Saturday 30 August 2014

End Times: Trilogy


Mount Sinjar

In this land

those who fight for their lives
bury their dead;
those who fight for their god
bury the living. 

God is in Heaven,
weeping, wailing,
wringing His hands,
despairing of His Creation. 
There are no virgins here

and hell is full of martyrs.

 Uttar Pradesh

Two girls:
sisters:  innocent, virginal:
Untouchables
bar that soft space between their thighs.

Debase, driven,
testosterone alive they came,
that sordid band of sordid men
took turns in their defilement.

The mango tree bears witness
and gives its boughs in testimony,
those boughs whereon those sisters hang,
a noose around each neck,
heads forever bowed in shame.

Syria

Here, in this land
vultures wait,
vultures both bird and barely human,
they wait;
wait to pick at the bones of children
of a lesser God.

Here too hyena howls
as he tears at the viscera. 
No clean death here,
rather that to distil a final dread. 

The child (smiling)
holds a decapitated head. 

His father:
nihilistic psychopath, smiles, proud,
as he stands knee-deep
in that primordial soup from whence we came.
How did it come to this?
What have we become?

(And God weeps wails distraught at His Creation.  
There are no virgins here and hell is full of martyrs.)

Anna :o[

I don’t know about you good folks – but I despair of/am (so) afraid for mankind.  I do know (and realise) that we human things are and have been capable of the most barbaric and grotesque atrocities since we slithered out of the primordial soup.  We are whether we admit to it or like it or not – tribal.  That is what we are. 

We cling to our identities, what we thinks make us who we are.  We cling to our class our caste our religion our colour our gender our intellect– whatever we thinks makes us superior to the man standing next to us.  We look up to our God in the same way we feel easy in looking down on those we think inferior.  We are tribal.  That is what we are.

Accepting diversity – hell no, we are afraid of it, afraid of them.   We don’t understand their different ways their different cultures  their different way of thinking, no more than they wish to understand ours.  We are tribal.  That is what we are.  We are afraid of what we don’t understand.  (And sometimes we should be sorely afraid.)

I must admit that of late I had become Islamaphobic – fearing those zealots’ who purport to follow Islam.  Please understand I don’t fear all that follow Islam – yet I am (still) afraid of it.  I fear/feared those who wish the entire world to bend their knees to Islam would have their way – for this crazy thing of human rights and the fear of offending others will leave us weak and vulnerable.

Yet this article in The Telegraph put me right.  For those in Isil are nihilistic psychopaths and it up to us in the rest of the world – whether it be east or west – to rout them out – for if not, if we stand back afraid – they will overcome.  F*ck whether there is oil or not – we must preserve humanity.

Tis true that in our sordid past, much evil has been done in the name of Christianity – so we (who are born into this faith) cannot be smug and sit back in judgement.   We must admit to our own branch of evil.  

We must admit to what is front of our eyes NOW.

The world is now a tiny space, what with the Internet and the freedom of travel. And (because of this) present day evil is so easy to leave at our door, no, enter it.  Whatever the guise, evil is and always has been ever-present and we must pull ourselves out of the primordial soup and stamp it out.  But we will not, for some – the majority(?) - of us in the west are so wrapped up in the touchy-feely of ‘human rights’ we forget what human rights truly mean.

Off on a tangent: whilst watching the (horror of the) news at work with a resident, she remarked:  It’s always men isn’t it?  And I had to agree with her (as I had thought this myself) – for 99.9% of the time – it always is.

What say you men?  

Shared with the good folk at OLN at dVerse

Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Author: Rennett Stowe from USA


References:  Mount Sinjar:

Uttar Pradesh:

Syria:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11025803/Australian-PM-denounces-image-of-seven-year-old-boy-holding-a-severed-head-as-barbaric.html

Sunday 3 August 2014

Bleeding Hearts


Sometimes (no, it’s often)
she hangs there, just hangs there,
a string of bleeding hearts
slowly tightening round her neck. 
I loved you once y’know she says
(she whispers it, pulsates it out).

I know he says as
he sits there drowning
in a blood red caring sea.  
(Those bleeding hearts bleed out
for him and not for her.)  
They come for me he says,
they come for me.

And so they do.

She is collateral damage
in the strange battlefield of care. 
She is expendable.
 
His needs string the noose around her neck. 
He will be the death of her.

Anna :o]

This is a re-write of my previous post which was so convoluted I don’t really understand it myself.

Life at the ranch is pretty bad and has been for some time.  Handsome one was hospitalised for two months earlier this year and his needs have increased five-fold.   Before hospitalisation I was finding it increasingly difficult to cope, what with meeting his needs and holding down a full time job.  Due to financial commitments giving up work is not possible, nor do I want to.  I have my needs too.

I did not expect him to come home, rather enter care, and with this came a sense of relief.  However he was deemed to have capacity and expressed a wish to come home – so he did.  My needs and my ability to cope did not enter the equation.  He came home with an extensive care package in place – its supposed intention to help me.  But oh how I hate it – it is so intrusive and my right to privacy is gone.

The carers are good folk – but in their caring are drowning any independence handsome one had, pushing him deeper into the sick-role, deskilling him and giving him entitlement, an entitlement he feels to do less and less for himself – and thus increasing my burden.

This feeling of entitlement has brought about a personality change and he has said some hateful things to me, this from my best friend of many years – I can honestly count on one hand how many times we have rowed in our married life.  And now I no longer love him.  I cannot forget what he has said, can’t deal with how selfish he has become.

When I was a student nurse, I had a sixteen week placement with the Community Psychiatric Team, my mentor ‘Dave.’  We regularly visited an elderly couple – Charlie & Margaret – Margaret having dementia and Charlie finding it extremely difficult to cope.

Across the weeks I saw Charlie’s mental health deteriorate rapidly but Dave was determined to keep them together, keep Margaret out of hospital or care home.

I informed Dave I thought he was terribly wrong, in that he was sacrificing Charlie’s mental health for an egoistic unreachable goal.  He smugly said I was wrong.  (Both Charlie & Margaret ended up in care…)

In all my years as a student, I only received one bad end-of-placement report.  It was from Dave – he thought I was opinionated.  What really annoyed me was that he didn’t have the balls to discuss this whilst I was on my placement – rather hide behind the report.

And now I am Charlie.  For the first time in my life I am depressed.  I have no rights to determine my future whatsoever. I hate my home life – but I am expendable.

The above shared with the good folk at Poets United – hosted by the lovely Mary.

I must admit to not reading everyone’s posts in other prompts I have entered this year – and for that I apologise.  It is just that other things get in the way or I lose heart motivation due to my oft miserable state.   I will endeavour to be a good girl and read yours – if I don’t, sorry.

Image:  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Author:  flemming christiansen from hammer, denmark