Stuff from March, April, & May 2019

              These Things Must Exist

The images swim out of various parts

of the anglophone cultural miasma:

Hearts and floral arrangements

and darling crayon drawings by kindy kids

frame the tender depictions of present-day madonnas

and the warm, fuzzy paeans of purest love

that ooze out all over the place

on Mothers Day

and its commercial build-up …

I imagine that’s real for most people,

but it sure isn’t real for me;

I do struggle, badly, to be resilient, somehow.

A long table covered with home-made food

and surrounded by four generations, with in-laws,

of a large and safe and boisterous family;

kids of all sizes climbing on trees or fences or furniture,

more than a dozen lifetimes of interwoven experiences

inevitable disagreements tempered by shared values,

with love the prophylactic against distrust, or meanness,

or subtle challenges and psychological threats ...

I imagine that’s real for many people,

depending on their culture and situation,

but my family’s just not like that.

Two silver-haired Old Dears

looking lovingly into each other’s eyes,

holding hands in the park or by the sea,

or maybe on a shady front porch,

their mutual empathy and trust automatic,

their souls suffused with their shared nearly-everything …

I wonder how real that is in the city;

it sure isn’t real to me,

but I have coping mechanisms.

         The View From The Launch 

A certain tension pulsates beneath the surface

at buffets put on at minor events

between: (a) the people who brought

their signature snack delicacies

for the common board

and who want to see all of it eaten,

as much to feel rewarded for their efforts

as to avoid the trouble of disposing of it,

and (b) everybody else,

each of whom is all too aware

of the opprobrium and ridicule

and the sneering about gluttony –

sometimes via witty jokes or comments,

but often, more tastefully,

through visible-but-unspoken looks –

that rain down on those people

whom our more judgemental friends

feel they have reason to accuse

of making a pig of themselves.

It only has to happen once.

When only a bit younger I didn’t give a shit

and tucked in heartily

when the goodies were good,

but now it just seems easier

to avoid risking that sort of tediousness.

Nobody actually needs yummy snacks.

It’s only pleasure, after all. 

                           Fresh Fruit For Breakfast 

The stars, the cosmos,

have no meaning for my dog.

Does this mean they have no meaning at all?

Well, yes and no.

If you know what I mean –

or even if you don’t.

It depends on what you mean

by meaning –

and what the stars

and galaxies

and other points of light

in the night sky

(when the city lights don’t interfere)

mean to you.

My dog has other things on his mind.

Me? I like fresh fruit for breakfast.

           Mutant Amoebas 

I happened to mention

that I like soy sauce on my brussels sprouts.

He snorted, ‘You can’t really like brussels sprouts;

they’re nasty-nasty-nasty, and I should know,

because I have Very Good Taste,

better than all those food snobs

and you sheeple who go ooh and ahh

over so-called food that you really can’t stand

because you lack confidence –

fakes, all of you.’

I said, sighing inwardly

because I didn’t want him to notice

(but he probably did),

‘No, your hatred for brussels sprouts

just means that your TAS2R38 gene

has mutated to make a protein

that misconstrues certain substances

in brussels sprouts and other brassicas

for a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide,

which is unpleasantly bitter.’

He smirked disdainfully at me, sneering,

‘Are you telling me that I’m a mutant?’

‘Every living thing,’

I told him with little hope that it’d get through,

‘from octopuses to oak trees

to pigeons to people,

including both of us,

is basically a mutant amoeba.’

He smiled at me with condescending loathing,

‘Not me, mate.

Speak for yourself.’

                   The Solution  

Human civilisation is a mess

That’s always been the case (the record’s clear),

only now its capacity to destroy itself

has become so sophisticated

and so powerful and so tempting

in so many different ways

that civilisational collapse

seems imminent and inescapable.

Of course, numerous individuals

and scattered clumps of people

have proposed numerous reasonable ways

to at least delay this self-destruction,

but without political wisdom,

these are likely to come to nought,

and political wisdom is in short supply,

as it always has been (the record’s clear).

Philosophers and statesmen

(note the gendered term)

have since ancient days

argued over what is the best way

to sort out people’s power relationships,

but no system or philosophy or ideology

has come close to being

what it needs to be.

I, however, have the best solution

for the best outcomes for everyone:

make me King of the World

(or Emperor or CEO).

The title doesn’t matter,

just that what I say, goes.

After all, I do have the optimal

values system, knowledge base,

higher-level cognitive abilities,

and acquired wisdom,

modest personal needs,

and just the right psychological disorders

for the job. 

           M.O.G. 

If the rain is, indeed,

the tears of the Virgin Mary

weeping for our sins,

a whole lot of sinning

must be going on.

                Fresh Grapes from Chile

  

The sun sucked up that little spludge of water,

no bigger then the last joint of my thumb,

sucked it up into a cloud from somewhere in the ocean,

or maybe from a lake or a swamp,

or the river two blocks from my house

into which my urine also flows,

and it wafted all the way across the Pacific

to the Atacama region of Chile,

where it fell in a shower, or maybe a thunderstorm,

onto a vineyard growing red globe table grapes,

then rose  up through roots to inhabit

a grape of exactly that size

in a bunch that some underpaid person picked,

before other underpaid workers packed it

into the hold of a climate-warping airplane,

in which it rode for more than 10,000 climate-warping kays,

ending up briefly at the Vege King in the Fairfield shops

before riding again, muscle-powered, inside my backpack

to my kitchen, where I popped it into my mouth,

and deeply enjoyed the moment

of that juicy grape-explosion

when my teeth crushed it.

Endless aeons of cosmic expansion, geological activity,

biological evolution – of both grapes and me –

and global human economic development 

created that one juicily worthwhile moment

before my species fucks things up for ourselves

more or less terminally,

and no more Chilean red globe grapes

fly pollutingly to New Zealand

for worthwhile moments and transcontinental recycling.

       A Cultural Phenomenon 

Heavy metal,

it seems to me,

is a musical, attitudinal, and sartorial expression

of a world-view

and cultural-values profile

that emphasises the grandness

of imperialism and conquest

and triumphalism and domination

and violence and cruelty

for people who may be benefiting

from the historical consequences

of such things,

but who feel cheated by the way

that those who still enjoy them to the full

– especially the domination stuff –

have eroded the metalheads’ enjoyment

into puffed-chest fantasies of long ago

– especially the domination stuff –

as their own life experiences of their civilisation,

born of violent conquest as it was,

and imbued with its rationale as it is,

has turned, inexplicably to them,

to shit.

      Just One Little Thing  

Most of my exes

(and I have too many of them

scattered about the globe)

would probably take me back

if only I were a different person,

which of course I’m not.