Yet More Thoughts

It’s a funny place an old man’s night

It’s a funny place an old man’s night
Funny peculiar I mean
Here you hang, tangled in all the might-have-beens
Things that now can never be done
Rapt yet in ended conversations
Smothered in kisses now trapped in dust
Together with the lips that gave them
You bang your head against your recollections
Of your own stupidity
Held captive in the intangible hold
Of a spectre boat
That sails across the emptiness of a sea of sameness
Until becalmed
As a tainted ship upon a tainted ocean
Then finally –  you sink deep
For no discernible reason
Into the twisted, troubled respite of sleep

The Lust For Power

Yes that is the way it is
Money is your god
Because it gives you power
Your measure of all things
So as you speak
I hear the stock exchange bell ringing
With approval from your lackeys
But your lucre is filthy
It colours constantly your thinking
In a plague of self interest
So every day is a marketplace for profit
Where affluence dictates your deeds
And finance decides your destiny
But be aware of this
You may rule my world
Dictate
Where I live, what I buy, what I learn
Whom I serve and whom I obey
And who my enemies are
Yet
One thing stands supreme
Just a gentle axiom of wisdom
A ray of hope
A mirror of survival
A vision of destiny
A ray of light in troubled darkness
A fragment of music amidst discord
You will never
Ever ever ever ever ever
Decide which person or cause I will vote for

Oil

There it is
The black brute
Fiend beast ogre devil savage
Cause of war
Cause of climate change:
Tempest flood fire and drought
Cause of rivalry and deceit
Fuel for kakistocracies
Tainted with duplicity and trickery
Almost sacred in its influence
And still
A substance that reeks of disaster
Come with me
To share its dark history
Consider
Any agent you choose
To illustrate
The cataclysms it has caused
From fiasco to catastrophe
Oligarchs in the United States
British tycoons of shame
War mongers of Japan
And others too
Around this troubled world
Competing defeating cheating
To seize the market for oil
The folly leaps out at you from the history books
Troubles your mind
Invades your vulnerable purse
Invoking screams of rising frustration
So where does this lead us?
What is the destiny determined by this substance?
More warfare like Iraq?
More illicit markets?
More global warming?
More teeming profit?
The answer to these questions
For the good of humanity
May well be, as one last sanguine resort,
Electric engines

The Prison Industrial Complex

Contrary to the well known saying
Crime pays…
As with the military industrial complex
There’s money in it
For the chosen few who lobby
For approval
To help them go into business
With their privatised gaols…
For them
Unlawful acts
Leading to imprisonment
Are lucrative events
Profitable in many ways:
Prison construction
Food for the prisoners
Guardianship costs
Prison attire
And lessons for the guilty
All of these aspects of internment
Are linked to the income of the venture
And make the dividends flow
Yes
Felony leads to thriving commerce
A vast income
Stockmarket plausibility
Entrepreneurial success
Achieved with political finesse
With all the hallmarks of valid enterprise
Yet what of the prisoners?
How much of the profit
Of this massive enterprise
Is devoted to crime prevention?
How much
Leads to education outside the prisons?
Which invites one final question
That begins:
What shall it profit a man…
The task of finishing this enquiry
Is left calmly and confidently to the reader

Memories

Memories are unruly things
They disturb the peace at the oddest times
Catching you unawares
Frequently
And not always to bring joy
And yet
In spite of this
They are an important part of your preset self
Sometimes
They help you live again a moment of triumph
On an otherwise bleak day
Or they may be a reminder of a folly
With a painful outcome
And you are careful
Not to travel on the same pathway again
Joy can be another outcome
A love you once shared with someone dead
That lives on in your heart
Despite the pain of present tristesse
A lesson perhaps from school
Or elsewhere
That has made you more aware of things
And gives you confidence in yourself
So
Here I am now
Alone with my computer
Rifling through thoughts of the past and present
Something has just happened
I’ve had another thought about memory
From me a simple soul
Still alive
Yet humbly thinking about my eventual demise
At peace
And remembering so many friends, loved ones
Even foes
Yes so many memories
So many people
And yet I am left with one fervent, passionate wish
That somewhere in the minds of that memorable crowd
Will be a memory of me

royciebaby