What makes you laugh?

Daily writing prompt
What makes you laugh?

What makes you laugh?

The current state that the world is in. Seems like a strange answer, doesn’t it? Wars, famine, plagues, diseases, fire, flood, earthquakes, drought, what is there to laugh at? All of it, of course. Because if I didn’t laugh at it, I would cry. And crying – well, there just aren’t enough tears, are there? Anyway, as the Reader’s Digest used to say “Laughter is the best medicine.” So, if we want to heal the world, we must first learn to laugh at it.

In fact, there are many things we should be laughing at – politics and politicians, for one. Or is that two? Chuckling away – it’s hard to tell them apart nowadays. In fact, if we laughed right out loud at the folies bergeres who masquerade as wise men, can-can dancers who actually can’t-can’t, and decision makers who really can’t decide, then that laughter would be the last straw that would break the camel’s back and dump them all on their backsides in the desert where they belong. There, they would be voices ‘crying in the wilderness’, crying indeed, for deprived of their privileges, none of them would be laughing. But we would. And we’d probably be a great deal better off.

New words also make me laugh. Homicide, femicide, domicide, ecocide, countrycide – tell me, who makes up these names? Who keeps popping them into the dictionary? And if they mean what I think they mean, we should all be on our knees, praying and weeping. It’s like fake suicide. That happens when push comes to shove, and the subsequent defenestration is deemed a suicide.

Look at Moo’s painting, Burning Birbi. Now that is something to really make you cry. Moo tells me he was going to call it Burning Bush, but then he remembered all the poor birbis who were burned to death in the Australian Bush Fires. They ascended the eucalyptus trees for safety, and there, of course, they met their sad and tragic fate, while trying to escape the conflagration. I can laugh many things off. But not the fate of those cuddly little Koalas, brought to the edge of destruction by our treatment of their natural habitat.

Welsh proverb – “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone.” So, I am laughing at it all. I have to – or else I will suffer a break down. So, laugh with me, and let the real losers cry in the wilderness, hermits all, abandoned to their lonesome own-somes.

¡Qué será, será!

¡Qué será, será!

“Those who the gods would destroy,
            they first make happy.”

Twenty-four hours
            after our power came back,
it had been gone for 52 hours,
            we lost it again.

And happy we were,
            cleaning out the freezer,
            draining the water from the bath,
            packing up the pots and pans.

We sat down for happy hour,
            a drink before supper,
            and zap – the power went.

Promises, they made,
            estimates of when the power
            would return – 4:30 pm –
            5:30 pm – 6:30 pm –

Now we don’t know
            when it will return.
            The power site says
            “No estimate available.”

I write these words by candlelight.
            The battery on the radio
            just failed and now our cell phones
            are rapidly draining.

“¿Quién sabe?” Some are saying.
            “¡Qué será, será!” say I.
            Whatever will be, will be.

Alien Nation

Alien Nation

I used to love the trees, the way
they stood there, patiently,
through all four seasons,
bending to the will
of weather and wind.

I planted many of them,
cultivated them,
watched them flourish,
treated them as siblings,
stood beneath their branches,
my back against a trunk,
their life force flowing
through me, renewing me,
as leaf-filtered sunlight
freckled hands and face
and danced in my heart.

Now, I fear them.
People have treated them
so badly, polluting water and air.
I fear their darkness,
their slow-burning anger,
their dryness, the ways
in which they gather,
shutting out the sunlight,
whispering dark secrets,
plotting to destroy us.

I fear the fire they have stored
in root and branch, a fire
that may one day come
to burn us out and leave
the land for their offspring.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

An Experiment Gone Wrong

An Experiment Gone Wrong

Not everything turns out the way you want it to, and some experiments are total failures. Just look at the poor snowman in these cartoons.

On the left – “I won’t believe in global warming until April or May.”

On the right – “April May be too late.”

Oh dear – all those crows and doggy dump time. How embarrassing.

As for me, I tried painting today with my paint and draw kit on my computer. What a disaster: I handle a mouse even more clumsily than I handle a paint-brush. I was going to publish the ‘first attempt’ as a warning to others. But it wouldn’t convert. So I looked for a better idea: no innovation and back to the tried and true.

Oh Moo of little faith.

This isn’t a poem, so there’ll be no sound track with this one. “Oh brothers and sisters I bid you beware – of giving your heart for a snowman to tear – especially when the sun is warming the air.”

“Do you like Kipling?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never kippled.”

Oily-Garcks

Oily-Garcks

And the oily-garcks betrayed the earth.
They drilled it full of holes
until the planet looked like a circle
of Swiss bankers’ cheese floating in space.

Mining, fracking, exploitation, internal combustion,
everything combined to make rainfall rise,
rivers flood, wild winds blow, hurricanes hustle,
lightning strike, again and again,
until forests flared, skies grew dark with cinders,
and land was reduced to water, dust, and even more ash.

The oily-garcks read their bibles and in their pride
they built super-fortunes, super-structures, super-yachts,
modelling those super-yachts, two or three each,
on double or triple the dimensions of Noah’s Ark.

Then they loaded them. They invited, two by two,
their friends, physicians, doctors, opticians, surgeons,
specialists, generalists, nurses, masseurs and masseuses,
body guards, anybody, really, who would keep them alive.
Next came their wives, concubines, girl friends, partners,
and those they loaded, old and new, by the dozen.

Earth warmed and her ice caps melted.
The seven seas rose higher and higher until
there was only one cruel, grey, destructive sea.

The oily-garcks set sail in their arks beneath
dark skies and an even darker future.
They sailed for forty days, forty weeks,
forty months, and then for forty years.

Nothing.

Gaia, raped, mocked, tortured, and destroyed,
had neither given nor promised a rainbow covenant.
No let up in the rains and winds, no supply ships,
no neutral landing sites, no undrowned friends,
no friendly rainbow in the sky to promise peace.

The oily-garks had brought no living food.
Their fridges were stacked with frozen dishes,
caviar, lobster, tenderloins, great wines, fine liqueurs.
They didn’t even bring a dove, just helicopters
launched from helipads that took off, year after year,
in search of the land that had disappeared.
They searched and searched until their fuel ran out.
In all that time, what did they see? They saw the sea.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Oily-garks






May Day

May Day

Mayday, Mayday, S O S,
this is a plea for help, I guess.

Dit-dit-dit- dat-dat-dat,
the world lies dying
and that’s a fact.

Add another dit-dit-dit
and that’s morse code
for we’re in deep shit.
What can we do
to get out of it?

Very little, as I see it,
if the world can’t be
bothered to see it.

Another half country
of forest gone,
right whales diminishing,
they won’t last long.
Rivers flooding,
forests on fire,
what have we done
to earn Gaia’s ire?

Human beings
long-forgotten,
but profits are up,
maybe that’s what’s rotten.
We’re near rock bottom
I would guess.
Mayday, Mayday, SOS,

We’ll soon be gone
our works forgotten.
No more humans,
the world in a mess:
Mayday, Mayday, SOS.


Comment: Well that’s how I see it some days and this is just one of those mournings. Say it in paint, say it in rhyme. Nobody’s listening most of the time.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
May Day

Art from the Heart

Art from the Heart

Just out today, thanks to my good friend Jared who turned a difficult task into a simple one. And yes, this is my first art book, though there are two more, at least, to come. Thanks to Patti too for the delightful portrait of the author as a flower-child. That was some time ago. This is a very limited edition. Best friends only – BFF. NB The photos are rotten. I apologize for that. However, the cartoons are very special. Here are the two on Climate Change, much debated, sometimes denied, but all too true for this poor snowman.

Climate Change
aka

“I won’t believe in climate change until April or May.”

April May be Too Late.

Again, the book is fine.
My photos are shaky!

Migrants

Meditations on Messiaen
Why do the people?

4

Migrants

Think natural disasters. Think famine,
wars, violence, plague. How our world changes
when refugees arrive, blend, contribute,
offer so much, their languages, cultures.

Yet we still exploit them, stealing subtle
things, their identities, their energy,
their ability to adapt, to give
so much and really to take so little.

Who would want to build a wall,
to reject them, to deny entry?
Maybe a million Indigenous people
can actually claim the right

to belong here. Most of us are immigrants,
late-comers in one way or another.
To accept, to grow together in peace,
to establish a nation where people

need not fear imminent expulsion
for the color of their skin, their language,
their religion, their political thoughts,
the fact they may not even vote for us.

Click on the link below for Roger’s reading.

Migrants

After the Floods

After the Floods
(2004 BC & 2018-2019)

as the crow flies
so the pigeon
holding straws
within its beak
time to rebuild

who now knows
the unknown
perceives the abyss
beneath egg-frail
cockle-shell hull

waters recede
islands re-emerge
bald skulls of hillocks
stripped of grass and trees
water-logged fields
old bones dug up
displayed in the ditch

mud walls fallen flat
warped wooden planks
water-swollen
so much stolen
by water wind and wave

Fire

Spotify:
Remember to scroll down to the appropriate audio episode.

Fire

Fire
a double-edged sword

Fire
the beginning
and fire the end

Fire
the means of forging
the Omega and Alpha
that surround us
day by day

Fire
surrounds us
but leads us
nowhere

we must create
our own path through
Fire
to the life beyond
Fire

so many things
to save from
Fire

so many things
to be consumed by
Fire and flame

only a fiercer Fire
will free us from
will put an end to
Fire