The Power of Repetition

My mind is poisoned by the words

Of foolish people I don't like;

I know their schemes of thought too well,

Even those that really smell.

The power of repetition works,

Even when the content sucks;

It's wise to turn your face away,

Don't give the fools the time of day.

I've read the words of those I hate,

Whose ugly notions really grate;

I thought I read them to confront,

Like moth to candle flame I went.

The academic's daft ideal

Of knowing both sides of the question

Did my peace of mind quite steal

And left me without inner bastion.

A Hard Rain is Falling in a Dry Land

In ancient Mali the hate runs deep,

The lies and violence multiply.
Is there no end to sorrow's journey?

The horror grows and the people weep.

The outside world just wring their hands

As the angel of death barks his commands.

The leaders of France count on victory

But seem unable to restrain their friends.

The means are justified by the ends;

And so the murders begin again,

The same old bloody story,

Justice gives way to revenge.

The army are a bunch of toughs:

Angry thugs in uniform,

Who treat the law with utter scorn.

They fight among themselves like dogs

When they're not killing Tuaregs.

The Tuareg are an enemy race,

Doomed by dint of paler face.

Jihadists are just druggie scum,

To rape and burn was their good fun.

But of course they are long fled,

It is not them who're being shot dead.

Men are shot 'cos of how they're dressed,

With ammo supplied by an indulgent West.

Only law can end the hatred,

Courts not shootings the way forward,

Past crimes must be investigated.

Justice, not rough, but quite fine-grained

And true needs now to be sustained.

Knowledge is key to horror's abating.

To a Yobbo

Foul cursin, swagg'rin, drunken yob

What a rage roars in yir pate

As ye stagger down the street

Rantin yir sour refrain o hate.

Ye make auld ladies timbers shiver

And yet ye wull repent it never;

Ye reckon this'll mak ye somethin

An itherwise ye'd jist be nothin.

I suppose I've represented this in Lallans because I was thinking of 'To A Haggis' etc when I wrote it, during Burns Week. Originally it was spotted with apostrophes, but I removed most of them, as they are a kind of nod to English pronunciation, which isn't really the idea. I am still unsure of the correctness of this decision.

The yobbos who inspired it stumbled down England's streets, in case you were wondering.

Losing a Sense of Entitlement

Eastern gurus teach us that to be free and happy, we need to emancipate ourselves from desire through many years of meditation and spiritual practice. This is true, but....
     Quite a bit of mental pain may be escaped from rather more quickly by losing our sense of entitlement. I expect you think: 'Ive not got one of those, that's for snobs.' It's certainly true that snobs and those born with a silver spoon have an enhanced sense of entitlement, which may even help them to gain high positions.
      The rest of us have a more limited sense of entitlement, which is very double-edged. We may feel entitled to fair treatment, to justice. Sometimes this may help us to have the confidence to stand up for ourselves. On the other hand, if others are determined to inflict what we perceive as injustice on us, our sense of entitlement backfires badly, reducing us to helpless rage and humiliation. This may waste large amounts of energy which we need to actually fight the battle.
      If we were attacked by wild animals, we wouldn't be troubled by a sense of injustice, but would simply fight for our lives, with absolute concentration and careful calculation of our chances. Wouldn't it be best to be able to deal with attack by other humans in the same way?
      To do this, we need to lose our sense of entitlement. This doesn't require the depth of retuning of our minds required to become enlightened in the Eastern sense, just a change of attitude. After all, our knowledge of history and world events shows us that people have always ill-treated each other. Why should we expect to be immune?
      This requires that we find other means of motivating ourselves to stand up for ourselves. A sense of self-esteem might be serviceable.
      I am not trying to suggest that this idea justifies joining the ranks of the oppressors ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Rottweiler

'Sit! Sit!' shouts the owner.

'Woof! Woof!' shouts the Rotty.

'Why won't you sit on your botty?'

Grumbles the owner,

Or should it be moaner?

The big dog leaps and pirouettes,

Doesn't know what 'sit' means yet.

He wants to kill a passer-by.

But for the lead, the man would die.

What a truly charming pet.

The owner's huge and strong,

He doesn't see any wrong

In yanking at the dog's neck,

Lifting it right off the deck.

Dog-food man yells 'Sit! Sit!'

He looks a right twit.

I sit in my car.

No rush to get out.

I'd meet the dog and his lout.

I'll take a few more minutes rest,

Before I head for my nest.

A  true story, though I've taken a bit of poetic license with the 'botty' bit,  in reality I could only hear the futile shouts of 'sit'. Why they thought the dog would speak English I don't know.
I witnessed this incident because I often rest for a few minutes in my car at the end of my evening commute, as I am obliged to park a long way from home.
I am a residents parking scheme refusenik.

Protest

Who now resists authority?

The price is far too high for me.

The young and thoughtless get in trouble,

It seems they've lived in a kind of bubble.

Their idea of resistance is

To mess about and take the piss.

They steal some stuff from High Street shops,

And wonder why their protest flops.

The system strengthens its iron grip,

The will of the people doesn't mean zip.

It's go along to get along,

Even when we smell Le Pong.

We still are ruled by the same old slime,
No matter how deep-dyed in crime.

The money men still set the agenda,

While the young are on an endless bender.

Phone hacking or expenses scandal,

There's nothing the elite can't handle.

They sacrifice some lowly type,

And then the legal slate gets wiped.

The top men never go to gaol,

Even when the system fails.

The poor must always pay the price,

Perhaps because they're far too nice.

Brides of Christ

In convent school

The metal rule

Inflicted a relentless sting.

Harsh nuns instilled fear all day long,

While droning a demented song

Of being brides of Christ the King.

If confession heals and Jesus saves

Why did they act like Satan's slaves?

Not Lord's prayer nor holy water

Nor veneration of their altar

Could stop them cracking cruel welts

On hands which had some words misspelt.

No ritual or outward form

Restrained the fervent Devil worm,

Which tunnelled in the very soul

Of those who wore the habit robe;

Though sanctity was their life's goal,

No sacred song could make them whole.

Nor was excessive force confined

To religious who were feminine;

The Christian Brother crew would flog

And starve boys like a hated dog.

A few would bugger children too,

A rule of silence running through

Their fearful schools of charity.

For adult men the Trappist dream

Was not a wholly crazy scheme:

But what madness made them think

To thwart every child's instinct

To run off at the mouth?

For all the strictures of their rule,

To break the law they were not loath.

       The ineffectuality of holy water and beads etc comes as no surprise to those of us brought up in a Presbyterian community. However, I have seen the Benedictine monks at Mt St Bernard Abbey chanting the Lord's Prayer, which was thought in the schools I attended to be heavy magic, which would deliver us from evil. (There are no children at Mt St Bernard, and I am unaware of any wrong there.) 
       I presume the Christian Brothers in Ireland and nuns in England also used the Lord's Prayer every day, as the Bible instructs.  It doesn't seem to have brought about the intended effect.
       The law in the Irish Republic which set up the Christian Brothers schools said that corporal punishment was to be a last resort, and must always be recorded in a punishment book, to be presented to the government inspectors when they visited the school. Only a leather strap was to be used. This law was ignored, and the children were forced to obey the same rule of 'recreational silence' as the brothers, who had often been recruited at a very young age themselves. In a residential school, this meant that they could only talk in class, for instructional purposes. Bizarre.