Poetry – Minefield – a poem of unsynchronised passion between lovers.

Posted on by Opher

Sex is a minefield. You only have to look at the courtship palaver of animals to see that. There are rituals and whole pageants necessary to be performed.

It’s all so easy in a new relationship where passions are high and the air is scented with pheromones as the hormones race the heart. But once that phase succumbs to a lesser heat the frenzy subsides. Then it is more a question of synchronicity and mood, inclination and desire. and a balance.

Sex is intimate and requires both parties to bring they biology into alignment. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Old relationships are patterned on compromise.

Minefields

Can’t look

Can’t see

Can’t touch

Can’t feel

Can’t smell

Can’t taste

Edging round the minefields of your inhibitions

Sneaking up on you

Trudging through the sand-dunes of your desserts

An oasis overdue

 

Don’t touch

Too hard

Don’t feel

Too deep

Don’t see

Too much

Don’t move

I hurt

Apart and at bay

Hunted like prey

Locked up passion

On ration

Not let out to play

Today

 

Safe within the barbed fence of pyjamas

Unisex walls

Restrained within the mind game patterns

Without balls

 

Do not intrude

Into the rude

Sense my mood

Keep at bay

My way

No play today

 

OPHER  19.12.97

Poetry – Leave me be – a sado-masochist poem.

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this poem in response to a strange court case. A group of sado-masochists were being prosecuted. They were performing weird and extremely painful acts on each other that included sandpapering their genitals, putting pins through their testicles, and nailing themselves to the table. They were filming this and sending it to each other.

Now I have no inclination towards S&M, I find it peculiar and a sad reflection on our repressive sexual culture that ends up confusing sexual feelings with pain, violence, punishment, subjugation and degrading acts, but I could not see why a group of consenting adults who were doing no harm to anyone else but themselves should be prosecuted. They were publicly humiliated (they might have enjoyed that bit), lost careers, split up families and were imprisoned.

Surely what consenting adults chose to do in private is up to them?

Leave me be

Sandpaper me

Put pins in my body

Burn me with fire

To the dirge of some midnight choir

 

Don’t ease my thirst

Make it worse

I don’t want to recover

I want to suffer

 

As you can see

I’m happy here

In agony

 

I’m quite alone

Cut to the bone

Happy in silence

With nothing

To make any sense

 

Don’t give me another session

I’m deliriously happy

In my depression.

 

Opher 7.1.96

Poetry – Lines – a poem about aging and being true to yourself, wondering who you really are.

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this while looking into a mirror and studying my face. I was wondering just how many of my feelings, views and philosophy was mine and how much was put there by my culture, upbringing, education, social mores and adopted position.

We are all subject to expectations and restrictions. We are all put through the cultural mincer. What comes out the other end is a shredded version.

How much of my philosophy was merely reaction against the pressures on me and how much were my genuine views.

How can you tell?

Is there a real essence of me that makes objective decisions on matters of morality or actions? Or are we pulled back and forth by the forces acting upon us?

I was fortunate that my family did not indoctrinate me with their politics or religion. They left me to discover my own mind. But the school, my friends and society at large had bearing on my thoughts.

Where am I in the midst of those lines on my face? They are familiar and yet the more I stare the more unknown I become. The lines lie.

Am I a product or an essence?

Lines

Read between the lines

On my face

That’s where the truth

Lies

Down through the years

On my genes

Written in disguise

 

Drifting through the tides

Of time

Rushing through the dreams

Of space

Wondering at the sense

Of wonder

Gouged deep within

My face.

 

Opher 25.7.95

Haves and have nots – a poetic snarl.

Posted on by Opher

Haves and have nots.

Us and them.

Aristocracy and the hoi-polloi.

The Rulers and ruled.

Marks and punters and numbers and showbiz queens.

Exploiters and exploited.

Users and dealers.

Light and dark.

Pushers and pimps.

The cool and the uncool.

In and out.

God and nothing.

Night and day.

Helpers and help us.

Left and gone.

Beaters and the beaten.

Questioners and thinkers.

After and before.

Maybe and will.

The know-alls and ignorant.

The needy and the poorly and the can’t care less.

I’m alright and you can fuck yourself.

The haters and hated.

The dying and the dead.

The powerful and weak.

Torturers and tortured.

Governed and led.

Mine and yours.

The doers and the doed to.

The doubters and believers.

The lonely and abused.

In the know and in the dark.

The starving and fed.

The bullied and the bullies.

Me and you.

Why and why not.

The should know better and the couldn’t care less.

What a way to run a world.

What a way to run a world.

What a stupid fucking way to run an unfair world!

 

Poetry – God too – an antitheist’s view

Posted on by Opher

God Too

I’m the power in your sun

The atom and the wind

Giving light its speed

Its colour

And its spin

Arising out of nothing

To make your sunset glow

Organising your bodies

To your neurone flow

I give life its mystery

Creating all the laws

That keep it all in motion

Its perfection

And its flaws

You make me into Gods

Religions and Holy books

But I evade all your

Interpretations of my looks

You will not find me concerned

With how your life should run

Providing you with morals

For what is

Or is not done

I am not a human

Apart from the cosmic flow

I connect you to the mystic

That you cannot know

Your religions try to capture me

As I appear to you all

But I spiral through the words

Of the prayers that you call

Everything you think is real

You create it from the void

And you are doomed

To live the life

With which your dreams have toyed.

Opher 8.2.99

I suppose I think there is some mystery, some mystical element behind the universe. It comes out of nothing in a big bang. From nothing to the universe in a fraction of a second; atoms out of nothing. There is energy flowing through the universe. There is size beyond comprehension. There is infinity and the void from which it comes. There are atoms that cannot wear out and energy that goes on forever. But is there a plan or purpose? Is there a God that is concerned with morals and human destiny? Is there an after-life? That is too human to me. Too convenient. If there was a God it is one God. The God of all religions – no one special. The morals and the dogma do not hold with the mystical. I ridicule it. Religion is the biggest tyranny. It has held us back for thousands of years, stopping progress, inhibiting ideas, constraining thought, filling us with dread and fear, sin, evil and paradise, Heaven and Hell. Bollocks. So what happens after Heaven? What is that all about? Bollocks. Mysticism I can equate. Religion is bollocks.  15.2.99  Opher

Poetry – Cosmic Breath

Posted on by Opher

I loved the idea that atoms are forever (well almost). They go on and on.

All the water we drink is recycled. There are molecules of water in our body that have been in every single human beings body who ever lived. I’ve got molecules of water in my body that have been in Roy Harper, Captain Beefheart, Elvis, Martin Luther King, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Pol Pot. and Buddha (I could have gone on with a longer list).

Every breath we take is also full of atoms and molecules that have been in every single human beings body – (and plant and animal). It gives you some idea of the colossal number that we are talking about.

Atoms are like little  perpetual motion machines – time machines. They don’t wear out too quick (unless radioactive) and are simply recycled and reused. They are powered by the background heat. We drink, breathe and eat them in. We pee, shit and perspire them out for everyone else to use. It’s the ultimate Green Dream of sharing, harmony and recycling.

I like that.

I like the idea that atoms that have been part of my body, imbued with my will, dreams and aspirations will go on into the future almost forever. Maybe they will possess a little of myself – but that’s just me being fanciful.

Cosmic Breath

 

The cosmic breath of my dreams

Rides the solar flares

To eternity.

Timeless atoms

Imbued

With energy

Are time machines

Powered on desire

Opher 27.5.99

Poetry – We Skid

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this poem because I was aware that with our limited senses and tiny brains (we are but microbes living on the surface of a tiny planet in the midst of a gargantuan universe) we cannot understand a fraction of what is around us.

We have as much hope of understanding the infinite wonders of the universe as a bacteria in a toilet bowl understanding the huge backside that is descending to bring them sustenance.

That should not stop us trying though. I’m amazed we’ve done so well and are so imaginative and inventive. We’ve discovered enough to rid ourselves of much of the superstitious rubbish. We’ve a long way to go.

I like this poem.

WE SKID

I

Skid

Across

This

World

 

We barely                                                              touch

 

So much is going on

 

I miss so much

 

My eyes

Slide

My brain cells

Glide

Too much                                             I slip

Energy                                   I skid

Too much                                             I fool

To see                                    I kid

What is

I guess

I make up

The rest

 

Teeming energy

I cannot see

From molecule to galaxy

Attractive magnetism

Profound gravity

Unseen

Flies from you to me

 

I

Skid

Across

This

World

 

We barely                                                              touch

 

So much is going on

 

I miss so much

I

Skid

Across

This

World

 

We barely                                                              connect

 

I see                p  a  r  t  i  a  l  l  y

 

But not what you expect

 

I hear your words

I sense your touch

I feel the sun

But not too much

I slide. I skid

I don’t see it all                                    I think. I see

I don’t know your red                         I understand

I miss-see it all                                      Hazily

With the words you said

I slide and skid

I think I know

Just one percent

Of your rainbow

 

 

I

Skid

Across

This

World

 

We barely                                                                                                                              connect

 

My senses detect

But what else would you expect?

 

I miss so much

 

Opher 6.12.98