secret labs, our cleverest people are paid to devise ever nastier ways of killing other people.

All those dollars spent on death.

At this minute politicians are plotting who to attack, Generals are identifying targets. Schools, hospitals, residential blocks, clinics and electricity stations are targeted. Children and women are fair game.

Destroy resolve; destroy spirits.

It’s evil.

Just imagine if all that money could be used to deal with poverty, inequality and the creation of a less polluted world.

Just imagine if we used our greatest minds to find solutions to all our problems.

What a world we would live in.

Instead….

Man

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So What was Mankind’s greatest invention?

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Fire??

Language??

Medicine??

Education??

Art??

The wheel??

Vaccination??

Music??

Soap??

The combustion engine??

Dance??

The microscope??

Harnessing electricity??

Writing/reading??

Ice-cream??

Cement??

The telescope??

Comedy??

Poetry – In the heat of Battle

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In the heat of Battle

In the heat of battle,

As the storm beats against the windows,

Outside it is dark, drear and dangerous.

The hurricane is raging,

Using wind as a weapon,

Death in a breath.,

Leaving wreckage in its wake.

Here, in isolation,

We are safe,

Safe until we have to venture out.

Opher – 16.4.2020

There is only so long you can take refuge. The outside world intrudes.

Hidden on the wind, in the touch of a hand, is death.

We are not used to these storms. They were what used to happen long ago. We’ve read about them in history books. Now we are living history.

Poetry – The Day Will Come

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The Day Will Come

The day came

When the last bird croaked;

When the last breath

Of fresh air

Blew across the last blade of grass;

And everyone walked about

In protective suits,

Breathing manufactured air

Pumped in

From the chemical plants.

But they were no longer human.

Opher – 24.7.2019

The day will come.

We are laying down the framework for the future. It can be whatever we want. But instead of making sensible decisions we are drifting along in a consumer nightmare. Mindlessly we are stumbling like sheep towards the abattoir. The day will come but we don’t have to help it on its way.

Poetry – Is it Dawn?

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Is it Dawn?

Is it the dawn or the dusk

That I am seeing?

A birth or a death?

Are we digging graves

Or foundations?

Do we have a day

In which to live?

Or a night in which

To sleep forever?

Opher – 1.5.2019

Looking at mankind, such a recent species, I am undecided about our future. Are we still in the early stages of a long and illustrious time upon this planet? Or are we already in our death throes?

When I look at the mistakes we are making, the damage we are causing, the way we are blunderingly creating the very seeds of our own demise it is hard to image that we have much of a future. We are busy building weapons that could wipe us all out – nuclear, biological and chemical. We are wantonly destroying the very ecosystems we depend on. We are stupidly increasing in numbers beyond any sane sustainable level. We are polluting the environment we depend on with chemicals, radioactive isotopes and all manner of gunge. We are squandering irreplaceable resources. We are misusing antibiotics and not developing antivirals so that we will be vulnerable to a fatal mutation in a virus or bacterium. We are not protecting ourselves against a cataclysmic asteroid.

It is as if we have a death wish.

Yet we have the intelligence to solve the greatest problems and if we were to survive this adolescent period of mindlessness it is possible that we could go on to achieve great things.

The dice has been thrown.

Poetry – Bipeds with Big Brains

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Bipeds with Big Brains

Bipeds with big brains

Walking upright across the African plains.

Full of anger, cruelty and hate, 

Determined to become super-great.

Killing, maiming and enjoying pain,

Creating ruin, again and again.

With a lust for power and control,

They seek to impose their will on the whole.

Full of selfishness and greed,                        

They till the land and plant the seed.

Now we live in the aftermath

Of the destruction left in the wake of their path.

All that moves is brought down,

As wars rage regardless of black, white or brown.

One species, with the aim to expand,

Will destroy everything that comes to hand.

Profit is the recurring war cry

Blood for money; an eye for an eye.

The finite resources are under strain

Everywhere is death, destruction and pain.

Yet that large brain houses another side

To take another route – we can decide.

For love and compassion lurk there too,

And we can care for others in this human zoo.

We can give up violence and selfishness

And cherish a life not based on destructiveness.

There’s room for all of life on this great ark,

We don’t have to live in a plastic park.

Wildernesses full of creatures and song,

In which we humans can get along.

So will we use our great brains for creative invention?

And solve the problems we create?

Can we learn to care, share and find room for all life?

Or will we leave it all too late?

I fear the answer will seal our own fate.

Opher 29.4.2019

Human beings are the Jekyll and Hyde of the animal kingdom. We are often thoughtless, cruel and positively evil. We enjoy inflicting pain and causing death. We seem to gain pleasure from it. Give a man a weapon and he will feel the desire to take lives. Not content to shooting at targets they prefer to shoot birds off the wire.

We wish to subjugate nature and control it all. Chopping down trees, filling in swamps, killing anything that threatens us. Nothing is sacred.

Our worst aspects are the desire for power and wealth. We are prepared to sacrifice the whole earth for it.

Yet our altruism is also renowned. We will take huge risks to save an injured animal. We care.

Our brains are resourceful and ingenious. We can solve the most complex of problems.

We have the capacity to put right the mess we have created.

Do we have the will? Or are we going to allow the same greedy, power-seeking elite to continue to lead us towards the precipice?

A Narrow Belt of Colour

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A Narrow Belt of Colour

A narrow belt of bright colour on the sea of monoclonal green;

An elongated oasis of life among the sterilised land;

A thin strand.

Within these tiny parameters,

Vestiges of what once was,

Nature makes its last stand.

Opher 7.6.2021

As I went for my daily walk here in early June I was heartened by the thick swathes of flowers on the verge and hedgerows of the country lane.

The other side of the hedge was a great sweeping field of wheat – identical plants, sown in rows, all the same age, carefully supplied with nutrients, sprayed with pesticide and herbicide and nurtured into a huge sweeping green desert in which nothing else can live.

The other side of the hedge was a sanitised nightmare.

One day, when we are gone, the verges and hedgerows will reclaim the fields, the vestiges will expand to become all, and the land will spring back to life again.

Poetry – Kenya

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Kenya

Kenya – where the rich red soil of Africa is like the living blood of life,

Where bones protrude from the soil in profusion,

Testament to the proliferation of the creatures that were there before.

Kenya – whose valley was the seat of all our births.

Whose yellow sun and blue sky still shine as it did on the very first;

The first of us to stand tall, pick up a tool and question the stars.

Kenya – where the elephant once roamed in huge numbers and the game grazed the plains

Providing rich pickings for those who were there to be part of that web.

Kenya – where the air sang to the ears of those first people, where the land glowed with colour and the breeze was pungent with the scent of life.

Kenya where camp-fires warmed the soul with chatter and tales of daring

Where the stars mysteriously glistened and mystery abounded with wonder.

Kenya – where it began for us.

Now I want to stand in that valley, tease out the bones to remind me of the past, taste that breeze and look up at that sky

Just to see if there are any traces left of that magic.

For Kenya – I fear we’ve left our souls in the spilt blood of your soil, yet our bones are still inexplicably walking.

I would bury myself in your soil where I belong.

Opher 1.9.2017

Africa is where humans evolved. I have an affinity for that red soil – to walk the Olduvai Gorge where the fossil bones litter the ground. Once Africa teemed with life. Once we roamed there freely hunting that bounty. Now we are spread across the planet in our billions, nature is on the run and our old ways are no more.

Poetry – Nature’s joke that backfired

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Nature’s joke that backfired

Almost a joke among the trees on the grassy plains,

Standing naked in the ruddy dawn,

Striding out in packs to trap and snare

And drive away the fearsome beasts.

Against the odds they prospered.

A spark of wonder and a bag of lust;

Worshipping the unknown sun and moon

That sailed the sea of sparks and awe,

As camp-fire cinders soared into eternity,

They dared to dream.

Defending, defying and exploring,

As teeth chewed, minds churned

And thoughts pierced the mantle of reality

Illuminating the wonder of infinity

With exquisite curiosity.

Never prepared to sit and be content;

Obsessed with lust for power and invention,

Creative urge and complete control

Spawning figments of a fertile imagination

As they ventured forth.

Onto the endless shores of possibility,

Where all was achievable,

They gave full rein to their every desire

Creating majestic edifices and hell,

Flawed by a streak of cruelty.

Stained by a mean and vicious arrogance,

With the hard stare of brutality,

A heartless whiff of psychology.

We seek to dominate and destroy

For our enjoyment.

Yet still imbued with the possibility of greatness

With numbers so numerous

Teetering on the edge of the precipice.

A chasm so deep as to be buried forever

We vacillate.

19.6.2016

Nature’s joke that backfired

I can’t help thinking that we are at a cross-roads. I feel as if we are poised in a moment. Ahead are two routes. We can keep on going or we can reassess and attempt to put things right.

As our numbers teem and our societies are still consumed with medieval superstition we can blithely go forward destroying all around us, or we can stop and take stock; we can take action to halt our burgeoning populations, put an end to the destruction of nature and try to forge a better future.

We have the capacity and intelligence. But it is pitted against the primitive lusts and enjoyment of pain and cruelty.

We have the science and technology but do we possess the will?

We are still ruled by primitive desires and blind irrational belief. We believe some fantasy figure has it all planned out and like superman will leap to our defence.

There is no superman. It’s time we grew up and sorted our problems for ourselves.

The road ahead looks bleak. The other road is strewn with flowers and the sound of nature.

Against the odds we naked apes, nature’s joke, have got this far. How much further?