Pell Tolls

Ask not for whom the Pell tolls

This island's highest speaker to
The greatest corporate conglomerate
Of things invisible or incredible
Has now fallen brass bare

Pederastic scummery
Your millstone is here
- Just like the carpenter said -
But, in this single block
Do we see cracks
Appear elsewhere?

Does the wall hold strong yet
Or is the curtain
Across the sea
Really about to tear?

Bakery?

Bakery?

Early morning dripping cool silence
How different it is from
Day Road busy with laughter
Hooting
Car doors slamming
Caw crowd calling
Bird voices speaking
Coins jingling
Slang of adults children mingling
Whistle of street warden armed
With fulsome ego and sign
But Now silent solitude
Dawn unbroken
Blue stars burn simple distant
Chill pavement unadorned
Greets great noise of
Groaning old man truck
Sighs it's hydraulics let down delivery
And bread breaking softly steam rising from
Fresh loaf scent
Sneak around corners gentle waft to meet the nose
Of sleepless myself
Tempting Bookstore
with shut fast door
Coffee yet to grind
Beggerous shapes stumble and clink gently
And the faithful dumpster waits for divers
I like lyneham
At night
And when the night is nearly over
Then it is at its best

Hairless Shurgles are our Friends

There could be tiny people on the top of my head, living a simple, rustic life, subsisting on the small, many legged animals that they hunt with spears through the vast jungle of hairs.

There probably isn't.

There could be a naming master, who sits in an office building, writing things down on pieces of paper, and sending them to people in authority, explaining what they should call new things. Things like kankles, or squidoids, or flummery.

There probably isn't.

There could be a small pink teapot balanced carefully on top of a very high mountain, that when struck with a spoon, lets out a reverberating ring that makes birds who hear it oddly peckish.

There probably isn't.

There could be a hairless shurgle at the bottom of every well, that refuses to interact with humans in any way, but that bares us no ill feeling.

There probably isn't.

There could be a person reading this that has realized how to make time travel possible, but doesn't really feel like sharing.

There probably isn't.

There could be a point to all this.

#NotAllRuperts

Dear Rupert Murdoch,

I live in a country desperately trying to remain at peace with itself.

Everyday, it seems that the atmosphere of hostility to citizens that have committed no crimes, that simply want to live peacefully, is increasing.

This is caused (largely) by people who do not even live here, that are committing violent acts overseas.

Your comments that 'Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.' are not fucking helpful.

You are not fucking helpful.

We must not be a nation divided.

Sincerely, the voice of sanity in Australia.

Tomatoes

Okay. Tomatoes. They're a fruit. Not a vegetable.

No way! Tomatoes are used in the same places we use vegetables. They aren't a fruit.

Vegetable (noun):

A plant, or part of a plant used for food, such as a cabbage, turnip, potato or bean.

Fruit (noun):

The fleshy product of a tree or other plant that contains seed and can be eaten as a food.

-

That means that all fruits that we eat are also vegetables (tomatoes, apples, pumpkin, cucumber). But not all vegetables are fruit (broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, asparagus).

So yeah. Just go home and stop arguing one way or the other. Tomatoes are both.

...

You may think it's weird that I rant against people arguing about whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables.

But it isn't really about tomatoes.

It's about humanity's frustrating obsession with the concept of binary exclusion. Lemme explain.

To most people, it seems like things have to be one thing OR the other. It drives me freakin' crazy.

Good or bad.

Ugly or beautiful.

Right or wrong.

Fruit or vegetable.

Because humans are obsessed with things being one thing or the other, they exclude the possibility that sometimes, and in my experience usually, these apparently contradictory ideas go hand in hand.

But the the truth is extremely resistant to simplification. Walt Disney was a racist... Who made a large number of sweet and beautiful animated movies.

Albert Einstein was a genius and revolutionary thinker. Who cheated on his wife.

The Internet is a magical thing. That is frequently filled with stupid people doing stupid crap.

A car is a wonder of engineering. That pollutes our precious environment.

A lion is majestic, and so is the zebra it kills to eat.

Because of a lack of acceptance of these things, we have stuff like sexism, racism and homophobia. That while others are different, actually, they're also the same.

If you accept that the world is not a simple place, that a tomato is a fruit AND a vegetable, you might just find that the world actually makes much more sense.

Binary is for computers, but you're better than that.

Conspire

Those that know me well will know that I hate many things. But there is one thing that I hate most of all, yes, even more that certain weirdly specific types of equines. 

It's conspiracy theories.

We all hate them to some degree. But, the reason why I hate them is, I think, rather unique. 

They prevail that this world is not as it seems. That it is a curtain for something darker, and deeper. Something interconnected and strange and complex. But what is this thing that works the puppets?

So, it's aliens.

No, wait. It's the CIA. 

Ah, no, it's the lizard people, who wear human skin. 

It's that damned illuminati! Keeping us in the dark!

Of course, none of these things are real. They're ridiculous. Phenomenally. 

But I don't have a problem with them being ridiculous. I find that reality is frequently ridiculous. 

I have a problem with them, because they're boring. The whole vast universe, a great rip piling ocean of mystery. And yet, the best you can come up with are little grey dudes who want to probe you in interesting places?

No, the truth is infinitely vaster and more true than that. 

The very concept of infinity cannot be grasped by a human mind. Whatever strange denizens lurk beyond this small circle of firelight, they are far beyond the comprehension of you and I. 

Do they pull the strings? Are there strings to pull? Does it watch us? He, or she, it and they, all useless. Language is incapable of even giving the most vague name to whatever it is that you and I feel when we hear the reaper sharpening his scythe. That fear of mortality. It's more that just that, isn't it?

We're conditioned to ignore it. But it's there. Squirrelled away in the back of our minds. Everything we do is a distraction from it.

The strangeness of sentience makes us know it is there.

This weird vagueness is all that can be put into words. It is beyond us to know.

The Unremembering

There is a difference, you see, 

Between forgetting. 

And unremembering. 

I have dreams, or dreams of dreams. 

There is the snake lady, so silvery, so green, so silky. 

She asks me, "Oh pretty boy, why do you want to be God-King?" 

I say something or other. 

She says, "Oh pretty boy, don't get distracted," 

The knight, so lost, opaque in his loneliness, ever so nearly transparent. 

"You must be what you must be!" He says. 

I say a thing or two.

"You must not wallow! You must struggle! You must walk!"

They fight.

The snake lady, she strikes his armour. Long, beautiful fangs.

He holds her so tightly. Her scales reflect his strong grip.

I leave them to their battle.

Never pausing, well, only to speak to me again. 

I wait for the drums. 

Do they fight?

I have forgotten. 

One forgets most everything, wandering through the library, the titles on the spines, strange hieroglyphs, the air, baked and cooled, the grey marble walkway, the echo of my own footsteps. 

If there is peace, it is in the unremembering.