Armageddon

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this poem as a song. Anybody fancy putting music to it??

Armageddon

The punters are somnambulant

                As the host aims for his mark.

Dull-eyed and whooping

                Lacking any spark.

The celebrities strut their stuff

                In lacklustre lime light.

As drones and goons

                Track their victims

In the latest fight.

All is quiet in flat screen heaven

                On the hundred inch screen

As the punters get their fix.

                Bankers cream percentages

                                Politicians play their tricks.

It’s always twilight and decadence

In the great society.

We’re living in the twilight zone

                Of what used to be.

Always on the brink

                Of some great disaster.

The planet has the answers

                But nobody chose to ask her.

All is quiet in flat screen heaven

                On the hundred inch screen

As the punters get their fix.

                Bankers cream percentages

                                Politicians play their tricks.

Outside on the fringes

                Nature struggles on.

Every single part of it

                Sold for a song.

As the actors take their bow

                It remains fifty fifty

A slow increase in temperature

                Or end it all quite swiftly.

All is quiet in flat screen heaven

                On the hundred inch screen

As the punters get their fix.

                Bankers cream percentages

                                Politicians play their tricks.

The game has never changed.

                Power is its name.

As kings and bishops wrestle

                On the crooked road to fame.

The audience is noisy.

                Oblivious to reality.

As dad provides the bread

                And mum pours the tea.

All is quiet in flat screen heaven

                On the hundred inch screen

As the punters get their fix.

                Bankers cream percentages

                                Politicians play their tricks.

So up the drug production.

                Keep the booze a-flowing.

With surveillance cameras scanning

                For those who are all-knowing.

They’ll deploy the goons tonight

                As the last tree is cut.

The last kangaroo mown down

                And the world outside is shut.

All is quiet in flat screen heaven

                On the hundred inch screen

As the punters get their fix.

                Bankers cream percentages

                                Politicians play their tricks.

Welcome to the future.

                A plastic universe.

Where hosts with perfect teeth

                Act as your daytime nurse.

Watch ‘Grab the Cash’ and sip

                Your happy juice.

You could, of course, protest.

                But what would be the use?

All is quiet in flat screen heaven

                On the hundred inch screen

As the punters get their fix.

                Bankers cream percentages

                                Politicians play their tricks.

Opher 19.4.2024

As I write this in 2024 we’re still playing the same game, edging even closer to the finale.

Outside the comfort of my room reality is raging. Everyone is struggling to seize a bigger share. Power and wealth are all that matters. The consequences inconsequential.

I am distracted by the latest binge series and sip a glass of red. There are a hundred channels of soccer and half a million soaps. No need to go out. The groceries are delivered.  In town the tough lads and scantily clad girls get drunk and pair off in a mist of ethanol and hormones. Nobody pays any attention to what is going on.

So the wealthy set the rules for the game and the politicians are bought and sold. Nature is a commodity and the future is bankrupt.

They organise their wars, deploying all their pawns. Life is cheap in paradise – for the many. While the elite cream off their profits and buy the moon. The rest of us play in cesspits, starve or slave and watch the world on plastic screens, eager for the next episode.

The skies are full of missiles and drones. The bombardments reduce everything to rubble.

The remnants of nature cringe. Forests give way to motorways. Goods must be delivered. Creatures are pests to be eradicated. The temperature outside rises as the satellites pinpoint their targets.

The final curtain is about to be lowered as the last scenes are played out.

The end is yet to be determined. It’s a dance. Slow slow quick quick slow.

The universe doesn’t care.

End Game

Posted on by Opher

I woke up this morning with this in my head.

End Game

There was no warning. Three huge ships the size of football stadia appeared in the sky above the equator in Brazil. Accompanied by a roaring rumble they proceeded to move along, side by side, leaving behind a flattened trail of clean soil. The earth shook. Everything in their path was destroyed. Hills cropped, gulleys filled and all vegetation and life cauterised. After travelling relentlessly forward a hundred miles they turned to produce another tract of devastation alongside the first. Roads, villages and people under the craft were eradicated.

The Brazilian air force attempted to intervene. Warnings given, missiles fired. Planes seemed to fly into an unseen barrier and explode in mid-air, likewise missiles. The three ships continued their task oblivious to the furore taking place around them.

Simultaneously smaller craft appeared over the oceans and great waterspouts shot up into the sky.

Days wore on. The size of the devastation relentlessly grew. The water spouts were investigated. They were spewing billions of tons of water out into the vacuum of space.

NATO met. The UN held emergency council. Governments met. All over the world there was turmoil. Panic ensued. All around the expanding area of destruction people were fleeing. Towns were flattened, vehicles annihilated and all people or animals caught under the sweep of the relentless onslaught were instantly vaporised. Within the expanding area nothing was left.

All attempts at communication fell on deaf ears. All weapons proved useless . As the site of devastation grew so did the force-field surrounding it.

Smaller ships arrived. Strange multi-limbed crab-like creatures scuttled about, their limbs and bodies glassy and reflective, smooth faceted as if constructed from panels of mirrored glass. They were oblivious to what was going on outside their force-field. They went about their business ignoring the frantic efforts of the humans outside.

Constructions started to go up inside the compound; edifices of the same glassy mirrored material that the creatures appeared to be made of. When all the new turned soil had become arid dust crystalline shoots began piercing through. Soon all the ground within the force-field was carpeted in a growing mass of crystal bushes.

The area was growing relentlessly. Sea levels began to drop. Rivers coming under the sweep of the craft were sucked into space. The land encompassed within the rapidly expanding compound resembled an arid desert.

The levels of the oceans began to fall. Then scientists began to detect a rapid dropping of carbon dioxide levels. Emergency councils were permanently in session. Nothing could be done. Nothing worked. The aliens remained impervious to attack and completely incommunicado. Even the desperate use of nuclear and chemical weapons proved utterly ineffective. Panic developed into hysteria. Nobody knew what to do.

As the huge craft moved relentlessly back and forth the size of the encroachment increased. Ocean beds began to be included. Cities raised. People driven back. Everywhere was terror and chaos. Still the process continued unabated.

Crops were failing from the drop in carbon dioxide. At first the receding waters yielded plentiful fish but that soon changed. Starvation added to the horror.

‘They are ploughing the land,’ President Gulatis observed, studying the information streaming in from the scientist. ‘They are changing the world to fit their needs.’

Everyone stared at him in dismay. Nobody spoke.

‘Nobody can get near to examine them,’ Gulatis muttered, more to himself than the committee, ‘but,’ he looked up and met their eyes, ‘these aliens appear to be silicon-based. They have no use for water or carbon. They are systematically removing it. Their world is waterless desert.’

‘And what of us?’ General Decalis asked.

‘We are pests to be brushed aside.’

Poetry – Whatever you have

Posted on by Opher

Whatever you have

Whatever you have

                Is never enough.

You can’t have

                                                Too much stuff.

Whatever you own

                Can never suffice           

                                Is never enough

                                                To fill the hole in your life.

You can own the world

                Rule everyone

                                But that’s not enough

Though everything’s better than none.

For you can never have enough

                Whatever the cost

                                Even if it means

                                                The whole future is lost.

Opher – 11.5.2021

Is it human nature? Is greed embedded in our psyche? Will that be the cause of the end of the world?

Cartoon – Dinosaurs and the end.

Posted on by Opher

It could be worse. Intelligent life might have evolved!!

Ushuaia – Wildlife and wilderness at the end of the world – photos.

Posted on by Opher

Despite the rain we headed off into the park to hunt down some of the wildlife. It was majestically beautiful and there was much in the way of birdlife.

Ushuaia – nature reserve at the end of the world – photos

Posted on by Opher

We headed off to a huge nature reserve. The mountains, streams and lakes made a great habitat for the wildlife. It was wet, cold and green! There was snow on the mountains!

The Genocide of Evangelism!

Posted on by Opher

The effect of the Spanish invasion of the Inca nation in South America is well-documented. That civilisation was annihilated as the conquistadors plundered, tortured and raped their way around in their lust for gold, conquest and to spread the word of Christianity.

What happened in Tierra Del Fuego is less well known.

When the Spanish first visited the large archipelago at the tip of South America they were amazed by the sight of tens of thousands of campfires that lit the place up at night. It is estimated that 500,000 South American Indians inhabited the area. Tierra Del Fuego literally means land of fire. Those natives, despite the freezing temperature, went naked and lived by hunting the numerous wildlife, mainly sealions. They did this from canoes. It is thought that the large amount of sealion blubber in their diet raised their metabolism to enable them to deal with the cold.

That discovery was the end of that way of life and the end of that half a million people.

By the time I visited Ushuaia in 2016 there was just one elderly Native American Indian left.

The ships from Britain, Portugal and Spain came more often. The ships, much to the dismay of the Tierra Del Fuegans,  massacred the wildlife. They even went to the breeding grounds and wiped out the young. They slaughtered everything even when they did not need them for food. What was plentiful became rare.

The Indians found that the sealions, their staple diet, were no longer sufficient to support them. They began to starve.

The evangelical missionaries moved in. They offered food to the starving people if they agreed to convert. They insisted they wore clothes.

Unfortunately the clothes became soaked when out canoeing and the hunters became chilled. Clothing the natives killed them. Feeding them on corn did not maintain their metabolism to deal with the cold. The missionaries brought Western diseases. The Natives were decimated with influenza, measles, syphilis, and gonorrhea.

What was once a vibrant culture living at one with nature was rapidly transformed into a decimated rump. Hundreds of thousands died.

When I visited it was clear that the wildlife was sparse. The remnants were hanging on.

The very last Native American was living our her last days.

Evangelism has wiped them all out. They might all be dead but at least they had received the word – right?

Evangelism is deadly.

When I heard of the stupid American evangelist who was visiting the natives in the Andaman islands. I was quite pleased that they’d shot him full of arrows.

I suggest that we leave people alone!! (And stop slaughtering the wildlife!!)

The Voyage Pt. 15 – Argentina – Ushuaia – the end of the world – Tierra Del Fuego

Posted on by Opher

 

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When we finally had our passports returned we found they had an entrance stamp for Chile but no exit. I guess we stopped just sufficiently long enough to get signed in so that we could then enter Argentina without having come directly from the Falklands. That made us laugh. Technically we had been in Chile. We had travelled down the narrow channel that was the Magellan Strait, with Chile on both sides of us, but we had still never set foot on Chile soil. What a joke all this nationalistic silliness is.

Through the night we picked our way through the intricate passages around the islands and through into the Pacific Ocean. Pacific means calm but I cannot say we noticed any great difference. The weather was a little unsettled.

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It was still dark when we ducked back in to the fjord that led to Argentinian Tierra Del Feugo and Ushuaia, the town that claimed to be the ‘end of the world’.

I was out at the bow as the sky lightened. It was raining and so there was no sunrise. The mountains, the finale of the Andes were shrouded in cloud. Ushuaia looked like what it was – a frontier town. The houses looked like shacks that had been gaily painted. This was the gateway to the Antarctic and it looked it. That was the only reason the place existed. This was mid-summer. The air was frigid. The mountains were still capped with snow. It was hardly the most hospitable of places to live. But the town had a great beauty about it as it nestled into this flat expaqnse at the foot of those great mountains with its own bay.

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We nosed into the jetty and headed off into town. We walked around in the drizzle staring in the windows at shops which all seemed to specialise in T-shirts and rain-proofs. There were craft materials that were supposed to be representing the wild-life and art of the Tierra Del Fuego indigenous Indians. In reality they were tourist tat. There was only one of the Indians surviving and she was eighty seven years old and probably wanted to divorce herself with all association to any of that stuff.

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It would probably have been a lot more cheery in the sun but the drizzle was a bit dispiriting. We looked into museums and found some great photographic exhibitions, old original shacks and a bust of Eva Peron. Then we ducked into a café to dry off, warm up and drink a delicious hot chocolate.

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In the afternoon we headed off to the Tierra Del Fuego National Park. It was staggering. There were small rivers and streams wending through meadows and woodland under the backdrop of these huge, cloud shrouded, snow-capped mountains. Magical.

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We walked round a lake and enjoyed the moss and lichen trunks. The rocks were all coated in patterns of colour.

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There were black necked swans, swallows and pretty birds in the shrubs. Two turkey vultures were perched in the trees. A wading bird stalked fish and there were ducks and geese on the islands in the lake. Despite the drizzling rain it was stunning.

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Our guide told us the story of the past, how the Spanish, Portuguese and British boats had arrived to find the whole area alive with native Indians. They estimate there were 500,000 living in the region, They hunted the numerous sea-lions whose high energy fat caused a rise in metabolism that enabled the Indians to lived naked in the cold temperatures. The Europeans slaughtered the wild-life, They did not spare the breeding grounds and took the eggs, young and pregnant without differentiation. Those ships needed fresh meat and took hundreds of tons of meat on board. The populations of wild geese, sea-lions, ducks, and seals were decimated. The Indians starved. The missionaries moved in to exploit this. They gave out food but insisted the Indians wore clothes. The clothes became damp and the Indians died of pneumonia. The Europeans brought flu, measles, chicken pox and smallpox as free gifts. I only hope that someone thinks to say sorry to that last old indian lady before she dies. They’d lived there for thousands of years and within a couple of hundred years after that first wooden ship took refuge in that bay they were destroyed. It’s the European curse.

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Back on board we looked out in the late afternoon light. The clouds had risen so that the mountains were clear and Ushuaia looked beautiful as if sat in that bay. The lights were coming on but I would have preferred to have seen the thousands of camp-fires that those first Europeans saw when they moored in that bay, the camp-fires that gave it the name – the land of fire. All those camp-fires have gone. This is now the town that is the gateway to the Antarctic – the gateway to the oil and minerals. The resources to plunder were different but the intent was the same – profit before all else without a thought for the future. I wondered how long Ushuaia was going to look so picturesque.

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If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.

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