Stuff From February and March 2018

 Smokers’ Etiquette & Science 

It was just lying there,

without volition of its own,

a crushed, empty cigarette pack

in about the middle

of the park footpath,

maybe 30 or 40 metres from a bin,

and I thought,

shaking my head sadly,

‘Smokers sure do tend to be shitty people,’

and then I caught myself,

and castigated myself

for my logical fallacy

of jumping to a conclusion

based on insufficient data;

despite having seen

a plethora of stomped-out butts

and other tobacco-based detritus

on the ground all over the place

throughout my long life,

my observations have been

unsystematic and without

scientifically robust controls

to compare them with

how much crap other people

throw on the ground.

Bastards, all of ’em,

anyway.

                Factors 

Smart phones

Dumb people

That’s how the situation rolls

Smart phones

Dumb people

Tumbling wild out of control

Smart cars

Dumb drivers

Unenlightened about nature’s laws

Smart cars

Dumb drivers

Gotta eighty-six the human cause

Hot bods

Cold feelings

Forget the losers far from the top

Hot bods

Cold feelings

Fuck that brainy, PC, no-fun slop

Cheap talk

Grand promises

Love’s gonna find us by this afternoon

Cheap talk

Grand promises

We’re gonna set it right now really soon

Soft hearts

Hard lessons

The open door is starting to shut

Soft heart

Hard lessons

We’re floating then we’re kicked in the butt

Smart phones

Dumb people

It’s so easy to be mystified

Smart phones

Dumb people

We’re getting dizzy on that downhill slide

     Why I’m Not A Lawyer

I earned my bachelor’s degree

in political science

with a respectable grade-point average

at a university

with a prestigious

and well-connected

law school,

but I never even considered

filling out an application

for admission to that law school.

Nothing would have made my mother happier

than for me to become a lawyer.

That was reason enough

for me not to apply for law school

right there.

              Faith

I don’t believe you.

It’s nothing personal.

I don’t believe much.

Actually, when it comes to, well, stuff

I try not to believe anything,

although I don’t doubt

that a sustained, rigorous investigation

could uncover instances

in which I’ve fucked up

and been taken in,

me being fallible and all.

When it comes to people

my default setting is mistrust,

but from time to time,

whether out of loneliness

or a craving for love or friendship –

or any other form of human closeness –,

I have let my guard down

and trusted and believed someone,

and of course have wound up

getting kicked in the arse,

metaphorically speaking,

trust and belief returning

to tarnished memory.

                       No Polemic 

I’m incapable of feeling empathy

with bigots, sexists, wowsers, prohibitionists,

and people who are obsessed

with other people’s sexual proclivities.

I have enough trouble just trying to be myself

than to work myself up into a froth

about who other people are

and what they’re up to.

Sure, I definitely have a dislike

and an occasional unkind word

for psychopathic narcissists,

maliciously sadistic bullies,

aggressively superstitious blowhards,

and phonies who pontificate authoritatively

on subjects about which they’re pig-ignorant,

but experience has convinced me

that nothing I say or do will change them,

so I just confine myself to avoiding them

as much as I can,

and limiting my unkind words to them in general,

but not individually by name –

because that could lead to interpersonal conflict.

Dickheads are everywhere,

and that’s the way it’s always been.

One can’t fight them all.

                   Just Like That 

Some people are just like that.

I was walking my dog

along a street lined with regal oak trees

when she called to me from a deck

on the other side of a fence

to come in through the gate

for a glass of wine.

Fifty years old, she told me,

and wearing dreadlocks and baggy mid-calfs, I noticed,

she turned out to be an attack conversationalist,

launching one personal attack or innuendo

after another,

her objective being

to poke reactions out of me,

as she told me after one egregious insult,

which she readily conceded that

she herself thought was awful and didn’t believe.

She seemed to think that I was enjoying this.

Some people are just like that.

I was soon looking for a polite way to escape,

but she’d given my dog a huge bone,

which he, at least, was enjoying enormously.

Still, after 15 or 20 minutes

of sustaining repeated attacks,

I stuffed the jumbo livestock joint

into a plastic bag I had in my pocket,

as a responsible citizen,

for picking up dog shit,

and retreated out through the gate

to the tree-shaded footpath,

where it felt good to breathe

again.

Some people are just like that.

               Dalí Doesn’t Rhyme With Tolstoy

          Dalí didn’t dilly-dally, did he?

          Warhol wasn’t wishy-washy, was he?

          Shelley shouldn’t shilly-shally, should she?

          Wordsworth wouldn’t wiggle-waggle, would he?

          Kindergarten fartin’

          played a part in startin’ a smartin’ spartan

          goin’, ‘holy moley, roly-poly,

          you’re losing your bruising and

          your cruising and your boozing, whilst

          you’re fusing and refusing, which makes

          your schmoozing bemusing,

          so you’re losing it once again.’

          Meanwhile,

          their cobber’s slobber clobbered your throbber,

          and their clubber’s blubber

          scrubbed a grubber that wouldn’t rub her

          the right way anymore.

          Geisel groaned no gibble-gabble,

          Chomsky chawed no chitter-chatter,

          Picasso pooh-poohed their prittle-prattle, and

          Tolstoy told no tittle-tattle.

          Meanwhile,

          Paisley’s partly pickled party gherkin

          was workin’ the java that was perkin’ away

          for every jerk and patsy in the park.

          Dalí didn’t dilly-dally, did he?

          Warhol wasn’t wishy-washy, was he?

          Tolstoy told no tittle-tattle,

          not a snotty jot of it, no!

                  The Consequences of Immodesty

                  She removed her hijab headscarf,

                  fluffed her hair a bit,

                  then wrapped it back on her head,

                  right there in the windy park,

                  far from anyone,

                  but I saw it happen

                  from a hundred or so metres away;

                  I saw her forbidden hair, I did,

                  and I wondered if some sort of hellfire

                  would ensue for me,

                  but none did,

                  or hasn’t as yet.

                  I have nothing to report

                  about any hellish consequences

                  for her,

                  but I think not.

             Comments 

I never listen to talkback radio,

but occasionally I fail to avoid

noticing internet comments

of the nasty and dimwitted persuasion.

I almost envy

those internet Comments arseholes,

as it must be comforting for them

to huff and puff self-righteously

about how people

who are less lucky than they are

are really inferior

in all sorts of ways

(So much safer for the commenters

than claiming to be superior themselves),

and it must feel grand

to get a deep-down-in-the-glands thrill

from stomping on helplessly defenceless people

who are already down,

and to do it

with a holier-than-thou conscience,

if that word applies.

              Fancy Fucking 

Lenny Bruce said

that the difference between

pornography and erotica

is the difference between

plain fucking and fancy fucking;

depicting ordinary, everyday fucking,

he maintained, is pornography,

but if you can, as he put it,

‘tear off a piece of ass with class,’

that’s erotica.

My experience of fancy fucking,

way back before old age

made me terminally unattractive sexually,

was of those times when,

whilst pumping away,

whether with class or without,

I experienced the illusion, or delusion,

that I had become one with my partner,

and that we were inextricably joined

spiritually as well as genitally.

The fucks resulting in zygotes,

to me at least,

were even fancier still.

     Repeated Kicks Up The Bum

The thing is

I have come to know

that what holds me back,

that what’s always held me back,

are psychological disorders,

and I know where they came from,

so I know that the ways

that they make my mind work,

as likely as not,

are objectively suspect

as well as dysfunctional, but

the thing is,

all my real-world experiences

of relating to other people

and human institutions

have consisted of

repeated kicks up the bum,

which has reinforced my disorders

and provided me with the niggling thought

that they really are indeed

true and accurate

representations of my reality.

             News of Death 

One thing that I will never know

is how my daughters will react

when they hear the news that I’ve died.

I wonder if my mother ever thought about this,

and if she thought her death

would provoke copious tears.

I wasn’t there to see it,

but I expect that my brother

play-acted whatever parts

he thought would impress

whatever audience he had

when he had one,

his mind, meanwhile,

focused on the money.

Personally, I felt nothing at all

when I learnt that she died,

and never even considered

going to her funeral.

I wonder if, in thirty or forty years,

my daughters will hate my memory

the way that I hate hers,

but, of course,

I’ll never know.

        A Hideous Deformity

Out of any randomly selected

group of one hundred people,

one is statistically likely

to be significantly richer

than the rest,

one is statistically likely

to be significantly more intelligent

than the rest,

and it’s extremely unlikely

for them to be the same person.

It must be infuriating

for the cossack rubes

to base their world-view

on the hatred of people

who are much more intelligent

than they are

while refusing to admit

that they’re not really smarter

than those who are more intelligent

than they are.

Politicians on the rich people’s payroll know this,

and have great success exploiting it.

               Wet Willies  

One of the more damaging

of the myriad techniques

that my two-years-older brother used

to bully, torment, and generally abuse me

during the first 14 or 15 years of my life,

when I was trapped

living in the same house as he was,

was to use his greater size and weight

to pin me down so I couldn’t move,

snorfelling with laughter

at my desperate but futile efforts free my arms,

to free myself,

and only letting me go after sticking

one of his saliva-moistened fingers

into my ear.

I’ve had nightmares,

more properly PTSD flashbacks,

in my sleep about this

throughout my life,

awakening screaming and kicking

and so badly tangled in the sheets

that I’d fall to the floor

escaping half-asleep from the bed.

They reached so much sleep-shattering frequency

that when I was 67 I began taking medication

to help me to control my dreams,

and during the subsequent four-and-a-half years

have only awakened, shaken,

from fraternal nightmares three times,

and two of those times

before an actual assault took place.

Not bad, eh?

Not good enough, either,

but I suppose it’s as good as it’s gonna get.

Some More Human Stuff

                    Nice & Nasty

It’s nice to be nice

because when you’re nice

everything is so much nicer

than when you’re not nice.

Isn’t that nice?

Of course, you have the option to be nasty.

Being nasty, though, can make you a nasty person,

although even nice people can be nasty sometimes,

and sometimes even nasty people can be, well, nice,

and sometimes it’s nice to be nasty,

or nasty to be too bloody nice.

Depends on what meanings you load onto the words, eh?

Some people put on a big front about how nice they are,

when they’re really nasty right down to their core,

and some people put up a big front about being nasty

because they’re afraid of what’d happen

if people were to find out that they’re actually nice.

It’s bad form to be nasty to someone who’s being nice,

but are people who act nice in response to nastiness saps,

or just cunningly passive-aggressive,

expressing nastiness in a nice way?

When people are being nice to me I usually wonder

if they’re Just Being Nice and don’t really mean it.

Pain is nasty.

Nice music can either intrigue me or make me yawn,

but I tend to rock out when the music’s nasty.

Nice food is enjoyable.

Nasty food’s better not eaten.

Dogs are nice companions and playmates,

but can sometimes smell nasty.

That first swallow of cold beer is nice.

Complex, dogmatic ideologies are nasty.

Hugs are nice.

Sex is definitely nicer when it’s nasty.

            If I Ran The Marathon

I can picture myself slogging away smoothly,

keeping up the pace for more than two hours,

finally pulling away from the last of the others,

running as if on air into the final straight

almost a minute in the lead,

and with about fifty metres to the tape

tripping over some surface irregularity

and landing forehead-first on the paving,

knocking myself out cold.

                        Dodging Dickheads

One of the reasons that I make an effort

to stay clear of people in general

is that I strongly prefer to avoid

having confrontations with dickheads.

Not for me the joy that some whom I know express

in, for example, inviting Mormon missionaries inside

in order to have a bit of a piss-take,

wind them up, and generally give them a hard time.

Not for me the crossing of swords

with pompous anti-intellectual sophists,

hypocritical cryptofascist bullies,

or fundamentalist simpletons,

whether in Garden Place, on facebook, in the blogosphere,

or on the footpath in front of my house.

It’s bad enough to have to endure

the behaviour of tailgaters and the egotism of taggers

when I’ve no choice but to venture out of my home.

    Inconvenient Elements

I know that many people

admire, metaphorically,

those who do so,

but when my wash is on the line

and rain starts to bucket down,

I don’t rush outside

and shake my fist at the clouds.

I’m not defiant

when it comes to nature

causing petty inconveniences

in regard to my petty objectives.

A soft water rinse

does my laundry just fine,

thank you.

This wouldn’t be the basis

for an inspirational,

defiance-toward-adversity

so-called meme

on facebook, though.

would it?

           A Misnomer

It seems to me

that the term ‘clean-shaven’

is ideological

rather than descriptive.

If shaving’s so bloody clean,

why do people have to put

antiseptic on the skin

where they’ve just done it?

                       Barbering

Okay, it’s a long time between events,

but I never really know

how to respond

when,

any time for several weeks after the event,

people I know inform me,

“You got a haircut!”

It confuses me.

Are they trying to impress me

with their grasp of the superficially obvious?

Or do they think

that I’ve been trying to keep it a secret

and need to be exposed?

Or do they think

that I’ve been too dim to notice it myself,

and they therefore need to update my status for me?

Or do they think at all?

Sometimes I used to feign surprise: “Oh! Really?”

or claim that what I’d actually done

was to mousse it up really stiff

and then drive it back into my head with a hammer,

or some such similar nonsense.

With this last haircut, though,

I’ve been going for straight denial.

                  Some Kind Of Place

Some people are so kind and caring

and devoted to helping

those less favoured than themselves

in meaningful ways

that the consensus of those who know them

or who are aware of who they are and what they do

is that the world of human society

will be a much poorer place after they’re dead.

Some people are so horrid, destructive,

egocentric, cruel, and nasty,

feeling either nothing or smug pleasure

when harming other people and the world in general

that the consensus of those who know them

or who know more than enough about them

is that the world of human society

will be a much better place after they’re dead.

I don’t think that my death

will have much of an effect

on what kind of place the world of human society

will be one way or another

at all.

        Heroism & Money

Nicholas Winton saved the lives

of 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia

by whisking them away

from the Nazis in 1939

and bringing them to Britain.

I’d love to do something like that,

but I don’t have his social position,

my body is too tired,

and I certainly don’t have the money

to charter a non-trafficking

passenger service for refugees

or to pay lawyers

to do the paperwork.

             Taking It

Instead of ‘Goodbye’,

or ‘See yuh later’,

he said, ‘Take it easy.’

I replied,

‘I’ll take it any way I can get it.’

This is no time

for me to pick and choose

about how I take it,

but rather just to take 

whatever comes along

as best I can.

For me at least,

one of the most pernicious

two-word phrases now is,

‘I hope’.

      You Can Play, Too

Look before you leap,

but he who hesitates is lost.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
but out of sight, out of mind.

Home is where the heart is,

but familiarity breeds contempt.

Two heads are better than one,

but too many cooks spoil the broth.

Better safe than sorry,

but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Cream rises to the top,

but shit floats.