Formica is not Sad

Formica topped tables are not sad.

Don’t let that false notion into your head.

They may fill you with nostalgia

Because there was one at home

When you were a little lad,

But it was full of good cheer

And probably red,

With contemporary legs.

It was full of post war optimism

And a practical idea.

It hosted glass milk bottles

And boxes of speckled eggs

And tinned peaches and Carnation,

And the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book

With its beautiful illustrations

Of women, in clean kitchens,

With hair in turbans, wearing neat aprons.

It allowed itself to be wiped clean

With Jaycloths,

That “got you out of sticky situations”.

And was never mean

About hot cups without saucers,

Though it drew the mark at hot pans.

It went with the jolly, abstract patterned lino

Laid over the old, rough, cold stone flags,

And it admired the toughness of Pyrex

Encouraging the making of casseroles.

It held up the pamphlet for ‘Singing Together’

And ‘Listened, With Mother’.

When Loyalty’s Betrayed

When man has pledged his loyalty then found

His faith has been almost at once betrayed, 

He does not always act as if the ground

Has shifted.  He feels betrayal as a blade

Embedded in his back, yet with temper frayed

He lashes out at those who speak their shared, profound

Sense of regret, mad that it is publicly displayed.

When man has pledged his loyalty then found

It was misplaced, he needs must loudly sound

A call to arms for the false cause, to show that he has made

A better pledge: to loyalty itself. He needs to heal the wound,

His faith has been almost at once betrayed,

But he cannot live without his faith, so he has weighed

His old, false cause pound for pound

Against the true idea of loyalty. Afraid,

He does not always act as if the ground

Has shifted, he acts instead as if hidebound

Incapable of change. He wants to be portrayed

A loyal man. All, in one bound,

Has shifted.  He feels betrayal as a blade

Between the shoulder blades, and yet he hasn’t strayed

He is as rock, not shifting sand, does not explain, expound,

Seeks only to restore his self esteem and to stockade

His loyalty.

Life Considered An Absolute Value

Public discourse is highly moralized. Looking for someone to blame, individuals are exposed as “super-spreaders” responsible for the rising number of cases. On social media, “lockdown warriors” accuse citizens of lack of patriotism and failure to “do their duty” in the face of danger. In this highly moralized public discourse, life is considered an absolute value that can justify almost every form of disciplinary intervention in the name of health.  Carlo Caduff

The public discourse, highly moralised,

Must always seek out someone who’s to blame.

And individuals, criminalised,

Humiliated, made to feel great shame,

Must great responsibility then bear.

The “lockdown warriors” all love to twitch

Their virtual net curtains and to snitch

On neighbours, whom they hate. They do not care

To love their neighbours as themselves, nor how

One needs must ‘walk a mile in someone’s shoes’

To understand their actions, here and now,

Might come from some old pressing need. Why use

This notion: life as value absolute

In order to engage in this pursuit

Of discipline and blunt state intervention

All in the name of health or death prevention?

The Consolation of Imaginary Fear.

“This pandemic is not just about health, it is about fear, and the objects that are singled out and then made the ground and motivation of systematic thought and action. To be afraid has become an obligation, a responsibility, a duty. People are afraid not just because of what they experience but because they are told to be afraid and encouraged to inhabit the world with fear of “foreign bodies” and “invisible enemies.” Carlo Caduff

“Pandemics” of this sort, concern not health

They are concerned much more with public fear

And the objects which are singled out, made clear,

Are then made ground for spending public wealth.

They’re targeted made ground and motivation

For systematic thought and focused action

To be frightened is an obligation,

A duty and a cause of satisfaction.

And patriotic sentiments eliminate

Feelings of embarrassment and cowardice

And caring about money is just avarice,

So learn to nod along and learn to sublimate.

You’re complex, feel the complicated horror,

Of the consolation of imaginary terror.

Imaginary Friends

I do it all for you darlings,

My bike rides, my running,

My hiking, I record it on an app.

I’m that sort of chap.

So you can see that I am holding myself 

To a high standard and not giving up

On my routine. 

It would seem mean

To deprive others

Of the ability to compare

Their times against mine,

Over a given route.

It’s amazing how these things can trace

You every step of the way,

Wherever you are in an open space.

I would never dream of not being

In competition with myself,

It would lower my self esteem.

I’m in great shape now,

Adonis like, stunning.

Even when I walk the dog,

I would never turn back

When I was tired, or the dog was lame,

That’s not my game.

I always walk to the same place

And touch the gate post

Before retracing my tracks,

Counting my steps,

Till the journey ends,

I never cut myself any slack. 

I do it all for you, my friends.

Overture to Tannhäuser

The Overture to Tannhäuser on Radio 3
Makes the day seem less than it should be.
The sun should be bursting through the grey,
There should be things to shout about.
I shouldn’t be here in this crumpled mess,
Of stale sheets and tawdriness.
The Venusburg demands something greater,
But while curled together, the dog and I
And staring blankly at the sky,
I see a whizzing ballet passing by,
A diminishing motif
Which cascades while ascending
Is danced to by swifts, in a whirl, never ending.

Angel Stain

Within the organ loft above the rest,

Beside my daughter bringing harmony

With hands and feet and graceful dexterity,

To farmers and their wives, doing their best

To praise the Lord, whom they all believe 

Is glad, their singing to receive

And lost in thought through formal praise

And Nicene creed,

And watching play of light on white-washed walls,

I gradually perceive

An angel stain, a fitting thing indeed.

She kneels in supplication and her wing

Rises behind her brown and ochre halo.

And not through ritual, but at this sight

My mind is calmed sufficiently to bring

About a fitting state for prayer.

Until, that is, I start to turn the experience

Into poetry,

And remember that the only word that rhymes

With the one describing the light around an angel,

Is the Composer, Ola Gjelo

Nobody Who's Anyone

Nobody, who’s anyone, is funny anymore,

The people one respects aren’t raving perverts,

They don’t drink gin all day, 

And they only write to bore,

Nor are they Roman Catholic converts.

Nobody, who’s anyone, is loony anymore,

Oh wherefore art thou shaggers and fighters?

Nobody, it seems, is very much like Evelyn Waugh,

Nobody, it seems, has anything to say.

Peter Hitchens makes predictions,

But has no fruity predilections,

Oh where are the creators who find living is a chore,

So spice it up with wild addictions?

Why do I feel it is best to ignore

The witterings and twitterings 

Of modern day writers?

https://youtu.be/b2X-Yb7rfB0.

(Peter Hitchens’ Predictions) 

Singing Hymns For My Own Funeral (I’m not dying I was just in a gothic mood)

Today I recorded some hymns, SATB,

For my own funeral, lest no one should attend.

Of course it was a rather ragged, barber shop affair,

Since I myself sang all the different parts 

And I couldn’t sing the mens’ all an octave lower.

I recorded it on an app I’d downloaded.

Today I whipped myself up into madness

And ended in tears and sadness

When the pent up frustration exploded.

I once thought life couldn’t get any slower,

Now it speeds up and drags in fits and starts,

I make myself laugh out loud and weep, in despair.

But mood waves and sound waves combined in the end

Into a hymn of Him who died, for me.

A Kind of Poetry. My Garden in May.

Life Affirmed

Today, I saw a tab end on the footpath,

A thing I felt I hadn’t seen for years,

A filter tip, which filtered out nostalgia,

And left it here condensed among the fears

Of people scared of dying from infection

Caught by walking in the open air.

Today, I saw a strange kind of protection,

A bloody minded, two fingered salute,

To hysteria and economic ruin,

And other crazy health fads, to boot.

Today, I saw a fag end on the footpath,

Not the fag end of my hope, but a rejection

Of the notion that we live so we don’t die,

A reminder of our fleshly resurrection

And other life affirming ideas.

On the Edge of Sleep

The only places known to be affected

Are the places made entirely of words,

But since these must exist within the mind

And on the page, 

They are easily divided into thirds.

And once split into three

They can be dealt with 

And the dreariest of scenes can be cut out,

So that what is left is better than expected

And nobody can tell what it’s about.

But one thing is for certain

I have known it,

Time and time again, to be the case 

That the places made of words

Are quite unchanging,

And the mind can always spot a dreary space

Made up of odds and ends of poor description,

Which makes these landscapes out of tiny fractions

And shies away from writing scenic fiction

Because it thinks it loves a man whose actions

Appeal to rugged types as well as nerds.

Statistics Ruin May

Pale primrose, Frühlingsgold, sweet scented May,

but such beauty stained by our frustration

bird song sounding, green and iris coloured day, 

ruined by useless misinformation:

freedom’s dead, here’s the codification

of rules based on what statisticians say.

Look, here’s lovely random probability distribution,

pale primrose, Frühlingsgold, sweet scented May,

ceanothuses, peonies’, bright display

stochastic plantings add beautification

to alliums amongst the herbaceous disarray.

But such beauty stained by our frustration,

at the exponential multiplication

of potential harm and death. Who are they,

to dictate, or fill with irritation 

bird song sounding, green and iris coloured day

after sky blue day, turning each one grey?

Who are they to enforce isolation,

our Liberté and now Fraternité

ruined by useless misinformation,

ruined by deliberate disinformation,

ruined by arrogance which won’t betray

its ideological foundation?

Yet perhaps, they are done, I can sense the decay,

sweet scented. 

Post COVID

We need not scientists, but polymaths,

Nor statisticians, but Renaissance men,

We need not politicians, but Sylvia Plaths,

And artists and musicians

Who understand the world in ten

Or twenty different ways, 

Simultaneously.

Who speak miscellaneously,

Who daydream, gaze

In wonder and recognise the truth,

With the ability of fragility

The docility of fallibility

The humility of futility.

We need not some big shot

Some limited ideologist

Some epidemiologist,

With his models, curves and graphs

We need someone who laughs

In the face of reduction

And at those who seek

To comprehend the world 

And to give instruction.

We need:

Someone who can speak 

With credibility on the possibility

Of the hostility contained in tranquility

Of the imbecility of immobility,

The tractability of gullibility,

Someone wise,

One whose vulnerability

Is an obvious blessing,

Not a disguise.