Freedom of thought

Our brains are malleable
And at some point we've all been fallible.
It's nice to think we always have free will
But some have ways to fill yours with pigswill.

Morality is a minefield
But clearly many are blinded by zeal.
Yet even before they learn how to feel,
Young minds are repressed behind a shield.

California depleting

Driving route five,
up through California,
Surrounded by sunflowers,
olives and vines.
Predominantly, either side,
I see paddies of rice
drowned in water,
which rarely drips
from clear blue skies.

Alas, what rice is there
When the aquifers run dry?

Yosemite, it's better to be it

Yosemite park is a sight to behold,
But most people stick to tarmac like bitumen to the road.
It's a beautiful world we inhabit, with so much to see -
It's sad most people prefer to view Attenborough on the BBC.

Lankyshire's present

Up passages so narrow
  Th'as to squeeze,
Through steep terraced rows
  'gainst raw Pennine breeze.

Streets once cobbled
  Under hoof and wheel,
Now not a hobble
  Nor cloppity reel.

No mares, no foals
  Lest for deceitful treat.
No mines, no coal,
  To labourer's defeat.

A walk down't' canal
  Old Liverpool to Leeds
Still pit heads at' banks
  But no barges int reeds.

Horse-drawn loads long forgotten
  Unto rod and reel.
Gone the glory days of cotton
  And factories' ferocious peal.

No more are't' bustling mills,
  Now flats or crumbling shells.
No chimneys to adorn the hills
  And bugger all to sell.

Lankyshire once was mighty,
  Weaved the crown its jewels.
Lankyshire now blighted in Blighty,
  Out of work, unrenewed.

Alas in modern times to stride,
  A Lanky lad must leave.
Pints of Wainwright to London Pride,
  And tertiary sector slave.

O'er Watford wider still the Gap,
  Divide grows deep with greed.
Alas, the South would sadly lack
  If not for industrial creed.

Big Farma

It's commonplace these days to chastise the banks.

It's commonplace to chastise genetically modified maize.

It's commonplace to chastise big pharmaceutical chains.

Just think, though...

Without banks, where is your globalised society?

Without genetically modified grains, where is your food?

Without drugs...  ...  ...  ...

Chastise all you will; we were all subscribed, while apparently lacking one.

No EU turn

It's quite funny,
Cameron and co.
Fully well know
Britain cannot afford
To break this accord.

They won't admit it,
No space to fit
An EU turn
In this highway
To fiscal dismay.

Instead they pander
To the idiotic
Mail reading masses.
Postulating a referendum
That cannot possibly happen.

Gaia abandon - A poem for Earth Day

A glorious, technicolour bundle of life,
Abundant in ores christened within a fiery core.

Blazing a dizzy path around a glistening star;
Flying through infinite, atomless space, and time.

Each passing day a mere revolution among the trillions,
Among the trillions, evolution unto Gaia.

The giver of life and alive of its own accord,
From molecules, to cells - and species in their millions.

A perpetual cycle, over billions of orbits;
In delicate balance until the hordes of voracious hominids.

What was recycled through nature's shrewd proclivity
Now deposited in mounds or spewed out of chimneys.

Alas, of late, whimsical dismay towards cleaning our act;
Decades of promises to enact, yet all have sadly lacked.

We had better revise our Gaia abandon,
Lest we discover that which will surely come
And may well already have happened.

A daily dose of hate from the Daily Mail

There's a newspaper in these fair Isles that's called the Daily Mail,
Though news is a kind word to put in place of the lies beyond the pale.
And if you're not pale, they'll spin a tale,
Of immigrants coming in dressed in veils.
There's a daily dose of hate from the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state,
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is a holy grail for the right wing in't UK,
It circulates to a couple of million people every day.
And if you read between the lines
You'll find that almost all of the time,
Minorities are the source of the UK's ails.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state.
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is a sad indictment of society,
Polluting minds of Middle England over cakes and tea.
If you watch Newsnight, you'll get a fright
When you hear their readers chatting tripe,
And citing half the spite in the Mail on Sunday.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state.
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail has a hang up about Eastern Europeans,
Yet these fine people pay their way and fill the jobs we leave 'em.
Without immigration, this grand nation
Would be stranded in bland stagnation,
The Anglo-Franco-Saxon-Norse Great Britian.

 In the Mail on April 3rd there is an article rather dotty,
Welfare UK is to blame for the actions of Philpotty.
But the welfare state would be less at stake,
If the top percent shared a slice of cake,
And the Daily Mail is a fat cat brand of folly.

The Daily Mail is the right wing's holy grail.
A racist paper trail of hate
With distorted views on the welfare state.
There's a daily dose of hate in the Daily Mail.

The jet stream's icy drift

The jet stream abnormally low,
And temperatures follow.
The march into spring
More like winter;
In April, more snow.

As the jet stream drifts north,
Cyclones rage forth,
More voracious than ever before.
And in the South, future drought;
Soon to be without
The bread basket of yore.

The Black Prince

As the Black Prince feasted in Carcassonne
One can only imagine,
No matter plague, nor warfare;
The hot sun, vineyards and wine
Had never ceased through time's elapse.
Nor ever shall.