Category The use of Language
Parrot Speaks of Youth and Hope
Skelton’s parrot is a bird of paradise. But he mustn’t go on too long. If he has truth to tell in our storm, and wants to be heard, he has to be strategic. His cage is also his sanctuary.
Parrot Speaks of Law and Dust
The caged parrot keeps talking and seems to have quite a lot to say. His original author John Skelton was alive during the Reformation, another time in which England broke away from Europe in various ways. For the Reformation was not
Parrot speaks of The People’s Will
Does May really mean what she is doing here ? There is a dog whistle sounding whenever she intones this dreadful phrase “I am delivering the “People’s Will.” In the latest examples of it, she is setting herself up as the “People’s” friend and ally –… Continue reading Parrot speaks of The People's Will
Parrot speaks of a Pit Bull
Paul Dacre, longtime editor of the Daily Mail, a frantic and irresponsible source of Brexit propaganda, who used his right to free speech and his platform for delivering it, much less for the truth and the public good than for a chance just to bully and… Continue reading Parrot speaks of a Pit Bull
Just Words
Forced to witness and live, day after day, this nation’s fraught and inept and demented progress towards Brexit – the unforgiveable false step, waste and wanton irrelevance of it, the tedium, obsessive delinquency, delusion, shame, the sheer disgraceful wrong and disaster of it – I retreat into words, not just for some slight relief, but… Continue reading Just Words
Poems in Public
Poetry once belonged only in open space – the mead hall by a great fire, where flea-bitten warriors sat at table with their lord ; or a place of worship or ceremony, the wedding, the funeral. Not in private, on paper, let alone on screen. Poetry belonged in the air between people, out loud… Continue reading Poems in Public
Dust
The poem I’m publishing here foresees the end of the world. The false god Me n’ Mine has too many worshippers to be withstood. Besides Greed, the angel which serves Me n’ Mine most faithfully is the Lie and it is the Lie by which the false god rules and will destroy us all… Continue reading Dust