Labi Siffre - Into The Light

On our way to the ground floor

I observe
The three women in this hospital
Lift with me

Each with the same face
Carved in flesh stone
Dull fixed slack

Their eyes stare
To the distance; focused
On something close

Like mine yesterday
In the same lift
Seeing nothing

___

Walking back from the ward

The herring gulls on the edge
Of the hospital car park
Have grown mustachios

Dangling beaks full of mowed grass
For nesting, laying, raising chicks

Inside among the fearful, the relieved,
The hopeful and the joyful
Are those preparing for rest

As they mourn the loss
Of themselves

___

Is the electorate gutless?

I'm a poet not an accountant but: Doesn't anybody feel we the electorate should accept at least a smidgen of responsibility for the economic, social and political messes we’re in?

We've made it clear, in more than subtext: I want everything better but I don't want to pay. So lie to me politicians, the way we’ve trained you for years, electoral night and day. Tell us, "We’ll give you much more and tax/charge you less". Who in their right mind believes that ever made sense? And then there was . . .

Banking for Dummies

We’ll lend you money we know you’ll never be able to repay. We’re a canny bank so, we’ve laid off the bet or bet that you’ll fail. Have fun, here’s the cash; we don’t give a shit, ‘cos we’ll be OK.

Doesn't anybody feel we the electorate should accept at least a smidgen of responsibility for the economic, social and political messes we’re in?

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Smoking counterfeit cigarettes

We develop bona fide
Cancer of the lungs
Hospitalised we die

Medicated with counterfeit drugs
We are buried
In counterfeit sanctified ground

The prayers of our loved ones
Never reach the counterfeit
Creator of the universe

No
This poem doesn’t say
Anything nice

___

The leaves of these trees are stained with blood

They are tall trees and broad

Is that not enough?

___

The child glares at the high wire acrobat

The birthday outing spoiled forever

“Get up! Get up!

Stop lying broken on the floor like that!"

___

For the sake of heterosexuals

Homosexuals have to be
Portrayed behaving in a way
Heterosexuals will accept as Gay

The loudest voices seize the day, and so
I’ve rarely seen portrayed
A homosexual with whom I identify

___

Faith

I hear a voice in my head
I name it God
‘Cos with God in my head
I am blessed and I want
To be blessed

Also, with God in my head,
I am impressed with how
Impressive I am
Having God in my head

In addition I am more
Than those who are less; that is
Those who lack my voice,
The voice of God, in their heads

___

Confrontation

Is it true that you
Are a good person?
I’ve heard rumours to that effect

In reflection I don’t believe it
There’s something I just don’t trust
About the way you look when you brush

Your teeth
Shifty doesn’t quite describe it
Perhaps it’s the fact that

You look me straight
In the eye, but never in both
At the same time

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Siffre’s 7 Questions for Religious Believers

1: Is your God responsible for its choices and actions?

2: Is your God the ultimate moral authority?

3: Is your God the creator of the universe?

4: Is your God in possession of free will?

5: Is your God the supreme being?

6: Is your God omnipotent?

7: Is your God omniscient?

1: Is your God responsible for its choices and actions?

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Tenth of April Two Thousand Ten

It was a sitting in the garden

Holding hands in the sun day.

Elsewhere crowds were marching in protest

Or gathering mourning

___

In celebration of our heritage

We paint our faces white

As a sign we poor can kill

Efficiently as the rich

And with the same delight

___

They rape and kill my wife and child

I know it is God’s plan

Do my wife and child appreciate

His spirituality

Do they understand

___

Stillborn they prattle on

The sky is dark clear

I am walking in the sky

There is nothing to fear

___

The prophet had foretold

Endless night
From this moment on

But still the sun shone
So they wore blindfolds

To prove the prophet
Could not be wrong

___

Existence says nothing

Layer on layer
With an absence of weight
And delicate traces of semen
Or is it paint?

Gazing at the sky
It’s missing; the moon is alone
In a void
That makes four; six
Counting the stones and semen
As collective individuals

Whatever they are
Things have to be done
For no reason but doing them
Makes reasons come

___

To be omnipotent

(able to do anything) and omniscient (knowing everything) and to create something that can do no other than you have designed it, in total, to do, is not “giving it” “free will”.

To be omnipotent and omniscient and to create something that can do no other than you have designed it, in total, to do, and then to blame it and punish it for so doing is entrapment.

An omnipotent, omniscient entity, albeit a human invention/concept, that exercises that process, is contemptible and absurd and, if it existed, would be responsible for all that followed from its act of creation.

The thought processes that invented such a concept were crude and uninformed as to the technical processes of the universe. We, possessing vastly more information regarding those processes, betray our humanity and descendants by continuing to promote as accurate those crude, uninformed thought processes.

Therein lies our responsibility.

___

Stephen Fry talking truth & making sense for 19 minutes

The Intelligence² Debate

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Funny how they take money

From those
They’re supposed to be voting out
Of influence and into political extinction
While we

Give money to both and with outraged
Conviction demand respect;
No wonder they view us
With barely concealed contempt

___

He thinks about death; a lot

It’s natural
Happens to every one
It’s all around
Every day

But he’s not gloomy about it
He worries a bit that he won’t be able to function
When a certain person he loves dies
But he’d want him to just “get on with things”
So he probably will
Crying all the time for ever inside

And he worries about how the two he loves
Would be effected if he died first
So he tries to set things up
To make sure they’ll be ok

Yes he thinks about death a lot
Mostly in a practical way
Like remembering to put his wooly hat
On his bald head
Before going out
In snowfall

___

Were it not for the fact that God lacks the ability to write unambiguous paragraphs

Priests imams rabbis popes
Witch doctors pastors ministers
Archbishops

And their ilk, would rightly be
Recognized as faeces
Floating in the babies milk

___

An American talking truth & making sense for 25 minutes

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The languages of viruses

Bees ants wolves trees

Fungi flowers and whales work

Better in their societies than ours

Function in ours; and in the mirror

We fear and hesitate to face

It’s time humanity learned its place

___

In that vacant room

On that bed of thorn
Lies seed corn
Waiting for a child
Who will be praised
For wetting the bed
And up the stalks
Will build and climb

It won’t be me, too heavy
The sky; I can’t bear the weight
Though the older I get, the easier
I cry; packing less nitrogen
Still my tears may do
If the child can’t find
That vacant room

___

So, “neither flag nor wind move

It is the mind in motion”

But when the flag is totalitarian?
The wind a stinking fart?

What then of philosophy
Politics, poetry, art?

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