Poetry – One Gaff and a Slow Slice – a poem about the murder of the highly intelligent porpoises and dolphins.

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dolphins dolphins2 dolphins 4

This was a number of my Anthropocene Apocalypse poems.

The dolphins and porpoises have bigger brains than us. They are certainly intelligent. But they are gentle creatures with no need to build shelters or machines, let alone weapons.

I stood on the hills above Wineglass Bay in Tasmania with  my wife Liz and my friends Dylan and Julia. It is one of the most beautiful sights with its emerald green water and golden sands. I thought it was called Wineglass Bay solely because of its shape as a wine glass. It wasn’t. In the older days they would herd thousands of dolphins into the shallow water. The hunters would stand in the water gaffing them with huge serrated hooks and sawing through their necks to sever the spinal cord with great serrated knives. They would continue in an orgy of murder until all the trapped terrorised animals were slaughtered and the water they stood in was turned from emerald green to crimson. From the hills the water of the bay was turned red as if it was a half-full glass of Beaujolai.

Can you imagine that much blood?

Can you imagine the pain? To be speared with a huge gaff while some brute slowly cuts through your body with a great knife?

You’d think that was bad enough. But those were uncivilised days. People were brutalised. Except it is still going on. In the Faroe Islands they are still doing this.

They are as bad as the sadists of ISIS!

One Gaff and a Slow Slice

One gaff

And a slow serrated slice,

Sawing and hacking to the cord.

Then relief.

Agony prolonged,

Intense,

and grief.

 

Gentle and trusting

Easily herded

Into the shallows

Where the blood

Is curded.

 

Gleefully stabbed.

The shock resounds.

Excited hunter

With joy rebounds.

 

No concept of the pain.

Sad meat upon the shore

Crimson seeps between

Each grain

But the fever

Still screams

For more.

 

Butchered in the sunset

Ruddy water

Reflects

The crime.

Hunter stands

In depths

Of gory grime

As one

Of the great tragedies

Of our time.

Opher 4.7.2015

Poetry – Believers – A poem about religious fanaticism.

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Believers

Madmen pose with

Hardware exposed

To elevate their egos

To eternity.

Foolish fools

Believing silly rules,

Eschewing girls from schools

Inflamed with

Dreams of glory.

Endorphins rage

Through synapses

Of the brave.

Adherents ecstatic

With grave zeal

and brotherhood

Of unity;

All built on a book

Of lunacy.

Opher 4.7.2015

Everywhere I look around the world and through the depths of history I see excited young men clutching weapons in one hand and sacred books or political treaties in the other all wild-eyed and crazed; all joined by a cause; all eager to impose their vision on the world.

They butcher and torture until they themselves are numb, callous and cold and their Messianic fire has corrupted into sadistic futility.

All are assured of one thing – their cause is inevitably short-lived. We have seen the crusades, Jihads, Pol Pot, Hitler, Rwanda, and a thousand other massacres, genocides and causes as religions and regimes rise and rapidly fall.

It does not stop the fanaticism. Fascism and the adrenaline of brotherhood of war is a powerful aphrodisiac. It fires the belly and confounds the senses. The crazed believers are prepared to lay down their lives for their pointless cause.  They are easy to recruit and indoctrinate – point and they will go,

It all harks back to those tribal days of young men on hunting parties whose lives depended on their skills, bravery and willingness to support each other in a common aim – whether that be fighting off a ferocious wild cat or bringing down a dangerous buffalo.

Young men, befuddled by hormones, eager for status and glory, easily drawn to a cause, are always gullible.

Young women, equally befuddled, seeking father’s for the eggs they store, are attracted to the strongest. They support the craziness – always gullible.

We are so primitive. We are transparent. Our intelligence, helplessness and stupidity are our constant downfall.

Perhaps one day women will be attracted to men for their neuronal skills and compassion rather than their muscle and brute force. The world would be a different place.

Poetry – Human Civilisation – A poem about appreciating the wonders around us instead of fighting because we are here for such a fleeting moment.

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Human Civilisation

 

Ephemeral dust

On the wing of a seed;

Edifying ripples

From every deed,

Reverberating on the wind,

To hit the sky and die.

 

Dancing to an arrogant beat

With heart and feet

While a universe of mystery

Revolves with aeons

Of light and heat

To leave meaningless symbols

On this sheet;

To spin free into eternity.

 

To strain the eye

Project the ‘I’

And wonder why;

As mere years fly by.

Leave a flash so brief

That truth

Evaporates before

Time’s thief.

 

Opher 4.7.2015

 

I had this vision of humanity like bacteria on the crust of this seed of a planet flying through space; the seed that has given birth to life. And we’re all clamouring and making noise that reverberates through the air for a while and dies when it hits vacuum.

We are so conceited that we think we know it all yet we think more with our emotions and act with our physical presence rather than use our brains. We squabble, argue, fight and create wars, religions and politics, while all around us there is the majesty of the universe that has been there with its array of stars for billions of years. It’s a vision of awe and wonder.

Ultimately everything we do is meaningless. Our atoms will last forever but our words and actions, our fossils, will fall apart and leave no evidence behind. We only have the now.

Death is life’s thief and it will claim us all. All our vanity will be gone. We only have this briefest of times in which to appreciate each other and the wondrous life we enjoy.

Let’s put aside the stupidities and enjoy it to the full.

Poetry – You – The mystical woman who holds the atoms and the dreams together so that I can live. A love poem.

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This is a poem to the mystical woman whose love holds the universe together and gives it meaning. She is not real; no goddess to be worshipped. She is the purpose in life, the muse and meaning.

The atoms are tiny particles floating in space. The distance between their nuclei is so vast that when two solids, with their zillions of atoms hit one another, there is no contact of solid against solid. Without the forces they produce solids would slide through each other; we would drop through the floor. sliding through space.

Love gives life meaning and makes it real.

This is also a love poem to my special person who has made my life so much more real and made me a better person.

YOU

 

When I wake in the morning

The air is sweet with dreams.

The light from the window is crystalized through diamond images of you.

I breathe you in through the pores in my skin;

The freshness

The brightness

Of you.

 

You are the colours of my world,

The scent upon my breeze,

The essence that binds all things together,

The hum within the leaves.

 

Nothing would be real without you.

I know that would be true.

If you were to leave

I would just drop through

And moulder in drab dungeons

Through an eternity of grey

Wallowing in emptiness

Through each and every day.

 

I have to have you near me

Nothing else will do:

Your scent, your colour

The wonder that is you.

 

Opher August 4th 1995

 

Poetry – Incandescent Days – a poem for life on planet Earth.

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This planet revolves around the sun. In man’s earliest days it was a thing of wonder, bringing light, heat and life. It had to be a God and was worshipped. The beliefs were that the rituals could unlock and control the powers it possessed.

Our ancestors were wrong but even so the sun was the giver of all life.

The sun’s heat was sufficient to melt ice and liberate vapour. Water is the medium of all living things. None can live without it.

The sun’s light caused photosynthesis to produce the oxygen we breathe and liberate our thoughts. With the energy it donated to us we dissected its secrets and learnt that it was no god and our powers could not touch it.

Life is change. With each day our bodies transform from egg and sperm to death. In millennia we evolve. And the sun itself must change. The giver of life will one day turn destroyer but its passing may produce life for others to evolve on distant worlds. For we are the stuff of exploding stars.

Incandescent Days

Incandescent days beneath a nuclear globe

Worshipped from days long gone

Creating green explosions on the crust.

No gods to implore but iron to rust

And chemistry to leave within the dust.

 

Hydrogen to helium

And energy to burn

Upon the mantle of our shelf

As quarks are rearranged

To radiate through space

And illuminate ourselves.

 

Excited electrons create the air

As pigments dance in ecstasy

To where

They are passed to the chemistry

That dares

To change its state.

For change is the law

And all our fate.

 

Opher 3.7.2015

Poetry – Without me – a surreal night of icy moon and reptilian clouds.

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Sometimes the world is unreal, like a stage-set. The lighting is too surreal. It bathes everything in its frigid glow and freezes it.

The moon was casting a bright, hard blue glow, creating sharp shadows and inky pools. It transformed the countryside into ice.

It seemed to rush across the sky yet it was the clouds streaming by. Those clouds were high and wispy and formed into the scales of some huge celestial fish that glowed with life; the life that the moon was sucking from the land.

I did not know what to look at;

The wondrous rushing panorama of the sky or the frozen ocean of the land. They were both as magnificent and unreal.

It was a story of vastness and mystique. The eye and mind were held by the spectacle. It felt like a performance, a living piece of Art, yet it was so cold and devoid of warmth. It was a tableau of beauty yet without life.

I felt as if I was the only person in the whole universe who was witnessing it. It was exhilarating yet it sent a tremor of fear through my spine.

I knew one day it would perform its similar tricks and no eyes would be there to marvel.

WITHOUT ME

The large Moon gliding through

The illuminated scales

Of some giant surreal fish

With icy-blue bitter light

Bathing the fields

With stark clarity.

As the fields rolled in eerie relief

Like a crystalline sea

I found it hard to imagine

That the scene could exist

Without me.

 

10.10.95

Poetry – Wining to the End – a poem about experiencing life to the full and evaluating the worth.

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It is good to reach an age when you can look back over a life and feel the wonder. There are many things that you might have done differently but then you would not have been where you are.

Experience gives you perspective and appreciation.

I have been fortunate to have lived through such times, times of peace, freedom and plenty, and to have found so much love and fulfilment.

There are not many times in history or places in the world that have offered such sanctuary, liberty and lack of mind control. It has enabled me to blossom.

There are many mountains I have not climbed and many more I hope to scale. I expect the views to be magnificent.

I hope my grandchildren will experience a world full of challenge but with opportunity and without the fetters that can narrow a young mind.

An imprisoned mind cannot savour the taste of such heady liquor as life brings.

Wining to the End

Last night I sat alone with my bottle of wine

And sipped the tiniest sip of the very last drops.

I swirled the red liquid around the bottom

And saw my reflection in the bottle.

I have loved the most beautiful women

Loved until nothing else mattered;

Wondered at the moon,

Fallen through the stars

Travelled to the worlds of new ideas,

And seen the best that men can do.

I have tried to make sense of galaxies and cathedrals,

Listened to men whose eyes glinted with passion

And experienced the greatest lusts.

I have read the most considered words

And wrestled with majestic ideas,

Found causes and ideals I would die for,

And seen the worst results

From men whose eyes were hard and selfish

Yet glowed with excitement.

I have considered heaven

And imagined hell,

The greatest minds

And the most depraved,

Drunk myself unconscious,

Opened my mind to wonder

Art, poems and stories,

Written, daubed and waffled.

I have despaired at fun

And empty lives

And sought meaning and fulfilment.

I discovered it in family, friends and sharing

And a thousand kind words.

I have travelled and marvelled

And taken so many sips and gulps

And now I am at peace savouring these

Last few,

For only in them is the flavour fully distilled.

 

Opher 24.3.01

Poetry – Why Ask What and When? With so Little about Much? – Just playing around with words.

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I love playing around with words. There is much we need to know and we have to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers. But then there is always the question of what to ask and when to ask it.

If you ask at the wrong time you don’t get the right answer. But what do you ask? There is so much to find out.

Why Ask What and When? With so Little about Much?

 

Why do we Ask so Much to achieve so Little?

When What we need is so Much.

What Why should we Ask?

Why when? Is the question.

Why Ask When What is an issue?

 

Opher 15.4.00

Poetry – Who asks the Question? – A poem about the stupidity of our leaders who create the problems.

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It always seemed to me that the mess around the world is actually created by our leaders. We vote them in power and they contrive to mess things up.

Instead of countries looking selfishly at national interests we could be organising the world to get it to function a lot better. There does not have to be such gross inequality that some have more than they can spend while others starve. There doesn’t have to be mass overpopulation. There doesn’t have to be mass immigration.

If the world leaders organised things instead of deliberately creating instability, fuelling environmental devastation and exploiting other nations, we could have a fairer, more stable world.

It is not hard to organise.

What creates the problem is selfishness, greed and power seeking.

No – it is not human nature. We are capable of better. Most people are kind, helpful, caring and considerate. It is the minority who are cruel and heartless.

It seems to me that we end up with wars out of desperation that is the result of foreign policy. Soldiers go in and millions die.

The dead cannot ask the questions. The living have to do that.

It is about time we stopped just writing slogans on the walls and asked the questions on behalf of the victims.

We have to make them get it right! Unless they are forced to address the problems they won’t bother.

Who asks the Questions?

 

The dead ask the best questions

Though the ‘masters’ do not hear.

Asking them to speak louder

Does not seem to make the questions clear.

 

We are charged with finding answers

With a grip upon their balls

To focus their attention

On the writing on the walls.

 

Why did this happen?

Who did this to us?

Who allowed the power?

Who profits from our trust?

 

Opher 20.9.96

Poetry – I’m White – a poem about my species and stupidity.

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Somewhere out there are a bunch of blinkered white supremacists.

Somewhere out there are a bunch of blinkered black supremacists.

Somewhere out there are a bunch of blinkered brown, red, pink, orange, yellow and green supremacists.

The Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same god and kill each other for it. Seemingly she delights in giving different commandments to different cliques. She probably is a bit disturbed and enjoys watching the terror it causes.

There are some with so much they can afford to sponsor wars while others cry because they haven’t got a mouthful to feed their children.

Politics, religion, skin colour, ear-lobe shape, gender, height, eye-colour, nose shape, breasts – it doesn’t take much to start a war.

I’m White

I’m white in the light

But I’m black at night.

For a genus so bright

It  seems we rarely get it right.

Now I don’t mean to be facetious

But I’m not proud of my species.

 

Geologically we’re new

Though we think we know it all.

We take in the view

But before the sky we’re small.

 

We may share all the genes

But don’t know what that means,

Worship Gods, Kings and Queens

And still want to steal the scenes

 

Now I don’t want to be facetious………

 

I see air-head studs

Posing on the beach

Of the apocalypse

For dead-brain bitches

With fake tits

Smacking their lips.

 

I guess that while there’s still air to suck

We’ll fuck it up.

 

 

Opher  5.4.98