Longer Poem in Smaller Writing

 

The two kids in the playground are Israel and Palestine.

The rest of the world are the other kids who form a large circle.

Most chant for the bigger boy, the bully, for they have created him.

but they get bored and run indoors on the dinner bell.

But David and Goliath do not hear it and keep slugging it out,

as the afternoon lessons drone on like an air raid siren.

Goliath has got out his flame thrower and his tanks and his bombs.

while David has his catapult.  

The noise is deafening.

Teachers come to the windows followed by the pupils.

The blood trickles down David’s face from ‘the temples.’

The headmaster who looks like Joe Biden makes it halfway across the sandy

quad but then turns back as if he has forgotten something.

The Groundsman is even mowing the grass as the carnage continues.

David will not give up, as parents arrive to pick up their children.

Big beefy Dads have to turn away with sick stomachs.

Goliath is hearing voices from his past telling him he is the chosen one.

and he can do just what he likes because

he knows that most people are scared of God even if they do not believe in him.

The fight continues into the following day, days, weeks, years, decades.

The school has now become a Housing Estate, ‘a settlement’.

and the former pupils and staff now dead.

Nobody learnt a damn thing in that place.

Short Poem in Big Writing

 

She was scared

She had to be told to ask “how people were”

“How are you feeling?”

She had no empathy

She got it from her father

It wasn’t a problem till she got older

Why hadn’t she looked back at the dead body?

instead of stepping over it.

It reminded her of what she would become

and she had no time to waste.

Compete, Compete, Compete does not compute.

You can laugh but the tennis racket above is the exact same model that I used in my short lived tennis career back in the 1970s and early 1980s. In fact it was the racket I was using the day that I had my first official nervous breakdown. Don't tell me I don't know how Naomi Osaka feels. Everybody else has got an opinion on the poor dab. Why can't I have one? 

I never made it to the Press Conference. I drove home after leaving my poor puzzled friend on the court. Who knows? He might still be there to this day. At home there was a wailing and a gnashing of teeth and I was sent to see Dr Davies who sent me to see a Psychiatrist and Psychologist.

Now my problems had nothing to do with the fact that I was shit at tennis but they had everything to do with a seep seated depression that had begun age 13 and was now manifesting itself at age 20. Situational depression linked to being sent from a completely Welsh medium primary to a completely English medium secondary school where I was required to fail Latin for O level. For fuck's sake you don't want to read about my travails but you do want to hear my take on Naomi Osaka don't you?

Competitive sport kills! It kills your spirit because winning is the only thing that matters so much so that if you lose, people with a press card in their hat want to ask you how it feels to have lost? How do you think it fucking feels? lousy.

I am on team Naomi Osaka. At the school tennis courts, where I was playing when I had the first delirium tremens of a nervous breakdown, two or three years previously on the circular athletics track, me and a pal agreed halfway around not to race each other and we jogged in leisurely across the finish line. Did we get a row? It was as if we had committed a blasphemy against the God's of competitive sport. If I remember rightly, the punishment was to be sent on a cross country run with an instruction to make sure we 'COMPETE' whistling around our ears.

It is the culture of competition that destroys the inner confidence of so many people. To become an elite athlete of course you have to compete but what if it's not the competition you get a kick out of. What if it's the love of the game?

What if you are in love with tennis and the winning at all costs regardless of your mental health is what is destroying you inside? She has been a brilliantly brave woman to stick two fingers up to the French Open. 

We've heard all too often about Toxic Masculinity, well what about Toxic Competitivity? What if both are linked? What if both are linked to voyeurism where the spectator/press because they have paid their money demand to see the entrails of the vanquished competitor as if they were on the floor of the Colosseum in Rome.

I wonder if Toxic Masculinity occurs because of the demands of competition on the male of the species? Competing to get the biggest Woolly Mammoth, competing for the best position in the boardroom, competing for that promotion? Compete, Compete, Compete does not compute.   

Competition thrives in Capitalist Societies because there have to be winners and losers because we cannot all be winners under such a structure.

Unfortunately due to the contracts that you sign and the intrusive interruptions  that you must suffer to your mindset, winners are often made to feel like losers also.   

     

 Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2013/07/sick-society.html

In Sympathy

 

I had two friends who both lost parents. I sent them 'In Sympathy' cards. They complained down the line that cards were what girls and women did. I thought 'there's gratitude for you'. What did they want? for me to slap them on the back and buy them a pint?! Showing compassion and empathy is not a 'man thing'. Suck it up buttercup and get back to work.   

I have lost both parents in the space of nine weeks. They both reached good ages so no complaints there but their endings on this world are not what they or the family would have wanted. Mam did not want to go into hospital for tests to find out what was wrong with her. She knew that her health was declining since losing her mobility over a year ago and after a pacemaker operation and becoming bed  bound she was dispatched from this world  by use of syringe driver. Never heard of it? Don't worry, not many have. My Auntie had been dispatched that way in 2019 so I had heard of it but had not seen one until they produced one for Mam in a tamper proof plastic case. A syringe full of morphine (or substitute due to a Global shortage) and other drugs that have different jobs to do as a relatively pain free death takes place. A syringe driver takes away the pain and discomfort of dying as your bodily organs pack up but they also hasten the end.

Dad went into hospital with a kidney infection but because of advanced age and the fact that he'd been in previously just a month before meant that he was at a higher risk of catching MRSA which is what happened and developed septicaemia nine weeks after Mam left us. Apparently they test for MRSA when the patient is admitted but not when they are discharged so he could have picked it up the deadly bug the first time he was in.  He was also dispatched with the aid of syringe driver. Once the needle went in to the stomach area both were dead within 48 hours. 

As a local carer kindly said 'Once that goes in, there ain't no coming back'. Dad didn't want to die. He was alive until he was dead. Mam's decline was gradual and she said many times that she did not want to be here. Nobody really wants to die, they just want to be out of pain. Age is a determining factor. The life expectancy for a woman is 83.1 and 79.4 for men in the UK so both my parents smashed those records handsomely.        

We received many 'In Sympathy' cards for Mam and they are starting to trickle in for Dad and I was grateful for each and every one and some I believe actually came from men. It's not the card itself, but the thought, the verse, the anecdote, the memory or the tribute that is hand written that is worth its weight in gold at a time like this.

How many 'In Sympathy' Cards should we be sending to Palestine? 

The Great British Prose Poetry Bin

 

I wish I was young and a fly half and free

and chosen to play for the British Lions at Rugby

because I would turn round and say

“I’m sorry, the Union is over, there is no team UK”

If I was picked for the Olympic Team and I won Gold

I would not climb the podium

As the Union Jack was lifted and God Save the Queen

I and my medal would be nowhere to be seen.

You can call me unpatriotic or just an awkward sod

But let me ask you “What makes you such a British bod?”

Is it the Class System or the number of food banks?

Is it your Red White and Blue underpants or your toy Crusader tanks?

What is it that makes you so proud of GB?

Was it that holiday in Tenby with the monks of Caldey?

Was it being brought up sexually repressed reading Bunty?

Look around you, what do you see?

Are you blind to the poverty and austerity?

The regional disparity?

Is it the differences in wealth that makes us so great?

Or the way we treat refugees with such hate?

You might be middle class and liberal and green

and not really care about flags of the unseen

but for some that ragged piece of cloth on a stick

is all that they’ve got. Gets on your wick?

The cross of St George with the name of your club

Hangs proudly at Wembley, the cauldron of soccer, the hub.

They don’t know what they’re singing about, God and the Queen?

It’s just the fact that they’re being heard and being seen.

It’s the arrogance of Empire, of superiority, of wealth

That gives the Union Jack its odour of stealth.

On a gunship off Jersey, the Lords have to remind the French

of Wellington, of Trafalgar and the gunpowder stench.

It’s a made up construct, it’s ownership, a tramp stamp.

The poor and homeless get crumbs off their fellow Brits table.

This Perfidious Albion is a land of lies, call it fable.

 

Gŵyl y Banc

 

Pa well diwrnod na Gŵyl y Banc i sgrifennu blogiad yn y Gymraeg gan feddwl am y sylw fod yr hen iaith wedi ei gael gan feddwl am yr Wyddfa? Dim ond mewn gwlad sydd wedi cael ei goncro basa rhaid i ddyn a dynes mynnu fod pawb yn cynnwys ymwelwyr yn defnyddio'r gair Gymraeg am fynydd uchaf Cymru a Lloegr. Efallai dyna pam fod 'na fath ymateb "Our mountain is bigger than any of your mountains" Rhydd i bawb ei farn ond ddim mewn gwlad sydd wedi cael ei is raddio gymaint i blesio ymwelwyr. Fel dwedodd cyfaill o ardal Porthmadog yn ddiweddar "Braf i weld nhw'n dod i gefnogi'r busnesau lleol ond well fyth gweld nhw'n gadael ar ddiwedd yr haf".

O gopa'r Wyddfa allwch chi weld Castell Caernarfon? Dwn'im, flynyddoedd ers i mi botsio fyny fancw ond i mi dyna wraidd y broblem i bawb yn y Deyrnas Unedig ond y Teulu Brenhinol Windsor. Teulu Brenhinol y Normaniaid concrodd Cymru nol pryd oedd o dw’ch ag ers hynny rydym wedi cael y Prince of Wales wedi foistio arnom ni. Nawr dwi am ddeud rhywbeth fydd yn cael y Cenedlaetholwyr Cymraeg yn gacwn. Dwi'n Weriniaethwr Prydeinig cyn i mi fod yn unrhyw beth arall. Fydd na ddim hir oes 'na sylfaen cadarn i annibyniaeth i Gymru a'r Alban tan i deulu Brenhinol Lloegr cael ei chwalu felly yn fy nhyb 'gwrth gwyddonol' i fasa fo'n well i ymgyrchu yn erbyn y teulu brenhinol na dros annibyniaeth i Gymru. Ych chi wir yn meddwl fod pobol mor ddadleugar yn fewnol a ni yn mynd i guro Imperialaeth Brydeinig heb gael gwerin Lloegr ar ein hochr? Dyna pam collon ni yn y lle cyntaf, canrifoedd yn nol. 

Beth ydy eich strategaeth felli eich mawrhydi? Well diolch am ofyn. Fydd rhaid i wrth frenhiniaeth yn fod yng nghlwm i unrhyw ymgyrch annibyniaeth. Mae rhai pethau dydych ddim yn gallu fod yn niwtral amdanynt ac mae brenhiniaeth a monarchiaeth yn un ohonynt. Sut fuasa dinasyddion Cymru a'r Alban yn teimlo tasent yn mynd yn annibynnol o Westminster yfory a gweld fod ei gyd ddyn yn Lloegr dal yn gaethiedig i system dosbarth (class system) 

Faint o blant sydd gyda William erbyn hyn dw’ch? Mae o a'i wraig yn cenhedlu fel un o bunny huggers Boris Johnson. Os ydych yn hapus i adael i'r Eton elite lordio fo dros y Saeson gyda ni ac ein traed yn rhydd well parhewch gydag eich sticeri ar bolion lamp ag eich baneri ar bontydd ag cylchfannau. Mae'r 'mood music' yn erbyn y frenhiniaeth yn y Deyrnas Unedig ar hyn o bryd ag mi fuasa fo yn talu ar ei ganfed i'r mudiadau cenedlaetholgar ymuno gyda'r gerddoriaeth yma.

Mwynhewch os dych chi'n mynd ar ben yr Wyddfa heddiw.     

The Snake of Splott

“For fuck’s sake!” Not the start of another short story adventure thought Frane. He had the sinking feeling that he knew what was inside. But who was it? Ken Frane went downstairs and got some scissors from a kitchen drawer and a pair of latex gloves from a handy dispenser beside the fridge. 

The cool, shocked breeze of a Llanishen summer Sunday is disturbed by the chimes of an Ice Cream wagon playing the theme from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly accompanied by the sound of Ennio Morricone turning in his grave.

“Terry! What’s with the ice cream wagon?”

“I’ve gone into selling ice creams”.

“Ask a silly question”.

“Well, you know, the private detective work I was getting, wasn’t paying much”. Heston looks pointedly at Frane.

“It wasn’t paying anything and since Inspector Clouseau here was responsible for the loss of my camper van, I’ve had to think on my feet”.

Detective Inspector Peter Price was having a game of tennis in the courts in Bute Park across the road to Central Police Station. Docks Division were taking on Central in a game of doubles. It was the one bourgeois pleasure that he allowed himself. Since watching Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors and then the spoiled brat John McEnroe he had always harbored ambitions of a killer lob and serve given the chance. He was hoping that this Sunday was the day that Cardiff Bay Police smashed Central but it was a day that would bring the whole of Cardiff to a standstill quicker than a Covid 19 pandemic lockdown. 

Craig looks across at Frane.

“This isn’t going to turn into yet another caper Ken?”

“It might do Craig, it might do”.