For my (new) young ones III

little heart that’s in my care,

oh little heart I feel you there,

not fully formed yet,

barely dressed,

oh little heart I am impressed

by how intensely you can love and feel,

experiment with clouds and steel,

leap up behind the driving wheel

oh little heart I’ll keep you safe.

beating strong, you run the race,

determination etches along your face

in lines of laughter,

in scratches of pain

oh little heart it’s not in vain,

just come to me and sit beside,

look, here’s the map; I’ll be your guide,

and if you’re afraid, I know just where to hide -

oh little heart I’ll keep you safe.

little heart you’re so so young

oh little heart it’s just begun

I know it’s scary,

I know it’s dark,

but little heart you’re a kindling spark

and all you need is a breath of love

and your soul will be soaring with the stars above.

yes, precious heart, you’re perfect,

yes, little heart, come,

arms wide, mine are too, wider than I ever knew

they could stretch. make friends

and share your life, little heart:

you will always be safe with me.

love caused global warming

Categorically I will lay my life down for the people I love.

She said that with a spirited grunt that slithered down the spines of everyone in the room.

That’s non-committal she said

No it isn’t he said

Yes

No

Maybe then

Okay

That’s how everything is ending up these days. We argue and then we make up and we achieve nothing. Really, we achieve nothing. Nothing. Do you know how painful it is to achieve nothing? There is this vast void – can you see it? – that opens up when we fight. When we kiss and make up it’s still there; you just can’t escape it. It gets all awkward and hot and stuffy and no one can tell whether this is a lover’s tiff or a permanent strike of lightning that will separate us forever. I don’t know if I want us to separate or not. Maybe it would be better if we did, because then Global warming might stop.

Did you know that Global Warming has nothing to do with pollution? Well, not the pollution you’re thinking of. Global Warming is caused by these little lover’s quarrels. To be honest, I didn’t think that a little void between two inseparables was such a bad thing. Do you think it is? Well you should. The void grows and grows and gets bigger and bigger and soon the words 'grow' and 'big' do not suffice and 'suffice' is irrelevant because nothing suffices. Nothing, nothing can penetrate that void except for the etiolating arms of the lovers themselves. So every time a pair of lovers split at the seams and then try and make up, they send threads of bright furious love, or so it’s called, across the great tear, to try and fix it. But the tear is like shredded metal and you can’t fix metal with love. So the threads have to be really really hot and really really strong. The people who don’t last are the ones whose threads are too weak to bridge the void. The people who do are the ones who, well, who do.

But see here; the people who just rip all these gashes into the material of the universe, and leave them dangling, open and raw, are the ones who set the scene for global warming. They leave their silly little attempts at threading their tear back together hanging in the void, sending out little shivers of warmth that rattle the metal fabric and excite it into some sort of temperature increase, but really give it false hope. If you heat the metal repeatedly, again and again, it loses its strength and eventually it starts to shatter. At first there is just one miniscule crack, but soon that crack sends out runners and the runners send out sprinters and the sprinters break records and every dasher comes tumbling down in a feeble collapse of the frame of one little niche of the world.

Even the lovers contribute to Global Warming. No pair of lovers is without a few tears in the fabric of their relationship: it’s in the laws of love and friendship and marriage and all of that emotional verbiage and pleonasm. They make their little tears and 'fix them real quick.' They fix their 'lil ole tears' with scalding dishes of white hot “make up” sauce. Sauce? Sauce. Gravy maybe. Possibly custard. It all depends on the couple. They fix up their little issues by drowning them in love and make up stuff. They fill the bottomless void. They FILL the BOTTOMLESS VOID. That’s not possible. That’s what you think. It isn’t really possible. It can carry on for a millennia, maybe, potentially, a scrap longer - but what happens when all that burning stuff heats up all the  molecules of the void and melts the void and everything around the void?

It will melt the tear and tear the tear and scare the tear into tearing itself into a bigger tear that will make the fabric of the universe tear up. The universe will heat up. The universe will cry. All this rubbish they teach you about Global Warming and Climate Change is verbiage. Global Warming is caused by love, divorce, love, pain, love, hurt, love, everything else. Love is just this little guy in a big world and yet he can melt the world and divide the world and tear the fabric of the world. The world is green, blue, black – love is red. When the two mix, you get BROWN. Sludge brown. 

Will I still lay down my life for the people I love? Or am I already killing them with my love?

For My Young Ones II

Brave child, smile and don’t look down,

Life may be cruel, but wear your crown:

God is standing by your side,

God is there throughout the ride.

Strong child, look up and see the sky,

Life may be harsh, but it goes by:

God is here, to hold your hand,

God is behind you so you can stand.

Precious child, see Him, and listen too,

Life may be cold, but you’ll pull through:

God is stronger than all your pain,

God will refresh you, like the rain.

Beloved child, you’ll be okay,

Life is tough, but it’s all God’s way.

You are wonderful, just as you are,

God made you like he made the stars!

So stand up tall, be proud of who you are,

Trust God’s plan and you’ll go far.

Understand?

I understand.

I stand under the stars, 
watch aliens in a cartoon that are stars,
see cells in a brain that are brains -
and I understand.

But then, I stand under those same stars 
and see aliens
watch a baby grow, 
and see life
walk on the sand, 
(and realise that commas are not yet comatose)
and realise that where I stand is neither
where I stood a second ago, nor 
where I'll ever stand again.

Standing there;
a planet in a universe,
a universe of planets,
I sometimes think I understand.

But then I stand up,
or did I just stand down?
Put my hand up,
drop my hand down.
Reach for the stars,
or are they just straws?
(maybe they're imaginary alien's jaws)

I took a step, 
I took a stand,
But funny, somehow, I don't understand.

Do you understand?

The Philosophy of Exams

I overheard someone saying that exams were the worst thing ever invented, and although on the spur of the moment, my mind strongly agreed with her comment, in retrospect I’ve decided that they are not. There is a whole other world which opens up when one writes exams – a world of work, seriousness, stress and nerves, but also a world of excitement, opportunity and a future. It’s ironic that during the hardest periods of our lives we seem to find even more reasons to hope and believe, and a multitude of inspirational reasons for not giving up. But when life’s going fine and dandy, we tend to get bored and that is the moment when depression and indecision strike!

It is easier to choose the worst of three unappetising options than the best of three exciting ones. When faced with a choice between Bad 1 and Bad 2, I think the brain realises that either way something Bad is going to happen, and makes its decision efficiently and accordingly. Contrast Amazing 1 and Spectacular 2 and the brain goes into an excitable hyper-drive, making a frenzied choice that always leaves the decision-maker wondering if the other option would have been better. So when exams come around, it can be concluded that it is easy to decide to get on with exams (Bad 1) instead of failing exams (Bad 2), but once they finish it is painstakingly difficult to decide whether to have a manicure (Relaxing 1) or a pedicure (Happiness 2).

The time spent in total solitude, when studying, can be considered a time of introspection, a time to learn about oneself and to meditate, and one will often find that it is during the period of the build up to exams, and the time during exams, when one feels most philosophical and has more profound thoughts than usual. With all these deep musings flying around there is bound to be friction, because they will collide at some point, and these collisions can, I believe, be held responsible for the majority of the tensions and emotional outbursts that occur during the exam period. Imagine if every person was digging far deeper into themselves than they had ever done before, and possibly discovering things they didn’t necessarily want to – this would lead to a few minor personal complexes, mild schizophrenia and a touch of confused tension.

But none of this self-discovery and personal solipsism of the soul would happen if exams didn’t exist. To be fair, some people think deeply like that most of the time, and that’s why the world is as it is, but envisage every person studying for and writing even just one exam brooding about existence all day every day. It’s a kaleidoscopic thought!

Picture every person as a unique shade of a unique colour. Each of these people is surrounded by an aura of their colour that imprints itself on the atmosphere around it, in the air, in the wind, in the minds of the people around it; and this fog of colour darkens and becomes more opaque as the person gives off more thoughts, or thinks more deeply. So now each aura of each person is glowing darker and darker than it did before, and this means that whereas before all the aura fogs could exist in harmony, merging into one another and blending to perfection as they morphed under other auras’ influences, now they refuse to be confined and redefined, and they jab against each-other, their solidifying and condensing fogs unable to be changed by another different foreign fog. This is exam mode.

So you see, exams can be both good and bad: they can bring introspective tendencies to the shallow soul, deepening its waters, but they can also cause consternation and conflict as people realise that they are not who they think they are, and that other people might not be who they once believed the other people were.