Month: Oct 2015
Remembrance Day
IT’S STRANGE BUT EVERY YEAR, AS NOVEMBER APPROACHES, a kind of heaviness overtakes me which doesn’t leave me until well after the 11th (Armistice Day/Remembrance Day in Europe and Veterans Day in the US). In the last few years that period has produced a powerful melancholy poem about War from me. It’s as if the whole weight of the futility and hubristic evil of War — especially the First World War — weighs down on me, as my essence comes out in empathy with those whose lives were worthlessly squandered and also with the hell of their experiences. That war is like a hideous abscess on the arse of humanity. And when I respond to those deep feelings by writing something about war — whether a poem or an essay — it’s as if I keep the fire burning of all the young poets in the trenches who were sacrificed to satisfy the madness of the psychopathic power-players who designed that war while they sipped sherry on the lawn. Although I could mention names such as Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney or Siegfried Sassoon, I’m thinking especially of the beautiful Wilfred Owen, the officer who died aged 25 along with more than 1000 others in the battle at the crossing of the bridge over the Sambre–Oise Canal on November 4th 1918 — just one week before Armistice Day. All his war poems, written within the space of one hellish year, were published posthumously.
The Deconstructed Bully
An Allegory for our Times
IN MY COLLEGE, there was a bully. Not an unusual occurrence, you may think. But the circumstances surrounding this bully were so extraordinary that they merit deconstruction. For this bully was able to seduce almost all the teachers there into believing that he was not only a paragon of virtue but also that it was HE who was the victim of any bullying!
But let me begin at the beginning…
From Skein to Spurt [sonnet]
There comes a time in every small seed’s course
when greenness births to shoot out from its skin.
Until that spurt, all latency’s resource
is dormant, held in check — a life within.
And now I’m like a seed which you awoke;
into my downward darkness you brought light.
When timid leaves have through earth’s surface broke,
my tendrons with the sun will reunite.
More on the Jacky Sutton alleged “Suicide”:
Quote from the Daily Mail: “Lorna Tychostup, who worked with [Jacky] in 2010, said: ‘I lived with her in Baghdad in her compound in her villa [for] at least four months. I saw her under a tremendous amount of stress. She handled herself with dignity, with strength. So it’s nonsense [to say she was] crying because she missed a flight. The idea that she would not have funds to take her wherever she wanted is ludicrous. She definitely rattled cages. I’m sure she had some people who didn’t like her in places of power.”
The Flaky Chick Phenomenon
or Entitlement Princess Syndrome
One of the most noticeable developments of recent years is the huge increase in emotional disorder amongst women in general in the the world today. The fact that people can now express their every whim freely 24/7 on social media means that this disorder is increasingly manifest. In short, flaky chicks are now a big phenomenon on social media. Here is an in-depth analysis and deconstruction of this phenomenon, its likely causes and any possible cures. Please click on the link below to read the article:
PDF: The-Flaky-Chick-Phenomenon.pdf
© Alan Morrison, 2017
The Alchemy of Adversity: Nathan Meets Mr. Jasper
[extract from my book which is under construction, “Reluctant Angels”]
‘Why do so many families behave like little cults?’ was the question Nathan asked inside his head, as he watched the interaction between the larger and smaller people, noting how the larger ones bragged about the smaller ones’ achievements, taking pride in what they were saying and doing and in how they were dressed, treating them as little extensions of themselves to puff up their own egos. Living by proxy. Even in his tender teenage years he could see this clearly. After all, he had spent sixteen years wryly observing his own family, those of his friends and every other family with which he had come in contact. He saw how it worked — these self-perpetuating close-knit little cults which repeated themselves in identical patterns from one generation to the next. He observed how the parents are the cult leaders and the children are its members. So often there was manipulation and control masquerading fulsomely as love and care. There was coercion, funnelling and emotional blackmail, subtle threats of deprivation or abandonment, contrived withdrawal of affection, the conditioning process of praise and punishment, the denial of freedom.
The Naked Troubadour 