I remember
when I was young
reading about
two brothers,
hoarders, who
filled their house
with newspapers,
traversed by tunnels,
which one day
collapsed and
killed them.
In old age
our minds are
filled with the
hoarded memories
of a lifetime,
ready to crush
our spirit
with their weight
as we tunnel through.
At my age
every day
of the year
is an anniversary
of something
or other, but
mostly I no longer
remember of what.
Just as well,
in many cases,
sad loss in others,
but I don’t
get to decide
which will come
back to me
with the sound
of wind in the
chimney, the taste
of a cake, the smell
of wood smoke,
the light of
a full moon,
the touch of silk.
If we knew why,
and how, a school
classroom, full of
students, all
from the same town, all
exposed to
the same
experiences,
the same
information,
the same
culture and
society,
can turn out,
fifty years on,
to be Right and
Left, Believer and
Atheist, nice and
not so nice,
we could
understand why
the world is in
such a mess.
Donald Trump
is the end
result of
confusing
quantity of
free speech
with quality
of free speech
There were racist
Presidents before Trump,
and there will be racist
Presidents after Trump,
but I think we can
safely say there
has never been
and never will be
a President as
racist as Trump.
The way of
Empires is to
wreck countries
all around them
and then refuse
to accept the
consequences.
Is every country
now faced with the
prospect of its
own version of the
Spanish Civil War?
The World is
filling up with
the rubbish from
things that
people bought
for no good reason.
The question is
not why men
went to the Moon
but why they
wanted to
come back
Homo
sapiens will
reject any
solution to
over-
population
and excess
consumption
that doesn’t
involve
killing the other
species we share
this small planet
with, or
killing the other
humans we share
this small planet
with.
