Cymru/Wales: Bipolar Nation

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Friday 26 February 2016

Burqas & Bobbysox




Going to Friday Prayers
The French are in town for the Rugby.
There is a rebel amongst the ranks.
She is wearing bobby sox underneath her burqa,
not the tricolor but noir with Arabic writing.
Three bereted boyos enter a black and white taxi,
never to be seen again.
Cardiff must be a disappointment to the French.
Paris it ain't bruv
What’s wrong with Jardin de Bute?
It ain’t Catholic enough, it’s too secular in a circular kind of way.
A fifty year old Poet on a hover board glides passed in flames
 with a copy of Satanic verses in his
Bum Bag
This is Political Incorrectness gone mad!
Same God, different day  

Wednesday 24 February 2016

Aston Martin are coming to Wales



To be read to the theme tune of Andy Pandy's coming to play
'A Watch with Carwyn Production'


Aston Martin's coming to Wales fah lah lah lah lah lah
Aston Martin's here today, built by the descendants of the Working Class
for the Upper Class.







Tuesday 23 February 2016

Working Class



The Sleaford Mods have said it at 5.00 minutes in on this video "I'm a bit weary of the old class thing, it obviously exists, I'm probably lower middle class, you know what I mean". I haven't read enough Marx and I have not studied for a Sociology Degree but there is something uncomfortable (for me) about the term. The Dutch interviewer asks why is it such a UK thing? Is it a UK thing or an English thing? There are a lot of what might be classically considered 'working class' in the South Wales valleys but why, because of history? because of the work that they used to do? because of who they voted for? The so called classic 'working class' in this area are now voting for UKIP. If you are a manual labourer, does this make you working class? Is it your behaviour, your attitude, your values that make you such or is is simply the amount that you earn or rather don't earn? The Shark Fisherman is asking an awful lot of questions in a post that he knows that not many will read. This is no longer syndicated through social media so it is only the loyal and curious who will occasionally check back and fore to see what is going on here.  Socialists and Socialism is inextricably linked to the old 'working class' and because there are less of them in numbers then as a political ideology it has been less popular as people have become more aspirational and 'middle class' whatever that means. It is time to get rid of these outdated labels. People are people, to tie yourself to a class, a tribe is to diminish and limit yourself unless you are comfortable enough to be a 'champagne socialist'. Political Warriors keep banging their heads against brick walls in trying to get people to agree with them, to see what they see and to vote for them but there are too many bright, shiny objects of distraction for us to be able to concentrate on anything so serious for too long.


    

Tuesday 16 February 2016

"Dad, I fink I got it wrong again"


Women of a certain age, namely Tina Turner and a few men will remember the above character, played by Dick Emery. Gaylord and his Dad, played by Roy Kinnear, used to utter the immortal words.

"Dad, I fink I got it wrong again"

Well I certainly do think I've got it wrong again because I have just published yet another Poetry Anthology. This time 101 poems. All previous volumes, namely Genius Loci, Limbo Land and Another Place together with some unseen gems, written as long ago as the 1990s, all neatly bundled together for a very reasonable £9.99 for 136 pages.


As I am now officially retired from Facebook & Twitter, I am going to have to rely on you my anonymous and faceless chums to get the word out there about this bumper bundle of humorous verse.
Please feel free to share this post wherever you think it might engender a little interest. Thanks in advance for clicking your mouse. 
.........STOP PRESS.........

Still retired from Facebook but back on Twitter
  

Sunday 14 February 2016

Le chat dans l'arbre

















Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain, 
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp, 
Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 

When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears: 
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 
In the forests of the night: 
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake

The cat’s song

             Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word
of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.


February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,   
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here   
should snip a few testicles. If we wise   
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.




The Owl looked up to the stars above,
   And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
    What a beautiful Pussy you are,
         You are,
         You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
                       Lear




Friday 12 February 2016

Bristol CarPort





Never has there been a better time for the Metropolises of Cardiff, Bristol and Newport to join together. A Western Powerhouse. Yes of course, Wales is a Principality, not a Nation, they have just re-named the Millennium Stadium to that effect. The irony being, that the planned move is opposed by a very Welsh sounding gentleman by the name of Elfan ap Rees. Did the deputy leader of North Somerset Council take a wrong turning off the M4? Sitting on the No 8 bus last week in Westgate Street, Cardiff, we were parked for a good ten minutes opposite the old Jackson's nightclub which is now the W.R.U Shop or Siop W.R.U to give it the non metropolis title. It was pissing down! Roedd yn bwrw hen wragedd a ffin. An employee came out brandishing a brand new black umbrella with the Prince of Wales feathers dotted around whatever they call the segments of umbrella and I thought to myself, "This is not Wales" and by this I meant Westgate Street. With the Anglicised Western Mail round the corner and the PRINCIPALITY STADIUM, I thought, we need people with an Owain Glyndwr or a Tywysog Llywellyn umbrella to come jousting down. The apathy of the Capital regarding its role as the 'Chief-City' is limited to the Rugby.  
Yesterday I saw the Cymdeithas yr Iaith Minibus with 'Miliwn o Siaradwyr Cymraeg' on the side make its way through Aberystwyth ready for the Rali tomorrow in Caerdydd. Pob lwc i bawb fydd yna. Dwi'n aros yn Aberystwyth oherwydd fy mod i yn casau Rygbi a'r diwylliant Eingl Cymraeg sydd yn dod yn ei sgil. Cymru v Alban yr un dydd ond dwi'n dallt yn iawn pam fod y rali wedi cael ei threfnu ar y diwrnod hyn.  It appears that I am in Aber when I should be in Cardiff and in Cardiff when I should be in Aber. If Cardiff becomes 'Bristol CarPort' then I might just have to leave Grangetown for good. 

Friday 5 February 2016

A Ghost in the Machine




Saturday 30th January I came off Facebook & Twitter, cold turkey like, having been on there for five years solid, full time, so you can imagine I have been a bit short tempered this past week to say the least. I even deleted this blog and came off Google plus and thought that it had been lost in cyberspace but I retrieved it with a sharp stick with a piece of velcro on the end. I am harvesting the poems on the blog for yet another book and I am collecting some of the articles to put together in one volume to send them in for a competition. Don't want to let the work go to waste. So good followers, 13 and true, I shall be relying on you not to leave me here, like a ghost in the machine. If you believe my voice should be heard, then please share these posts on your Facebook page or Twitter feed. I probably won't be posting as much as I did before but I have enjoyed working on this blog so much I didn't want to abandon it. I now have to fill the God shaped existential hole left by Social Media. I have tried alcohol, dope and even God. Nothing will fill it I don't suppose but I need to get busy doing something else. Thank you to those precious few who have contacted me by email to beg me to return or to at least keep this blog running. I wont mention you by name but you know who you are. Thank you.
One thing I have been doing is learning French on Duolingo, apparently I am 12% fluent already which I find very hard to believe. D'accord, Laterz Shark Fishing Followerz!

Fruity old fruit bats

  Hello my fruity old fruit bats! That is a term of endearment by the way. I thought I would treat you to a piece of prose rather than the b...

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How To Be Idle
Second Sight
Freud: The Key Ideas
The Yellow World
Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other
Going Mad?: Understanding Mental Illness
Back To Sanity: Healing the Madness of Our Minds
Ham on Rye
Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Mavericks
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I Bought a Mountain
Hovel in the Hills: An Account of the Simple Life
Ring of Bright Water
The Thirty-Nine Steps
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The Seat of the Soul


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