Poetry – To be a famous celebrity – A poem about arrogance, elitism and avarice.

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To be a famous celebrity

Every now and then I catch a glimpse of Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice or Britain’s Got Talent and I am sickened all over again. Forty years ago I was sickened when the Americans squealed and went mental at dross. I thought it could not happen here. We were more discerning, more reserved.

But we are not.

The celebrity culture, support of trash, and desire for wealth is more pernicious than even.

Back in the sixties we thought we were actually building a better future based on values, where wealth, fame and elitism were banished. We thought we’d dispensed with the superficial and were looking for something deeper – friendship, spirituality, coexistence with nature, respect for difference, fun, enjoyment, relationship, music, dance, art, culture, equality, freedom…………………..

We recognised that fame and wealth does not bring happiness; that this mad rush for personal wealth and power (always at the expense of others) was no recipe for fulfilment. Life is not a race, it’s a sharing of spirit.

No lessons were learnt.

The game is played by a tiny minority who cream off the wealth and power, buy off the politicians, own the media and fool us all into slaving for their prosperity.

Nobody ‘earns’ a million pounds – let alone a billion or two. They accrue that by exploiting others.

The inequality of the world, the environmental destruction, war, poverty and desperation are the direct result of policies created by those who benefit!

We are fed pap in order to keep us quiet. We have carrots dangled so that we feel we can become one of them.

We buy lottery tickets and work like hell to join the ‘In Set’. We want to be on TV and be elevated.

I watched the Apprentice with its naked avarice and back-stabbing desire to claw their way to the top, to bend every rule and – WIN!!!

It’s disgusting, empty, vacuous and utterly destructive.

I do not want to live my life at the expense of every other living person and creature on this planet. I’m not worth it! Nobody is!

 

 

To be a famous celebrity

 

To be a famous celebrity –

Nothing less will do for me!

I crave for a penthouse suite,

A huge yacht,

And all that you’ve got!

 

I yearn for the fame and luxury –

Nothing less will do for me!

To get all that

I’ll rob the poor and even my old mum

And put a tariff on my bum.

 

I desire to join the Jet-set crew –

For me, nothing less will do!

I don’t care if millions starve and die!

As long As I’m not forced

To wonder why.

 

Wealth and fame for me is due –

For me, nothing less will do!

It doesn’t worry me

If we kill everything –

Every damn last tree!

Nothing less will do for me!

 

You know I’m worth it!

You know!

I deserve it!

More than you!

Nothing else will do!

 

Opher 2.1.2016

Poetry – Sparking with Eccentricity – a poem of the wonder of consciousness

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Sparking with Eccentricity

I sit and wonder where the thoughts come from, where the words appear. There is a process happening inside my brain but the manner of it is not clear.

Under my skull there is a large pink gelatinous mass that is my brain. It flows with blood and electricity – a jelly of cells with intricate neuronal networks of trillions. It throbs. I like to imagine it glowing even though I know it does not.

Within this jelly my thoughts and dreams are formed. My awareness of myself is constructed and my consciousness created.

When I stop to think about the physical and biochemical processes involved I am astounded. It is magical. To think that chemistry is the basis of my personality.

When I stood in front of others to speak I was so in awe of the process that I was never confident that the right words would ever form. I could imagine myself standing there with an empty head.

As I get older the words often play hide and seek with me. But I eventually track them down.

The wonder of consciousness is one of life’s great mysteries. But it does not make me believe in even more esoteric beliefs. Life is amazing. But I believe we will understand it in time to come. Science adores a mystery.

The incredible spectacle of the universe, life and consciousness are part of the phenomenon that gives life purpose and fills me with ecstasy.

That’s enough.

Sparking with Eccentricity

 

I have this pink blancmange

Full of electricity

That houses the thoughts

That are the essence of me;

Convoluting tubes

Sparking with eccentricity;

Grooves and ridges

Retaining my imaginative

Elasticity.

 

I spark!

I light up!

And I fly!

That gelatinous

Jelly

Throbs

With the warmth

That is I.

 

Opher 1.1.2016

Poetry – There was a time – a poem about the plastic universe we are creating with our teeming billions.

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There was a time

Locked within our cities far away from the natural world we live a life of safety and synthetic joy. Our whims catered for, our dreams indulged, we are saturated in control.

Our actions are restrained.

Yet how could it be otherwise?

There are now seven billion of us. We have swamped the world like a bacterial scum that erodes all it touches. Trees fall, nature flees, and animals are consumed. Behind us the machine creates the plastic comfort and ease.

Yet no more do we taste the free air and live as brightly. This is the age of health and safety, longevity, and false fulfilment.

This is the plastic, sterile bowels of existence.

There was a time.

 

There was a time when we ran free,

To pit our wits

And use our ingenuity;

Free of man-made laws,

Of household chores and social mores –

A child in the wild.

 

Exultant on the trails of beasts

Imagining the feasts

Full of the adrenalin of the hunt

The brotherhood and trust

Unfettered –

With unbridled lust.

 

Free in the elements –

Every breeze is tasted,

All nuance noted,

Every caress relished,

Every flavour promoted.

 

Overpowered by the desire for comfort

Security and ease.

The love of many children

Has brought us to our knees.

With seven billion progeny

We are no longer roaming free.

The breeze is tainted

Each caress a travesty.

 

Secure in our comfort

We’ve lost our sanity.

 

Opher 31.12.2015

Poetry – Complex – a poem about the phenomenon of life and consciousness

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Complex

It is not because I am a biologist that I find the phenomenon of life, consciousness and the wonders of biological chemistry an amazing mystery; it is because I find these things marvellous that I am a biologist.

We do not have all the answers to the creation of life and its evolution into conscious beings. We may never have.

But I like to think we will pierce all those mysteries. Science is still in the dawn of its discoveries. A century or two ago we could not dream of understanding so much. If one had suggested that we might know the operations of DNA, genetics, black holes, quasars, quantum mechanics or subatomic particles, they would have been considered mad.

Now we understand so much and are on the brink of so much more. In the next hundred years we may understand how consciousness works. We may understand the Big Bang and what lies beyond – beyond both the Big Bang and the event horizon.

I do not need divine intrusions of deities to explain the mysteries. That is, for me, mere human fantasy – an attempt to explain what we do not understand. Many mysteries of the past have been fully explained, the rest will follow. We have the intelligence and ingenuity. The world has been proved not to be flat. There are no angels in the heavens. There is no hell below the earth. These were myths. They have been dispelled.

Humans love to track down our mysteries and shackle them with explanations – no matter how bizarre.

Nowadays it is the religious fundamentalists who are still the apes. The rest of us have evolved into rational beings.

Perhaps there is a mystical dimension? But I believe that all scriptures, the works of men, contain little of it. The mystic buzz of the atom has no human purpose.

Life and the universe are mysteries. The wonder is in the probing.

 


 

Complex

 

I am complex.

Out of the simple

I select and combine

To refine

A being who is me.

 

I am sophisticated.

In a universe of simplicity,

Where basic is the rule,

My cells reflect

A more learned school.

 

I have structure

Beyond the crystalline;

A fluidity

Of biology

Incorporating chemistry.

 

In a world of laws

I buck the trend,

Initiating change,

Creating giants of order

In full organic range.

 

Out of this new chemistry

I am full of sparks,

Evolving spontaneously,

Awareness of planets, energy and quarks

 

There is nothing simple

About me

Or my complexity –

But I think

And that is still a mystery.

 

For me life is not divine –

Not constructed to a plan.

Life is self-perpetuating change,

Creating consciousness,

Just because we can.

 

Opher 31.12.2015

Poetry – Once Upon A Time

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Once Upon A Time

It seems to me that mankind’s intellect has outgrown his instinct. Where once we roamed freely in small numbers using all our intelligence and skills to battle the elements, fight of predators, feed and clothe ourselves and stay alive, now we are in the business of sanitising life.

In the plastic universe of our creation, where nature is banned or tamed, we are shackled by our laws. We still have the tribal instincts. The skills, camaraderie and bravery that once meant life and death for all the tribe now count for nothing. Health and Safety rules. Life has to be saved. But life has no substance or meaning.

Our young people are aimlessly drifting.

It is no wonder that some of them drift into religion as an answer. They are searching for purpose. They want more than gang violence and the endless, vacuous night out on the town.

 

Once Upon A Time 

Once a tiny tribe

Roamed, following the meat,

Now a teeming mass

With more than it can eat.

Once wild and free,

Bonding in brotherhood.

Now restrained by law,

Rampaging in the neighbourhood.

Once master of skills,

Living by their wits.

Now a gang of fools

With whom no purpose sits.

Once proud, strong and true,

Now posturing on corners, wondering what to do.

 

In the concrete and plastic

Of a man-made universe,

Where decisions are all drastic

And answers perverse,

The human race has come to this –

A smoke, a shag and a lot of piss.

 

Opher 19.12.2015

Poetry – Egg Poot Froth – A homage to Captain Beefheart.

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Captain Beefheart & Magic Band

This is my homage to Captain Beefheart. I wrote it in 2000 as a performance poem. I wanted to get my mate Rich and a pantomime cow costume. I wanted to face backwards reciting the poem out of the back end of the cow while wandering through the streets of Hull on a Saturday morning among the shoppers.

This is a poem of depth and magnitude that has to be said aloud in the Beefheart voice. Anything less is preposterous.

For some reason Rich turned me down. I have mentioned it a number of times and for reasons that escape me he simply will not agree. He just laughs. I don’t think he takes me seriously.

So if any of you out there have a spare cow costume and are up for a bit of fun I’m your man and this is our poem.

I ought to send it to John French and the Magic Band to record. I’m sure they’d be up for it. I reckon Don Van Vliet wrote it through me. What do you think?

 

EGG POOT FROTH

Egg poot froth

Egg poot froth

Masticated in magenta mandibles

Egg poot froth

Migrating magnificently

Nowhere

 

Tooth drip spew

          Tooth drip spew

Grips the tortured trebles

Tooth drip spew

Tangibly trembling

In the air

 

Egg poot     Tooth drip

 

While the tragic hobo jungle bum

Constructs the new day

And rambles on his way

Egg poot froth

Egg poot froth

 

Egg poot

Tooth drip

Froth spew

While the hobo bum

Creates the day anew

 

Gypsy Queen Princess

Illuminates the new day

Dancing through magenta dawn

To where the hoboes play

 

Egg poot froth

Egg poot froth

 

 

 

She chooses wisely

As the magic hoboes pose

Evades the tooth and spew

That every pooter knows

 

Tooth drip spew

 

Maxillae clatter

And labia vibrate

Hoboes spurt

Pooters can’t wait

 

Egg poot froth                         Egg poot froth

 

Young dudes rush and prance

While claw and tooth cleave

Old jungle bums

Reap the day and leave

 

Tooth drip            Spew

 

The Gypsy Queen Princess

Discards her froth and poots

Another day is born

Another pooter shoots

 

Egg poot froth

Egg poot froth

That’s all there is!

Egg poot froth

Evolution’s come to this!

 

Opher 12.7.00

Poetry – Poem to My Future Self

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This particular poem does not feature in this anthology but it gives you the gist of my poetry.

If you enjoy poetry with thought provoking content and commentary you might enjoy my work.

Poem To My Future Self

I am told that I may not always be the same as I am today. A thousand years from now I may appear different. I have this on good authority. This body I possess may have changed. The evidence of the mirror backs up the possibility that I am not the same as I was. The evidence of my experience shows that others before me have disappeared. But inside my head it is the same me peering out. I can’t imagine he will want to leave this green jewel shrouded in mystery.

It certainly puts things in perspective.

I’ve had a life. My dust has thoughts, dreams, wishes and still strives to change the world.

What are my visions for the future? What is this consciousness?

This body, this corporal entity, this substance that I call me – it is transient, ethereal and lifeless. It is dust – dust, wind and water.

Already I had shed a million bodies. My past dust drifts behind me like a gossamer shroud. I do not mourn them. Already each gulp of air teems with molecules that were once part of me and may be again. The water comes and goes to rest a while in clouds before once again flowing through my tap, blood and kidneys.

All those zillions of atoms are not me. They never knew they were ever part of me.

Or did they?

Do I imbue them with my energy? Do they, like me, dream?

They will swirl and eddy around his planet forever, until our sun finally expands to incorporate them once more to its fiery breast and they return to whence they came.

For one day I am destined to be a star again.

 

Poem To My Future Self

 

Dust – look at what you have achieved.

You are the stuff of stars

Yet you are so dull and shiftless.

You who were the ecstasy of worms

Are now all wind and dirt.

Where are your dreams?

 

Dust – why so useless?

Do you not crave action?

Are you content to drift

In aimless ripples?

Are you now so purposeless?

What are you planning?

 

Dust – you were once me.

You sought to live

And now you skulk in corners

And cover beauty

In your carelessness.

Do you not care?

 

I hear you.

 

I am dust, vapour and gas –

I did not amount to much.

I will touch stars again

But until then

I will exist

In what used to be, what is and what I will become.

 

Opher 14.12.2015

Poems and Peons is available on Amazon –

You might like to check out my full range of books –

Poetry – That’s Life! – a poem about using each moment because it is precious.

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That’s Life

I was writing a book when the email arrived. One of my good friends from long ago had suffered a stroke.

He was recovering. He talked of having to relearn skills – like walking and playing the guitar.

He was an amazing guitar player. When I last saw him he played a few numbers for us. It was beautiful. I told him he should have been on stage. He replied that he gets too nervous to be a performer.

It brought reality home to me.

My mind drifted – there are so many people who are no longer here.

Life goes on and everything is the same, each new day you open your eyes and the sun rises. But one day will be different. The sun will not rise. The pain, the letter, the feeling will arrive that will alter your world. One day it will not be the same.

That is sad.

But that is also a lesson.

We should make the most of every day. We should savour it and maximise each moment. We are adrift in the midst of wonder. Wonder cannot last forever. To make each moment full and perfect is all that we can do. There is not a moment to be wasted.

Pete is relearning the guitar.

I hope to hear his genius decorate my world again in the future. I’m sure it will.

That’s Life

 

An instant.

All change.

Life!

Going along so ordinary –

One moment,

That’s all,

Gone

Unexpectedly.

Never saw it coming.

Blindsided

By mundanity.

Proceeding so steadily –

Then

A brick wall

And gone.

It happens

So often

So predictably.

That’s life!

 

Opher 13.12.2015

Poetry – It Must Be Love – What could be better than love?

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It Must Be Love

Love. What could be better?

Nothing makes you glow like love, puts colour in the world, and makes everything positive.

All the worries go. The whole universe becomes focussed on one person; someone you would willingly sacrifice yourself for.

It may all be chemistry in the brain, a mundane firing of neurones, a stimulation of nerve centres along with a concoction of hormones, but it is real. There is no excitement like it to bring you out in wide-eyed blushing, sweats and heart thumping ecstasy.

Love makes you feel good.

You fit together perfectly. No one else would ever do.

You want to be perfect for them.

To be with them makes everything perfect.

For love is pair-bonding. It is the prelude to family; the vehicle for selecting genes to merge with yours in progeny.

Love is biology.

 

It Must Be Love

 

Flooding chemistry

Electricity flowing

Hormones raging

Emotions growing.

 

Hand in glove

It must be love

 

Centres firing

Skin perspiring

Full with energy

Never tiring.

 

Hand in glove

It must be love.

 

Forever laughing

Often bathing

Eyes connecting

Soon to be expecting

 

Hand in glove

It must be love.

 

Opher 13.12.2015

Poetry – Magic’s Gone – poem about ecologic tragedy.

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Magic’s Gone

When I was a child the world was full of magic. I’d run in the flower full meadows all full of grasshoppers, beetles, bees and butterflies. The whole air trilled and whiffed with their sound and scent. I fished in the ponds and streams for sticklebacks, frogs, newts and toads. There were lizards, slowworms and snakes, voles, mice and hedgehogs.

It was a world that was alive with magic.

I read stories of the impenetrable jungles where the gorillas, orang u tangs and elephants roamed. The seas were full of fish. The bears, tigers and lions meandered the wilderness and the wildebeest herds were measured in millions.

That was magic.

Now the logging companies have built in their roads, the hunters have followed them in and the impenetrable has become accessible.

Now the population of the world has more than doubled and they are gobbling up land, wild-life and resources. The jungles are burnt down and cleared; the bushmeat slaughtered.

Now the ponds are filled in and the streams culverted. The meadow flowers no longer scent the air. The insects no longer buzz. The herbicides and pesticides have done their job. The streams are muddy ditches devoid of stickleback, frog and newt.

The magic is gone.

As the last vestiges of chimpanzee, gorilla, tiger, rhino and elephant now hang on the mining and logging companies move relentlessly forward. The population continues to explode. We’re selling the future for a greedy present.

How can we bring the magic back?

Are we going to all it to die?

 

Magic’s Gone

 

Salamander,

Smooth snake tail,

Tiger tooth –

Now as rare as the Holy Grail.

Rhino horn,

Gorilla’s nail,

Not enough left

To even make one spell.

 

All the magic’s gone

Out of the world.

Sold down the drain

For a crock of gold.

 

Hardwood tree,

Chimpanzee too,

Mighty lion

From Timbuktu,

Whale and bear

Melted down for glue.

Before it’s all gone

What are we going to do?

 

All the magic’s gone

Out of the world.

Sold down the drain

For a crock of gold.

 

Opher 13.12.2015