Sunday 18 April 2010

ERUPTION.



In our confusion and fury
the days run quick
yesterdays blood
nearly gone,
tomorrow
a new dawn.
Struggle is infinite
we must look beyond
further out.
No aeroplanes in the sky
a clarity
of horizons,
traffic grinding to a halt.
Their will be stillness
but some things
still worth fighting for.
A land divided
is not home,
humanity pronounces
judgement,
and in the end
we all fall,
but
mother nature
prevails.

Thursday 15 April 2010

EDWARD CARPENTER - NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY



With the dying out of fear and grinding anxiety and the undoing of the rightful tension which today characterizes all our lives, Society will spring back nearer to its normal form of mutual help. People will wake up with surprise, and rub their eyes to find that they are under no necessity of being other than human.
Simultaneously ( i.e., with the lessening of the power of money as an engine of interest and profit-grinding) the huge nightmare which weighs on us today, the monstrous incubus of " business "- with its endless Sisyphus labours, its searchings for markets, its displacement and destructions of rivals, its travellers, its advertisements, its armies of clerks, its banking and broking, its accounts and checking of accounts - will fade and lessen in importance; till some day perchance it will collapse, and roll off like a great burden to the ground! Freed from the great strain and waste which all this system creates, the body politic will recover like a man from a disease, and spring to unexpected powers of health.

EDWARD CARPENTER, 1911

Postscript-

Well here I am in the year 2010, still listening,the world even colder than when the above words were written, a world unfortunately still stuffed with greed.
The General Election is forthcoming, my opening gambit is to be distrustful of all, but real change will one day come. We must demand it with every breath. Spoil your vote, do something, do not give the parasites legitimacy.Do not give up hope.

Sunday 11 April 2010

DI-WAITH / WITHOUT WORK


Wandering
where we are,
some say not having a job
creates a lack of identity,
have you seen us lately
walking up and down,
situationist's vacant.
Some say that most of us
are lost,
it depends where you are found,
some stunned into silence,
some in the nightshot sparkle.
Visions of one day
colliding with the next,
the secret is distraction
different winds blowing,
calling one another.
All summer
space is eternal,
we find gradually
that somethings are never there.
In groups
of solitary walkers,
in dreamtime
we don't give a damn,
this world has shifted
a million miles,
telescopes seek new horizons.
We carry on shuffling through,
sometimes taking the wrong turn
spiralling monk like
out of
control.
All battlefields are the same
it's never an easy road,
all this is work
where there is none.

Monday 5 April 2010

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS - some poems


(28/7/1844 - 8/6/1885)
Gerald Manley Hopkins was a daring innovator at a time of largely traditional verse, his life was built on renunciation and self-denial, he found lots of things quite testing and morally dangerous, but seemed to have a go anyway. His life spent hemmed in by personal guilt and scrupulousness encouraged no doubt by the constricting doctrines of 1860s Oxford. His personality was of great complexity, this is what all biographers seem to note, his descent into darkness and depression. Anyway I will endeavor to explore him further later in the year. First and foremost he was a poet, so here I will just post a few of his that reveal this calling. I will add that many of his poems were produced in relation to his spiritual state which were just another addition perhaps to his own complicated emotions. Enjoy.

SPRING AND FALL.
to a young child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
it will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

PEACE

When will yiu ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

ANDROMEDA

NOW Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, look off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rifle in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her to her extremes?-
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill/ thongs and fangs.

RIBBLESDALE

EARTH, sweet Eart, sweet landscape, with leaves throng
And louched low grass, heaven that dost appeal
To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;
That canst but only be, but dost that long -

Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong
Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,
Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel
Thy river, and o'er gives all to rack or wrong.

And what is Earh's eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dearand dogged man?- Ah, the heir
To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn,
To thriftless reave bothour rich round world bare
And none reck of world after, this bids wear
Earth brows of such care, care and dear concern.


Saturday 3 April 2010

THE MYTH OF DEFENSIVE MILITARY UAVS



Nearly all politicians in West Wales either support the Parc Aberporth UAV testing zone without question and support it for non-military use only ( but still fail to condemn it even though its use for the forseeable future will be overwhelmingly military ); or support it for civilian and defensive military use only.
Those of us against military use entirely would argue that locating people with a UAV site in order that they can be killed with a bomb dropped by a war plane, rather blurs the offensive/defensive distinction for those politicians who still think that they know which is which, this report from WWW.trainingconf.com should finally disabuse them.

The Uk could intergrate a light-weight weapon with its Thales Uk/ Elbit Systems Watchkeeper 450 tactical unmanned air vehicles, operations of which should begin late next year.
"We are conducting analysis to investigate the contribution that an armed Watchkeeper UAV system could make in current and future operations,"
confirms minister for International degence and security Baroness Taylor.
Taylor's comments represent the first time that the MOD has acknowledged the possibility of arming the British Army's future WK450 air vehicles. One likely candidate is Thames Air Systems' lightweight multirole missile (LKM), which has previously been shown at exhibitions with a full scale model of the WK450.
WK450 air vehicle Flight-test activities should start before year-end at the Park Aberporth UAV cenre of excellence in West Wales. The Royal Air force already operatesGeneral Atomics MQ-9 Reaper UAVs carrying GBU-12 Paveway II precision guided bombs and Lockhead Martin AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.
So "Watchkeeper becomes "Watchkiller". What rationale will the politicians invent now to justify their continued support for Parc Aberporth.

With thanks to Bro Emlyn Peace and Justice Group

Happy Easter now
Peace/heddwch

Wednesday 31 March 2010

RANT




Charming David Cameron,
walks through the door
looking quite debonair,
he just keeps hanging around
pretending to care.

He's cruising for your favour
but the stink of Thatcher's breath,
stalks him everywhere
it worries me, should worry all
disturb our sleep, our waking falls.

Miniature dinosaurs
cosying up to to big business,
wearing the same hats
and their old school ties,
and their ugly transparent smiles.

Remember the last time,
nothing much has changed
they made promises then
in order to catch our vote,
still wearing the same ruddy
overcoat.

Lying is the tory's one true calling
with unblinking eyes they then attack,
champions of the privileged elite
this broken economy we live in,
an example of their twisted legacy.

Still a party of the right,
though now dressed in soft blue
the same old bullshit, the same old lies,
their smarmy handshakes
offering only a poisoned chalice.

God help the lonely and the helpless,
the old, the poor, the frial and meek,
they will kill our spirit,
they will steal the light,
the bell tolls, THIS IS A WARNING!

Spectre of another era
of divide and conquer,
the ghosts of a not to distant past,
returning to ruin this countries future
because we voted for an arse.