Work

 

Work, that necessary thing most of us have to do at some point in our lives to earn money for our upkeep.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a teacher or an author, or both. I played school with my dolls and teddies. One particular teddy was always the naughty one and in trouble. His sums were wrong and his spellings were atrocious. I was an early reader which triggered a passion for writing my own stories. A love of ‘The Broons’ and ‘Oor Wullie’ educated me in Scottish dialect which I sometimes used in my written dialogue – not always appreciated by my teacher.

My mum was my mentor, my homework checker, my partner in fun and my planner for my future. Everything went awry with her passing and I was more or less left to go it alone. Floundering.

Dental nursing had never been on my list of possible occupations or training, but somehow, and luckily, it happened. There I was, schooldays over, thrust into the long days of a busy dental practice, 8.30 until 6 p.m. Monday to Friday, with college lectures on Monday evenings. Those were very long Mondays. A co-worker, who became a close friend, and I would take the bus from Blackpool town centre to St Anne’s College of Further Education for two hours of fascinating dentistry delivered by a local dentist, not the one we worked for. I didn’t mean for that to come across as sarcasm. It really was fascinating, and I was deeply interested and keen to do well. All this for £5.50 a week. Two years later, and a bit more money, I qualified, then shocked everyone by leaving to work in an office. Many years later, I returned to dentistry as a receptionist.

When my children were small, I helped in their school. It’s something I enjoy again as a volunteer since I retired. Too late to teach, but I’ve still got skills to share and help to offer, especially in the library and story-telling to infants.

I’m proud of my published work as a writer. I’m not a famous author, not yet, but never say never, and I haven’t earned a penny from stories or poems, but I have made some achievements. If anyone remembers the ghost stories from the Haunted Hotel in Blackpool Illuminations, mine was included and I’m still very proud of that.

My Haiku poem,

Working With the Public

Most people are fine,
Others can be difficult,
Arrogant or rude.

My pleasant calmness
And my eagerness to help
Didn’t always work.

Even my best smile
With a positive approach
Failed on occasion.

I met nice people
It wasn’t all negative,
I made some true friends.

Life-long friends as well.
We all matured together
And share a close bond.

Now in retirement,
Life should be quiet and still,
But no, it isn’t.

There’s still work to do,
So many places to go
And new friends to meet.

PMW 2025

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Palm - A Shiny Shilling

 “Cross my palm with silver and I’ll tell your fortune. Cross my palm with gold and it will certainly come to be. Cross my palm with iron and you won’t live to see daybreak.”

Mara Amberly – Her Gypsy Promise

Blackpool is well-known for fortune tellers. For as many years as the Golden Mile has stretched between the piers, clairvoyants have worked from inside curtained cabins advertising their gift of seeing into the future. A visit to the promenade or piers would include a palm reading or a studied gaze into a crystal ball for anyone eager to find out if something important is about to happen to them. It’s part of traditional Blackpool fun.

Crossing the palm of a new baby with silver was seen as a way of wishing them wealth, good health and the best possible start it life. I watched as my baby sister had a shiny shilling put into her tiny hand by a well-meaning person, a stranger to me. I was seven and a half. Anne could keep the shilling, but I really coveted the lovely plush bunny she was given by the same person. Nothing for me. I expect she received gifts from lots of people who didn’t acknowledge me, but that’s the one I remember. I could probably go to the exact spot where it happened, in the lounge bar of the Boar’s Head on Preston Old Road, Blackpool. I was a proud big sister. I still am. This was one of those moments that stays in the memory forever, so I’ve always given something to an older sibling, not just the baby.

The Psychic’s Dilemma

I’m a psychic, true, with visions grand,
But rent’s due, and I need a hand.
Cross my palm with silver, yes, it’s true,
I’ll conjure love for you, and a new shoe!

No gold for romance, no, that’s not the deal,
Just enough for groceries, a more practical appeal.
So if your heart yearns for a love connection,
Bring silver, and I’ll give you a pre-packaged affection!

Anon.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Threads - A Stitch In Time

 

My paternal grandmother was a professional tailoress. She objected to being referred to as a dressmaker as she made clothes for everyone. Most of my childhood clothes were made by her and also, a beautiful, pink satin eiderdown for my first ‘big girl’ bed. It was beautiful and I wish I still had it. My mum and I had summer dresses in matching fabric. My dad and granddad always had smart trousers. It is sad that Nanna Hetty passed away when I was only eight years old, but from being about four or five, she’d taught me a few skills. I could thread a needle, sew a neat running stitch and sew buttons on to a piece of spare fabric. These small things sowed the seed for my future sewing abilities. At secondary school, I excelled in needlework. Over the years I’ve made clothes for myself and my daughter and made items of soft furnishings. As my eyesight worsened, it became a difficult task and these days I just sew buttons back on, mend things and sew name labels on school uniforms. From Nanna Hetty’s background, I learnt about a different type of thread than anything she had on her bobbins. It was family and the invisible thread that fastens us together, which I came to appreciate more when I started to research my family tree.

When our maternal aunt died, my sister and I, as next of kin, were tasked with dealing with everything. Amongst her belongings was a large envelope with my name on. It wasn’t private, it was open and over-filled, containing old family papers, certificates and important letters, directed to me because of my interest in family history.  Eventually, I got round to going through the contents, being very careful with delicate items. Most was self-explanatory but there was the running thread of a surname that was unfamiliar to me. Clearly, this name belonged in the family, somewhere. I needed to discover more and solve the mystery. Looking into my ancestry gave me the answers.

This year marks twenty years since I began to search online, piecing my family tree together. I have followed my paternal line to Southern Cemetery in Manchester, where upon finding a clerical error in their data input, I was able to help them to correct it and find the grave I wanted. I knew that my Nanna Hetty was orphaned as a baby as she’d told me, but I don’t know if she knew anything about her parents, in particular that her father was employed as a tailor’s assistant. That thread was definitely in her bloodline. The unfamiliar name in my maternal family turned out to be my great-grandmother’s maiden name. I’m grateful to Cheshire Births, Marriages and Deaths website for that discovery, long before I started on Ancestry.co.uk. My family tree, even now, is a work in progress. Now and again I pick up a known thread, which is often more than one person and see where it leads. These are the threads of life in my family, which will weave on into future generations.

I found this poem,

 

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford   1914 – 1993

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

This Writing Game - Where Does It Start?

I’ve always had ‘this writing thing’, ever since I could hold a pencil and form letters, which was long before I started school. My mother taught me the alphabet in upper and lower case, how to write the letters and the different sounds they made, called 'phonics' now.  I was lucky to have my mother at home to do this sort of thing with me, and, although I was almost constantly the new girl at various schools due to frequently moving pubs with my father’s work, I had a good education. There was a lot of emphasis on producing good handwriting in my primary schools. An entire lesson could be spent practising until each letter was perfect and sat correctly placed along the lines in the writing book. I took pride in this, so much pride that my personal signature flourishes were frowned upon and deemed completely unnecessary. Individuality was not encouraged.

Books were a thing, too. My mother was an avid reader and she read my books to me. I was determined to read for myself and proved to be a quick learner when I started school. I’m from the ‘Janet and John’ era of the late ‘50s. I don’t think the ‘h’ in John ever gave me or my classmates a problem. We accepted what we were told, John says John. I remember being ready for my next reading book then having to wait longer because I kept mistaking ‘clothes’ for ‘cloths’. The things I still carry round in my head sixty-odd years after the event! No wonder I’m a bit bonkers. Anyway, I was moved up and continued going from strength to strength.

I was aged seven and in my last year of infant school when I was introduced to Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven and The Rilloby Fair Mystery by some books that were given to me. I reached the end of the book and would go straight back to the beginning and read it again. I couldn’t get enough of Enid Blyton but her books were discouraged by schools. Both parents bought me books regularly. I must have been so indulged, but I was always reading and the more I read, the more I wanted to write. The seed was sown. It took a long time to grow.

I lost my main mentor when my mother passed away. Things can be ‘meant to be’, though, and upon leaving secondary school I was encouraged by my English teacher to keep writing, so I did. Life takes unexpected turns and leads us down unfamiliar paths, mistakes are made, lessons are learned and we move on. That makes it sound simple and straightforward when, as we all know, it very much isn’t.  Personal ambition was never far away. The writing game, it’s just there, we have to do it, even if it is something for ourselves, like a journal, it’s compelling. I hope someone reading this understands and agrees with me. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Creative writing continues to be my passion. I might get round to finishing ‘that novel’ or it might stay as it is, half of it on a shelf, the rest in my laptop. I loved writing it. I loved seeing a published short story in print. If that’s as good as it gets, I’m happy. It happened.

My poem, a tongue-in-cheek look at the future of education.  I’m glad that my grandchildren are learning handwriting and basic skills that I can relate to.

An Alternative Education

The 3 Rs soon to be redundant
Computer-led kids will be abundant
With all information mega-quick
It only takes a scroll down and click
No need for any conversation
Included in their education.

Last year’s reception class have all gone
And taken a leap up to Year One
To drag sticky fingers on iPad screens
And work out what technology means.
Will this be their basic foundation
Instead of formal education?

Numeracy, or let’s call it Maths
Has rules to follow specific paths
Beginning with learning how to count
Then adding up and sharing out.
One click away from calculation
Takes away their education.

The infants are learning to use a pen
It’s not a skill they’ll need again
For a future spent staring on-line,
Social activity in decline
With hardly any interaction,
So they won’t need our education.

When did this digital preference start?
Oh why no poetry learnt by heart?
‘Spell check’ becomes their favourite teacher
With ‘Grammar check’ an added feature.
The only future expectation,
A self-taught on-line education.

PMW 2015

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

On Track - One More Time To Live

The school holiday of Christmas 1971 was a time of worry and uncertainty. Exams were looming ever closer which led to thoughts of that distant thing called ‘the future’ and planning for it by staying ‘on track’. I wasn’t sure what track I was supposed to be on, or what the future had in store for me. I wanted to write. When I was brave enough to say it out loud, I met with raised eyebrows from nearly everyone except my English teacher who recognised my potential, gave me lots of praise and used my work as an example to the rest of 5 alpha. I was bright enough to appreciate that a good, all round education was a sound starting block for anything so I did my best, and hoped for the best. It was down to me. The holiday was a good time for revision and in order to offer support to each other, friends and I gathered regularly, usually at our classmate, Ian’s house. He lived central to everyone and his mum didn’t seem to mind her front room being taken over in the afternoons by half a dozen or more lads and lasses sitting round the coal fire drinking the endless pots of tea she made for us. After a brisk walk in freezing fog to get there, it was lovely to feel welcome. My home was a place I felt the need to escape from.  My mother had passed away a few years earlier, my father had quickly remarried and the whole dynamic of our family had changed. Being amongst friends was the best way to spend any afternoon.

This group revision didn’t last very long before the lid on the radiogram was lifted and the LPs came out. The Moody Blues album ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’ was king of the turn-table.  My favourite track, ‘One More Time to Live’ written by John Lodge was the beginning of side two. We’d try to sing along, but never got the words right. Practice makes perfect. Years later, it was included in a Moody Blues concert and I was spirited straight back to those happy days. The album is one of my most played CDs and track 6 is always repeated.

This time last year I was in Shrewsbury and slowly coming back down to earth after meeting John Lodge on his solo UK tour. It was a delight and a privilege. It meant so much.

 

No poem, just a gathering of my thoughts.

 

I’m waiting to retire

I’m waiting to re-locate

I’m waiting to settle down

I’m waiting for harmony

I’m waiting for the baby

I’m waiting to get back on track

    With the novel I’m reading

    With the novel I’m writing

    With the poetry in my head

I’m waiting for my time, to come round again.

                                  PMW

 

Thanks for reading, Pam xx

Read More

Predicting the Future

On the night I was brought into this world, the stars were in the sky. They had assumed the usual position for July, that being the way of things and as a result of those positions, I have read a horoscope periodically for almost all of my life.

This year, I haven’t bothered but I can almost guarantee that it will be a year of great positivity and optimism with developments made in my career and probably relationship (subject to the career thing working out). There is sure to be a sickly optimistic fortune teller out there that will guarantee me that. I could be in line for a windfall. Equally, I could be in line for a death.

When I used to work in a papershop, I had a flick through the magazines on almost a daily basis. I would read science magazines, writing magazines, various BBC titles, historical articles, financial articles, newspapers and of course, the weekly assortment aimed at women. Each of these catered for a different audience and within the categories there would be slight differences, though generally around a theme. I learnt in this time that there isn’t a woman alive that wants a bad horoscope read to her- and so I very rarely read one. Instead, they are peddled with positivity and hooks to make a reader come back for the good news the following week.

Surrounding myself with positivity is the way I am choosing to deal with 2014. I cannot predict the future and I wouldn’t claim to but, in the looking at what I plan to do with it, I can ensure that this year is better than all of those before. I have an ambitious novel to write (or plan) and a poem a week to commit to. I have grand plans meaning I just don’t have the time for the tripe I watch.

For the theme of ‘future’ then, I am setting my only resolution- to watch much less TV. And to get my year going, a poem…

Poem on a mindless afternoon off

We hail in the new year, twenty fourteen

New Celebrity Big Brother starts

Again, they’re all famous from ten years before

With a smattering of daft, frilly tarts

This is it, this is what we’ve decided to do

On our evenings and weekends we sloth

It all started when they made an ITV2

Gave us all those free channels to watch

This year, let’s say sod it to Cowell and Co

The future starts now- show them all where to go

Throw the Ant at the Dec and then both off that bridge

Boost the ratings for one final show

 Or one day, we’ll be forced to repeat old QIs

There’ll be no shows of interest at all

Whilst we’re spending our time watching cable or sky

We’re as well banging heads on the wall.

Thanks for reading,
S.

Read More

Living in Dystopia

 by Ashley Lister

 The thing that I always find fascinating about our interpretation of the future is that most of us believe it will be better. To my mind, this indicates two things about the majority of people:

1. They are optimists.

2. They are stupid.

Take politics, as an example. We assume that future politicians will lead us to a better world of flying cars and social equality (at least for those pigs that deserve equality – a related point that we might get back to at another time). We have always believed that future politicians would help make our world a better place.

And yet we’ve ended up with Cameron and Clegg in Downing Street. How in the name of Santa’s foreskin were those two the best options available?

Take food, as another example. I was brought up to believe that future food would be like the protein pills they gave to astronauts: as tasty as a three course meal but the size of an Aspirin.

Instead we’ve ended up with horse-meat burgers from Tesco and Kentucky Fried torture birds. One of our most celebrated chefs, Heston Blumenthal, serves snail porridge at his Michelin-starred restaurant. Is this really a sign that we’ve progressed into a brighter future?

Take entertainment, as yet another example. Shakespeare died 498 years ago. We keep telling ourselves that another storyteller of equal or better ability will come along and wow us with their literary genius.

And then everyone rushes out to buy E L James and Dan Brown.

My point here is: carpe diem; carpe the day; seize the diem; do whatever it takes to live in the now and not dwell on the past or stare miserably toward a future that isn’t going to happen.

The past never really lived up to our rose-tinted retrospectives. The future we face in 2014 is likely to be as meh as all our previously imagined futures.

But TODAY will only be here this once. 

Read More

52 Poems in the Future

As a child the future was something that could be cut out of the Argos catalogue and stuck inside a cardboard dream house. It was wishing to be older so I could play ‘proper’ Scrabble rather than Junior Scrabble. It was longing to be taller so I could ride the bigger rides.  Then, as a teenager, the future became more difficult to define and harder to decide upon. Cardboard boxes and one-dimensional paper objects didn’t seem as important; I was capable of beating my Nan at ‘proper’ Scrabble, and I was tall enough to wish I was shorter.

From those uncertain years of adolescence until now, my relationship with the future has always been a reluctant one – a concept I’d much rather keep at a distance. As a consequence I’m not very fond of New Year’s Eve (everyone looking forward, celebrating) and in response I rarely make resolutions for the year ahead.

However, after experiencing a twelve month drought with my poetry, I started to consider making a writing plan for 2014 – something that meant fewer blank pages, less fear, greater awareness and a rebuilding of confidence. And so when I saw Jo Bell’s latest poetry project  on my news feed yesterday morning it was like an elbow in my side, reminding me I’d failed to create a poetry resolution and that this year could end up being as wordless as the last. Thus, I have decided to attempt the 52 project, where the idea is to write a poem a week (with the aid of weekly blog posts) for a whole year, and hopefully this time next year I’ll have something rather than nothing.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to share your 2014 writing resolutions below.

Lara 

Read More

Not in the now

Here are some more wonderful insights from the fantastic David Riley.

We're the only creatures in the universe with a real humdinger of a sense of the future. That and the past are the places we live in the most, rarely in the here and now. Also, isn't living in the  future always seen as the best? Think of the everyday phrases that have praise for living in the future built in. from forward thinker, planner to "ahead of the curve" and the almost business-speak, "I'm on it." Whole industries are predicated on it, advertising for example, not to mention the multi-trillions in the stock exchanges betting lives on what will happen from the next few seconds to few months. In fact, think of the way time infiltrates language dragging along its simple praise and blame classifications with it. From "he lives in the past" to "old school," there's a whole subtle set of implications as to how labels are placed to sum up others, it's the essence of spin doctoring, sound bites and a modernity based on planning for whatever colour of future your lords and masters think is good for you. They'll indoctrinate you about it on Twitter if that's not out of date yet.

The future is a very egalitarian tyranny, gripping most of us. There's the obnoxious middle class idea of the "gap year" (gap between what exactly - and how come they know there'll be a thing for there to be a gap in?) and the ludicrous notion of youthful hedonism - apparently living for the moment but actually built on ideas about the future (the ant and the grasshopper were both creatures tied to the hands of a clock in someone's head). Or if that nonsense doesn't appeal you could be nostalgic (aww bless), or, "yes nice Christmas, quiet but OK thanks." What do you think of them, eh?

We're also the only creatures we know of with a sophisticated language, tied to time. That's not to say that language changes over time, even though it obviously does but to suggest that in all our thinking, time is there allowing us to make judgements about people based on attitude to time.

And in poetry? Time has been there, implicitly and explicitly, the future doing its job as assistant seducer in time's winged chariot or a place for reminiscence where the clocks have been stopped. Not surprisingly poetry too changes over time - but how much are its attitudes to time itself altered, especially the time as aide to implicit judgement mentioned above? It has the possibility to do so, with its inventive approach to meaning it could stretch the tired metaphors of spin, past and future, give us a new language and new attitudes to each other.

Perhaps we could make new year resolutions to see if we could remake language and thought for the future. Don't put it off for another time.

Read More

Future

FUTURE
noun
a period of time following the moment of speaking or writing; time regarded as still to come.
"we plan on getting married in the near future"

adjective
at a later time; going or likely to happen or exist.
"the needs of future generations"

What will happen to me?
What will happen to them?
Tell me ghost of Christmas present
what will happen to Tiny Tim?

Seconds becoming minutes
Minutes turn into hours
Days, months, years are all ahead
In this future of ours

Of things to come
Of intention we mean
Time yet to waste
We plan and plot and scheme 

But what future can we look forward to
Racing towards us fast
This world is set for self destruction
Unless we learn the lesson of the past

We can all live in the utopia
Built by our won fair hands
Start by living the life you want
Rather than the media’s out of tune band

But remember you cannot change everything
Residing under this sun
So sit up, straight back, start taking notice
The revolution stars in the mind of just one

REVOLUTION
noun
a forcible overthrow of a government, ideology or social order, in favour of a new system.
“I started to think differently, I had a revolution of my own mind.”

Read More

Deconstructing Dick

Now is the winter of our discontent

Protests continue on a number of fronts:

• Anti-fracking (MP, Caroline Lucas to be charged for helping stage a peaceful protest)
• Many groups, including the main unions, assembling in Manchester this Sunday against the privatisation of the NHS
• UK Uncut want an end to austerity measures that hurt the poorest and advocate a tax on financial transactions
• Several groups have formed to fight the 'bedroom tax' which was recently condemned by a UN special investigator
• Journalists continue to publish details of government spying on civilians despite threats and the detention of those who help them

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

The first Conservatives were supporters of James Stuart, Duke of York, when he was excluded from the throne for being a Catholic.  The Tories were known for their love of the monarchy and hostility towards reform of the church.

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Take your pick.  There's the Osama bin Laden threat which was used to keep us in a state of fear, before he was killed and buried at sea, so the story goes.  Alternatively, there are the concerns over climate change and pollution which are sunk beneath piles of Newspeak and propaganda which puts the finance of private business above the state of the planet's ecosystems.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

London Olympics 2012

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

The right to protest is in a fragile state and protesters can be dispersed for 'distressing' the public.  Given the number of copies of The Daily Mail sold across the country, it is likely that there will always be a member of the public who is capable of becoming distressed at the sight of a protest.

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Protesters often mix political anger with more entertaining messages.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Boris Johnson

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

This is how the disempowered are made to feel.  Those at the bottom are portrayed as leeches, as something broken or cancerous which needs to be cut away from the population.  Those who protest against, for example, the use of drones, are portrayed as terrorist sympathisers and detained - in the UK.


Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:

The unemployed (there are lots of these since trillions of pounds were lost by corporations who continue to reward their risk-takers while accepting handouts from our taxes) can't afford to ride on the train but they have plenty of time to become depressed over what they are told are their own failings.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Necessarily a villain, if your protest stands in the way of a company whose representatives are working within the government.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.


At the Labour Party Conference, Miliband set himself up against the energy companies, threatening to freeze their prices if Labour win back power.  The energy companies feigned fury and in return threatened power cuts, this despite the extra £3billion in profits the 'impoverished' energy firms have made since the ConDem government took over.

But is this progress?  Current prices mean families are already suffering from fuel poverty.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

The Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill could come into play from January 2014.  It can significantly reduce the campaigning activities of charities and protest groups right up until the next general election.  Many vociferous opponents of the current government may find themselves effectively gagged during that time.

  Richard III - a villain or someone written as such by history's winners?  And who will write the story of this government, when the scholars are all owned by the same companies whose interests the government represents?  Will our descendents read about the brave, heroical decisions taken by Cameron, the hero of the 21st century?

Read More

Years from now...

Good Afternoon folks.

This week's theme is Sci-Fi which, I'll admit, has been a struggle. Not only was I up at 5.30am today trying to write something- I realised about an hour before work that I promised you all a poem.

Until that point I had drawn a picture of the pope shooting a bazooka into the sky (with a cross and swastika on his tunic) and made a surreal news feed idea about him shooting down an American satellite. This all came from a piece I read the other day about the Church of England threatening to cut their huge investment stakes in our internet providers. In the wake of the Jo Yeates murder trial- this made the headlines in some papers and it got me thinking- do they really believe censorship is going to change people's behaviour. In the wake of all the troubles we have in the world, can they not see that there may be slightly more outside influences on us than extreme porn and some propoganda. Anyway, I thought maybe the nightmare dream of a future in which the Church calls on its power to rule was worrying enough- and the idea for my promised poem eventually surfaced.

Influenced

A poll commissioned for TV

with texts all charged at 20p

sent shudders through the soul of me

The thought of Intervention.

Was it this dystopian dream

that shook me as I slept, or screen

after screen of trailed gun fire

on an unwatched streaming news.

How paranoid must the Church be

to invest in our ISPs

to block our viewing on TV

in case we do discover,

that what goes on behind our backs

the endless terrorist attacks

are not about who's white or black

but through misinformation.

So those who claim a right divine

and see the other ivory shrines

collapse under the weight of minds

in Middle East uprisings

they seek to censor truth rebuked

to deny nudity from youth

to confiscate and take away

then masturbate upon it.

We make decisions every day

on what to hear and what to say

the violence will not go away

if we don't see more pictures.

The blind man plays no violent games

reads no news feeds of children maimed

but still won't call out Jesus' name

for fear of dark inside him.

He sees the things we do not see

and looks inside for sanctity

believes in what he knows to be

and with that feels empowered.

Thanks for reading guys. A little rushed but I couldn't let you all down- a slightly more polished version of this will be read on Friday at the event. Speak soon, S.

Read More