Poetry – I am Quantum – A poem about reality.

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Poetry – I am Quantum – A poem about reality.

Poems & Peons BookCoverImage

This is my latest book of poems.

But this is my latest poem.

I am Quantum

The reality we hold within our heads is created by the neuronal net we each possess. Our consciousness is the result of billions of electrical impulses.

It is not real.

Our senses fire and relay their messages to the brain. The brain interprets these and creates sight, touch, warmth, sound, smell and the elements it uses to create our reality.

It we were dissociated from our nerves and different messages were conveyed it would create a different reality.

The world we see is not real; it is created by our brain.

My world and yours are completely different. We cannot imagine the universe our pets inhabit.

At the same time my mind fantasises and dreams, creates poems, visions and ideas.

They are not real.

They are the product of my neuronal net.

In Quantum physics an electron can exist in two places simultaneously. The whole universe is a product of unreality.

I think I have a quantum mind.

 

I am Quantum

I lead a quantum life

Flitting about

Here and there

In the world

And in my head

At the same time.

 

Two worlds

Simultaneous

And who can tell

Which is more real?

 

My ideas exist

In two places

As they shunt

Their strange paths

Across my synapses

To my dreams.

 

My senses fire –

Send messages

Along neurones

To make picture,

Solid and concrete,

In my head.

 

All the world,

Inside and out,

Is the same –

An electric fog,

A quantum leap,

Into the creation

Of a universe

Or two.

 

Opher 6.12.2015

The meaning of life. Cheryl. Bob Dylan. Consumerism. Fundamental Religion. Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.

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Bob Dylan’s Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

Opher's World

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Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

Thanks to Cheryl for stimulating this train of thought when she asked about the pointlessness and emptiness of our consumer driven society. I think that its moronic emptiness is driving people into fundamental religion which is even worse.

I am reminded of that incredible poem Bob Dylan did where he talked about god and Woody Guthrie and awe and wonder and ended saying they can all be found at Grand Canyon at sunset. That’s how I feel. I don’t need religion, god or afterlife to do good things, reward or punish, because my life is full and fulfilled, I can find my wonder and awe in communion with others, friendship, love, creativity, and the wonders and majesty of the world around me. If there is a god I am sure that it is not confined to any words written in any ancient (or modern) text…

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My Weird Sixties Surreal Book – Chapter 40 – mystical poem 1

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40.

 

I am the distance between any two points

I am the greatest size you can think

I am the point that has no size

I am the paradox that dissolves beyond logic

In me is contained all things

 

I am the Truth that defies all laws

I am the glimpse that can never be seen

I am the centre of all things

I am the fear from which men turn

Without me there is no meaning.

Poetry – Bums in the Air – A poem about religion

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Bums in the Air

People are great joiner-inners. They go with the majority. I find it quite startling to see how conservative and fundamental things have become. Back when I was a lad my Muslim friends were all westernised. They didn’t take their religion to extremes. The girls did not go around in head-scarves let alone burqas. In Islamabad University in Pakistan the students wore jeans, T-shirts and listened to the Beatles, Stones and Pink Floyd.

How things have changed.

The children are taken off to their Madrassas where they are subjected to religious indoctrination.

I see families walking down the street, in the summer heat, with the poor woman completely enclosed in heavy black robes, breathing stale air behind a mask, while her husband is cool in T-shirt and jeans.

I am a believer in freedom but I hate misogyny, indoctrination and superstition.

In my view spirituality is about harmony with nature and the universe. Religion is about power, indoctrination and division.

 

Bums in the Air

 

Bums in the air

Indoctrination everywhere.

Allah and sweet Jesus,

Jehovah

And God above.

How absurd they look

With their array of holy book.

Spouting words

From Neolithic lords

Dressed in fancy costume –

Medieval bride

And modern groom.

 

Opher – 14.9.2016

Poetry – Miniscule in Reality – A poem of awe and wonder

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Miniscule in Reality

I am always in awe of nature; there’s a wonder at work. Infinity with its swirling galaxies, spinning atoms and amazing mysteries of consciousness is inspiring, is full of majesty, is uplifting.

There is a harmony in a sunset, rainbow and the glow it produces. There is a spirit in the rocks, trees and seas. To sit beside the crashing waves and feel the breeze in ones face connects us to the universe. To feel the sun upon the face and bask in its benevolent warmth is to feel the congruence.

There is a mystical force that is natural, beyond religion, and integral to that dynamo of nature through which we are all one.

Calm and peaceful, without barriers as the vibration of energy flows through and on, forever.

Miniscule in Reality

Glowing dawns and standing stones,

Mystic storms, vibrations in the wind

And majestic trees.

Skies that swirl with stars,

Chasms of glowing rock at sunset

And crashing seas.

There’s a wonder at work –

A celestial spectacle of awe.

There’s a mystery in the mind

That’s knocking at our door.

Standing before the horizon

Outlined against infinity

Feeling large against the sky

But miniscule in reality.

Opher – 1.8.2016

Poetry – Jimi – A poem for might have been and still might be.

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Jimi

After all these years all you need to write is Jimi. Everyone knows who you mean. There is only one Jimi. He was not only the epitome of a guitarist, a showman and performer but an icon of an age, a symbol of all that a generation stood for and the idealism that changed the world.

When one thinks of Jimi standing there in his outrageous costumes you knew he was not dressing up for the show, he was expressing himself as an individual. He was blowing away the cobwebs from a dull and dreary post-war existence; he was drawing a line in the sand between the establishment (and the generation who chose routine, boredom, profit and war over fun, harmony, and meaning) and a new idea, a new approach, a new attitude – that we could live in peace, equality and freedom with purpose.

When I think of Jimi I think of helicopters in Vietnam, Agent Orange and machine guns, peace riots on the streets and phalanxes of State Troopers shooting at kids. I think of that young girl running down the street and enveloped by napalm. And I think of the friendship in the parks and gigs where everyone shared what they had and laughed, black with white, male with female and all together.

I only managed to see Jimi play three times for some ridiculous reason. I think we thought that it would go on forever and he would always be there. He wasn’t and nothing ever does – not even the bad stuff. But Jimi playing was a highlight of my life and will always be right up there with the best – and not just musically. He represented something greater than music.

We tried to change the world and I think we did. But the establishment fought back and wrested it back, tightening their control. We need another bout of sixties optimism, passion and rebellion. We need another Jimi, Bob and Roy.

So many years on and he is still Jimi.

Jimi

With the elbow, teeth and the back of the hand

As feedback wailed by design

Over the sound of the band;

With shades of Sci-fi

And the limits of the mind

Soaring free on the wind

As it cried Mary

And my thoughts drift back

To what might be.

Along watchtowers

Chewing gum to the cracking of a machine gun,

Outrageous in costume and style,

Psycedelically free

To test the limits

Of all that could be

And might be in that castle of magic

That left us all aghast

And has never been surpassed.

 

Opher – 1.8.2016

Poetry – I am destined to be big!? – A bit of fun really.

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I am destined to be big!?

 

As an indie writer who writes what he chooses and does not court popularity I am sometimes saddened by my present lack of success. I would like a larger readership for my efforts. To have words unread feels sad. Yet I know that all it takes is a flight of fancy – one book to capture imagination and go off on a wave of euphoria – I am in danger of becoming big.

As a human being who has reached that age where my metabolism has fallen but my appetite has not I am in that state where my weight has increased. I have to contain myself to prevent my growth becoming too great. I am in danger of becoming big.

Even the most commercially successful and the most enormously obese are all brought down, in time, to become the same basic skeletons in the ground.

 


 

I am destined to be big!?

 

I am destined to be big!

But that’s OK

I’m going on a diet soon.

With exercise

I’ll soon be back to normal.

 

I am soon to be big!

As my words

Elicit ecstasy in the

Correct reader

And I am propelled.

 

When we are long

In the ground

We are not so big anymore.

The worms

Bring us down to size.

 

Opher 20.7.2016

Poetry – Sucked Dry – a poem of catharsis.

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Sucked Dry

Once life was full of hope and wonder, laughter and friendship; it was so easy.

There were sufficient discoveries for a thousand life-times. It burned.

Now I am much older than that and my idealistic naivety has been replaced by the mundanity of life. Lately I have felt the energies dip on every front, the person I am change, and my dreams have become tainted with too much reality.

All my words haunt me with their imperfections. My hopes are sullied. I have had to step back and take a good hard look at where I am in life – I am not the cheerful, optimistic individual I have always felt myself to be. I am no longer optimistic or full of self-confidence. My ideals look like silly dreams.

So I wrote it in this poem. Perhaps it is just the Brexit Blues and I will re-emerge in full optimistic mode? Or perhaps the Brexit vote awakened me to the futility of fighting the global monster that corporate society has become? I have to find a way of saying goodbye to the gorillas, chimps, elephants and rhinos, the rainforests and wilderness, and get used to a future of war, inequality and greed, where exploitation is the currency and profit the only consideration?

I despair.

Another effort of catharsis – an attempt to clear my psyche of all this despair.

Sucked Dry

 

No more words or reason,

No love or hope,

No friendship or dreams,

To sully the day

With false expectations.

 

Now reality must rule

And bathe the world in grey –

For colour has fled

And joy has been vanquished

So that we are doomed to live

In among the dregs.

 

Empty as the void,

As the vacuum of space,

Sucked dry of humour

And devoid of wishes

With which to kindle any flame.

 

Opher 10.7.2016

Poetry – Darkness Descends – A poem of despair.

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Darkness Descends

Behind everything is a philosophy. It creates the ethos. It creates the zeitgeist. It pervades the air we breathe. Philosophy drives everything. We all have one whether we know it or not; every society has one as its basis.

The basis of my philosophy has been one of love and hope. I have put my faith in mankind and that the good in people will prevail over the bad; that we must build, through education, a world that is full of the best we can do and not the worst.

On one hand I see the destructive greed, power-seeking and cruelty that is mindlessly destroying the planet and on the other I see the beauty we create, the altruism and love that reflects us at our best.

Mostly I am optimistic that the billions of kind, caring and pleasant people will prevail over the far fewer heartless, selfish, violent beasts.

I would like to see humanity moving to a more civilised state where nature is respected, animals are not treated cruelly, our population is controlled, and things such as war, racism, exploitation and sexism are banished. I want a world with wilderness, fresh air and equality.

The only way I can see us achieving this is through a centralised government, the end of nations and religions, and a move out of the tribalism and primitive thinking that creates so much hate and violence. I dream of universal laws to prevent pollution, war and discrimination.

That is why the Brexit vote was so appalling to me. It seemed to me to be a vote based on fear and hatred that would spawn an ethos of isolation, xenophobia, inequality and further disharmony. It was the dream of the terrorists, nationalists and racists that prevailed over those dreams of idealists like myself.

For me the world lurched into a darker place that is less safe and much further away from the unity and togetherness of the world I dream of.

I can only see a future of gloom, environmental destruction and war. The philosophy of Brexit is opposed to everything I hold dear. I have lost my faith in people. The philosophy we live in changed.

I wrote this at an attempt at catharsis. I need to become more optimistic again.

 

Darkness Descends

 

Gigantic dark waves

Crashing on grey sands

As huge gloom-ridden clouds

Obscure the light.

Ice-cold winds bite through

The skin with shards of steel

As warmth and sunshine are banished forever.

 

Never again will the sun break through

To bathe the land with hope.

No more will the heart beat

With enthusiasm for the fight.

As the cloying mists of misery

Swirl in clammy fingers of doom

And claw the very life out of

All that would dare to breathe.

 

Opher 10.7.2016

My New Poetry book – Rituals, Odes and Mystic Anxieties is now available as a paperback.

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Rituals, Odes & Mystic anxieties

My latest poetry book is now available as a paperback. For the sum of £4.17 you could have it to read and cherish.

It’s worth it for the cover! Let alone the poems and my prose! Ever topic of importance covered.

There’s nowt more original than an Opher.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rituals-Mystic-Anxieties-Opher-Goodwin/dp/153480336X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466708693&sr=1-1&keywords=opher+rituals