From Russia with Confusion: Political Round-Up

After mentioning Russia with Cuba in the blog this week, I thought I’d round up some recent political thinking and events. I would have shown sympathy to the ‘Windrush’ victims a few years ago, but have received too much negativity, even when trying to be friendly and accommodating during the greenygrey years, although I have met many who were good. Now, I just feeling like writing the flip side of the coin is the ‘Homes Children’: vulnerable British white children who were sent around the ‘Empire/Commonwealth’ at the same time that immigrants were being enticed to Blighty! Moreover, the same kinds of children have been similarly abused over the last thirty years on our ‘sceptred isle’!!

‘Killing Own People’ Hypocrisy

Readers may ask what that’s got to do with Russia, and I only remembered half way through that paragraph. During the recent Syrian ‘chemical attack’ that resulted in Western bombing, Assad was described as being beyond evil for killing his own people; the same as Putin for the Salisbury one. As Peter Hitchens and some military experts argued, there didn’t seem to be any proof or rationale for Assad having launched the attack, as his forces were in the ascendency at the time. The Salisbury trail also seems to have gone cold, and certainly doesn’t seem as clear as ‘serial love cheat’ Boris Johnson claimed straight afterwards.

I also thought it was hypocritical for the ‘establishment’ to criticise Assad for killing own people after numerous cases of the ‘establishment’ doing just that with British people: from World War One, through the Homes Children to the recent grooming scandals, with some victims or their families having died. Soldiers are left homeless after serving the country, while the ‘establishment’ welcomes I.S. volunteers back and many such people seem to enjoy comfortable lives at the taxpayers expense.

I feel sorry for Stephen Lawrence and his family, but what about a memorial day for the victims of grooming too, such as Lucy Lowe. She was killed along with her family, but has hardly dented the national conscience, despite being even younger than Lawrence, and a whole family being attacked.

Cold War and Traitors

While I was an ideological supporter of socialism during the 1980s and 1990s, along with most working-class union members, as I wrote last week, even Russia has left communism behind now.

That means I’m freed from having any leanings toward them. Putin declaring his dislike for ‘traitors’ also makes me think I shouldn’t be a ‘traitor’ to ‘my country’. However, I still want to criticise my country, taking part in its democracy.

While I criticise ‘my country’ for seeming to ally with Islamists fighting Assad in Syria, Russia doesn’t seem to be any more virtuous, allying with Shia extremists in the self-proclaimed Islamist State of Iran. What would Marx and Lenin make of it!?

SAS Provide ‘Ideological Escape Route’?

The war against terror and I.S., defending ourselves while freeing victims such as the Yazidi women provided a world conflict I could really support. Now a return to a ‘Cold War’, seemingly divided on different sides of the Islamic Sunni-Shia civil war, doesn’t have the same inspiration. Hopefully things will get better, with Korea great news this week.

When I’ve watched documentaries about the SAS I feel that they are the closest to how I’d like to see Blighty’s image, but I also have some reservations when hearing them talk of operations against ‘communist rebels’, some of whom I probably thought had the moral high ground against a tyrannical power elite leadership.

Of course, it wasn’t the soldiers’ fault. When they sign up for the ‘country’ they have to fight where they are ordered. The Russian special forces and those from other countries are certainly no different.

The Left are Just as Biased

While I feel sorry for any innocent Rohingya victims, their conflict reminds me of the one in Kosovo I studied for my PhD thesis. In both cases the Muslim minority migrants started the conflict, and then portrayed themselves as the victims after the majority government reacted. If the Aleppo ‘chemical attack’ was a set-up, as many of the ‘victims’ claimed in a Russian news conference, saying some people just shouted it was a chemical attack and poured water over them, then it’s another case of Islamists trying to use their own people for their propaganda technique of ‘victimhood’; mixed with the strong superiority type such as I.S. torture and execution videos.

It’s ironic that some of the ‘left’ who tried to silence me for writing my views, such as the above about Kosovo, now seem to be on that side of the fence as Corbynistas; maybe they realise now what I was arguing! They probably supported the ‘underdog Italian Islamist’ against me in the department, but now she’s presenting papers at NATO conferences!!

As for me, I’m proud to be a stale pale male like Peter Hitchens… and Andrew Neil… who I usually agree with, but didn’t like his attack on poor Peter!

ABBA Return as Lovren and Ronaldo Star in Europe

After what turned out to be a three-days trilogy of Folding Mirror poems, I feel a bit drained of creativity today, so thought I’d catch up on some greenYgrey world news. Along the way I decided to do it in a 2 good 2 bad style used in Match of the Day 2; they do events, mine is news.

ABBA Return

My XaW Files: Beyond Humanity book, which included a lot of Folding Mirror style poetry, only in free verse form, proclaimed a new ABBA age, and now they are reported to be returning for real after thirty-five years with two new songs, after meeting up again last year.

Lovren and Ronaldo in Euro Semis

There weren’t many footballers mentioned in the book, and two of those who were, the only two I can remember at the moment, are in different Champions League semis, and their teams are favourites to go through after the first legs. Ronaldo of Real Madrid was already a star and RM could be expected to be where they are, but Lovren and Liverpool are a surprise, although they did reach the Europa League final together in the year of XaW Files’s publication.

Arrividerci Avicii

While Sweden welcomed Abba back it must have been a bittersweet week for them, after Avicii passed away. He was only 28, just making it past the mythical rock n’ roll bogey age of 27. He was after my time in dance music and I didn’t know much about him, but he seems like he could be house music’s Kurt Cobain? I liked the quote I heard of remembering him for the life he’s led rather than the money he’s made. My version would be the money I haven’t made!

Alfie Evans Parents

After I featured John Lennon here this week, and Working Class Hero, I think Alfie Evans’s parents acted like that throughout the sad story of his struggle for life. Going into my Magnificent Seven Charles Bronson’s Bernardo O’Reilly dying quote mode, I think it’s people like that that are the real heroes, rather than the people who often get celebrity status for negative reasons, or trying to be too shouty political on social media when they know little about it.

Mirror Poem about Human Society Madness Reality Increasing Value of Unconscious Inner Brain Sanity

Like many of my Folding Mirror poems I started the first half without knowing where it would lead. It led to another poem I’d been thinking about a couple of months ago, after having a couple of vivid lucid dreams after returning from Iceland. I’d also noticed that sleep and peels are a palindrome, and hadn’t been used as such when I did a web search.

As Humanity peels, sleep Homage Appeals

limpets and leeches
attaching to me
quicksand beaches
eating me up
clouds hiding sunlight
shadowing me
ivory towers height
knocking me down

dream thieves without care, also steal the nightmare

cleared me out
improving night vision
tunnel end
vivid paradise eden
angels smiling down
another existence
I write freely
not knowing significance

Crosswords Society Analogy Mirror Poem

Life was a tea-break quickie for me until I went to uni, and it began becoming cryptic, using a crosswords analogy. Cryptic crosswords don’t make much sense until you know the rules, and common forms of encrypting them, and I think the same is true for society.

If you have no interest in such things, the good thing about relatively free societies such as dear ol’ Blighty, still at the moment anyway, is that you can get by just doing the tea-break quickie.

Moreover, you can look smarter and quicker doing that, rather than struggling over learning and deciphering the cryptic.

John Lennon’s Working-Class Hero, 1970

As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules

When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see

Read more: John Lennon – Working Class Hero Lyrics | MetroLyrics

John Lennon and Marc Latham (4-6)

For those who’ve grown up in the social media age, Lennon wasn’t criticising the working-class, saying peasants; he thought he could be sarcastic to make a point, even though he was very rich by then.

I was probably reminded of Lennon watching an Imagine two-part documentary about Cuba this week. A lot of what the Habaneros said about socialism is how I feel now, after being a staunch one back in the 1980s. I still think it’s a good ideal, but hasn’t worked that well in practise, with even Russia generally forgetting it now.

A soft form works well in countries like Norway, but they do have North Sea oil money too; but have used it wisely, only spending so much each year, unlike Blighty!

The lyrics to Working-Class Hero seemed still apt for my experiences at university, but they also did in my day-job, when the bullying perpetrators were working-class from all ethnicities.

So, I’m not trying to convince you I’m your working-class hero here. I’d rather be living in a secluded mansion in the Hollywood hills; or somewhere similar in Blighty or Europe, like most of the working-class who’ve made some money.

That’s in contrast to people like Russell Brand and Lily Allen, who do the same, but try to hide it, while trying to claim they’re ethically squeaky clean. You want bollocks go to them!

Blighty Since 1980s

However, if the ‘Editors’ change the rules, withdrawing the tea-break quickie and imposing the cryptic on you, then you can come unstuck, and look stupid; as happened to people like poor Jade Goody, who seemed to me and the Mirror‘s Carole Malone (cited for her writing rather than her looks; a common mistake made in the current social media age) to be sacrificed for Multicultural Fascism under New Labour’s openly stated strategy to ‘change the face of Britain’ after the working-class had rebelled in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Jade and the others did look horrible at times in the Big Brother house, but that was predictable, put into a situation with a person and rules they didn’t understand, and who could be snobby, because that’s the life she led. For Jade and the others it was like being forced to try a cryptic crossword without any knowledge of them!

Society of Crosswords, Clues are Scrambled

no more tea-break
quickies for queue
straightforward view
while having brew
equality delusion
you know
the puzzle
so it’s time
for a new muzzle
multiculturalism

what you write today, tomorrow we’ll make hearsay

elitism
elegant word for meism
enjoying new lease
riding theism
we preach
our superiority
have another theology
new tautology
fork isn’t cutlery
cryptic-cross cultery now

My brilliant books (to me, maybe not everybody!) are available on Amazon etc:

Mirror Poem about the Difficulty of Being Undertood and Entertaining in the Social Media Age

I saw a stage performer interviewed recently, and they said they’d been self-deprecating in a self-parody way, but were advised that people usually just took things literally, so I thought I’d write the way I think it should be in this poem’s title, and how it usually seems to have been over the last fifteen years.

I Am Your Writing Hero, You Are My Beloved Readers

each day’s new clouds
fog obscuring shrouds
unoriginal readymades
low-lying tirades
kamikazes diving down
banshee screaming sown

brontosaurus dance, cognitive dissonance

silly students banished
class identity tarnished
believing buyer-liars
generational sellers
invasive historical view
growing planted myths true

Available on Amazon and other leading bookstores,

Alphabet Mirror Poem Reflects One From 2010

After there was a lot of greenYgrey in yesterday’s blog I thought I’d add a little POP (PinkyOrangePurple) in today’s blog post Folding Mirror poem. The poem is more about structural concept than sweet rhyme, so please don’t expect anything nicely epic, as I hope some of my recent poems were.

Creative Poetry Formats

After creating an alphabet Folding Mirror using A-Z for the first letter of the words, and mirroring 5-4-3-1-1-3-4-5 back in 2010, included in my first poetry collection and on this site, this one mirrors first letter in the first half of the poem (coloured pink) with the final letter in the second half of the poem (coloured orange), which is more of a mirror effect and has a 4-4-2-3-3-2-4-4 word formation.

The first half features mostly positive words, and the second mostly negative. Like some other poems, such as the recent Butterfly and Flower, that developed after I’d started the top half of the poem.

Poem of Two Halves, Alphabet Letters and Themes

alphabetical binary coded dualism
eloquent finesse grandiose heroism
investigative journey

kaleidoscopic lenticular maypop , vexation antihero maloprop

umiaq sinker
bottoms undercurrent impromptu lav
below perplex incendiary schmaltz

All real words. I know because I looked up a lot of them, using technology to complement my creativity, and still having to search to find the most suitable!

My Poetry Collections

Mirror Poem with New Hair Life Metaphor Inspired by: Toxic Plants Killed Most Dinosaurs Theory

After yesterday’s Folding Mirror poem had a plants and creatures relationship theme I saw on MSN news this morning that a new theory posits that dinosaurs died out mainly because they ate toxic plants, and didn’t learn to avoid them. The video contains loads of my biggest theory: greenYgreyism!

Wikipedia image

I used to worry about hair
now I don’t really care
same’s true of life I guess
less of both reduces stress
new mirror poem compares pair…

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow, Dinosaurs Example to Follow

once bitten twice shy
keep trying ’til you die
contradictory messages
tangled tresses
life mirrors hair metaphor
haven’t heard that before

growth tempts more complication, passing of time eradication

options no longer visible
worked out what’s divisible
doors dangled
dreams strangled
if you want to prosper
break your own agenda

Making your own way was the main message of the latest Amorettes single:

Lots more contradictory proverbs on Derek Christensen’s blog. The post also includes Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker greenYgrey statue!

The Flower and the Butterfly Prose Poetry Short Story

I recorded Pride and Prejudice and Zombies last night, so I don’t know if it’s title and theme inspired this classic poem of the eternal life cycle of nature.

Flower and Butterfly, Live or Die 

Candy Tuft had not long flowered
spring sunshine empowered
a butterfly landed on her petal
she held her breath to let it settle
‘I haven’t seen you here before,’
said Candy admiring the floral design it wore

‘Yet I, seem to know us.’ ‘We’re coded that way, like Rebus,’

said Pipevine upping game to the bloom above
‘created this way to inspire love,’
replied instinctively before a hush caused it doubt
was the flower wondering what about
summer rains refreshment
Pipevine Swallowtail knew a deathly silence.

References

Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly.
Rebus is a picture-word puzzle, which is probably what inspired a famous fantasy detective being named it.
Candy Tuft flower.

Wordplay Mirror Poem to the Letter

My latest Folding Mirror poem started off with wordplay to the letter between flea and free, with the words sharing f and e, but differing in the second and fourth letters. It’s a poetry technique I used a lot in XaW Files: Beyond Humanity over two long years, forensically stripping my poetry down to the letter; or even the three constituent parts of the letter in the case of the Y of the protagonist greenYgrey, after it was parted from green and grey.

Folding Mirror Poetry Technique

I wrote the first half in free form, as I did during XaW Files, which is the main reason I stopped creating Folding Mirrors for a couple of years, but then had to create a second half to mirror it, choosing to mirror the 1-3 matching, 2-4 different split of flea and free with the 2-4 matching, 1-3 different split of muse and nure; a made-up word that I chose for comedy and theme relevance. I could have used pure, but thought nure was more apt.

The longer the Folding Mirror poem the harder it is to reflect each side, but I think I’ve done it quite accurately, with the different letters of the key words providing the formatting framework. Initial letters of other words have also been mirrored according to the key words on each side.

My Poem Rationale

For those new to poetry I’m just playing a character, as poets have done forever. My choosing of flea and manure shows me in a good light as far as I’m concerned, in line with Buddhism and Nietzsche. It’s what I’ve been doing throughout my writing career, although my egotistical narcissistic critics think I’m just trying to be like and/or compete with them!

While I’d like to become as rich and famous as possible, and help as many good causes I can, while writing artistic poetry and prose it is all about the creative act, and trying to achieve as much excellence as possible. I’ve always aimed to write as well as I can, even if some of it along the way has been crass and slapstick.

My comedy and serious writing are two sides of the same coin, one I can flip over to suit the occasion at almost any time, and that’s why my greenYgrey and Folding Mirror books are a mixture of the two.

Insect I’s No News, Muse Letters’ T’s Truths

feel flee I flea
of free
sharing 1-3
but flaw
of 2-4
half way there
park yogibear
but instead
of RE
primary re-minder
Religious Education
school lesson
I’m l-a: not all
Los Angeles
Leeds Armley
border Bramley
kinda Kirkstally

struggling increases the grip, what makes humanity worship

King keystones
Brand bones
Needful Rings
Normality Returns
n-r knows – my number
poetry session
Mental Stimulation
ms-lexia prompt
SHE ism
although sharing
dictionary indemnity
glass half empty
3-1 unspun
letters undone
matching 2-4
muse provides
vowel assonance ma nure

https://mslexia.co.uk/
ma: slang for my.

Mirror Poem Reflects Cosmic Ray Light

I was thinking that yesterday’s video of the green shape docking at the ISS and Soyuz (which is what looked cross-shaped) could also be interpreted as the greenYgrey (the shape is described as yellow in another YouTube video) saying goodbye to humanity, as it was from 2014, when the greenYgrey was already on its XaW Files journey, in its final year on Earth, which included time in greenYgrey space above Russia!

Chemical Elements Mirror Poem

I thought the supporters of the above theory could be called the Enola Gays, remembering the song Enola Gay by the Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, wordplaying on the En start and ys end, with Gays also having a G like Grey, and the a and e are interchangeable, such as between American and English spelling.

However, when I looked the song up I realised it was about the plane that carried the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, so I think we should leave that there.

Ironically, atomic energy does have relevance to my new Folding Mirror poem, but only in being scientific in a chemistry way. As Wikipedia writes: ‘chemical element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei.’

Wordplay Humour Poetry

Having watched Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator for the first time yesterday, when I first saw boron I thought it made a good blended word for Borat and moron, remembering Cohen’s other character.

I also thought it was weird his character had made his name into a lot of words in their language, after I’d written earlier that day about the greenYgrey family of words. Its not the first time our humour has crossed paths!

I liked the movie, although the humour’s lost the sparkle of the early stuff, but is still good. Having watched that and the even funnier Ted2 recently, I wonder why some people in Blighty get all high n’ mighty about my writing! I’m like the Simpsons to them being like South Park!!

It was also good to see the female stars having enough of a sense of humour to laugh at themselves in both movies, as I am about myself, and show my humility, as in the word explanation below the poem.

Anyway, enough about politically incorrectness, and time for the poetry and to introduce a couple of lovely images I found with lots of greenYgrey letters relevance, and great gYgPOP (greenY[ellow]greyPinkyOrangePurple) colours.

Chemical Elements, Wordplay Ingredients
Iron Beryllium, Gold Vanadium

cosmic ray spallation
universal exhalation
scattering energy space
creating human race
supernovae seem rare
from where we stare
on our awesome planet
free of those trying to ban it

found boron in codeword grid, without knowing what letters hid

unlocked box full of chemical elements
eye candy mental sentiments
mesmerising my eye sense
enlightening by fluorescence
stimulating further learning
planning on returning
mental inhalation
deep breath relaxation

Most of the above science is new to me, although some ring a bell, such as Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium (Nirvana!), Nitrogen, Oxygen, Iron, Gold etc.
Wikipedia list of chemical elements: Boron is B5. Beryllium is Be4, Iron is Fe26. Vanadium is V23, Gold is Au79 – a gold AAW connection relevance!

If you need to research any words there’s the Free Online Dictionary. I checked fluorescent, thinking I knew basically what it meant, but not exactly. I was right, I didn’t know that fluorescence is light passed on from another light source, and is different to phosphorescence in that its light goes out straight away once the original light goes out.