Don’t pity the plague carriers,
The shy and ugly ones who,
Un-noticed,
Lock out the world and
Wonder Why
The doorbell never rings.

Keep the secret.
Don’t point and stare.
Hide the children away
So that the truth can’t get out.

Drop hints that it’s
THEIR OWN FAULT.
After all, they grew old
– No-one did it for them.
Genes are the user’s responsibility.
The accident could have been
Avoided!
Like the plague.

Give no sympathy.
Take no chances.
Avoid contamination.
Subscribe to Vogue
And enjoy your Designer Life.
Buy that hermetically sealed bubble
To live in.
Time and accident and genetics
And the hand of God can’t touch
YOU now.

PLAGUE

Kids do rotten things.  When I was a kid, I did plenty.  But there was one kid-bahaviour I never quite understood.  In primary school, and later in high school (amongst a different group), my friends would cat-call and shout insults at old and ugly women walking along the street.  Their only defense, when confronted, in both cases, was “well, look at her.”  And I used to think, “don’t you realise that you’ll be old one day, too “.
These were kids, but some people never grow out of it.  They see the homeless person, the chronically unwell, the widowed woman, the fostered kid, the single mum, and the mentally ill, and ask “why can’t they hold it together?” and blame them for the circumstances that result in their noticing them at all – as if by being visible they are an affront in and of themselves.

FAIR

“It’s not fair”, he said,
As his blood poured out
On the pavement
In the shadow of his attacker
While memories of the family
He had abandoned
And the associates he had cheated
Faded with his life.

FAIR

“Fair” was a ham-fisted attempt at suggesting that in a world of selfishness, all are guilty and all are hypocrites.

PUPILS DILATE

Pupils dilate
Adrenaline is pumped
Fear and excitement mingle
Skin tension increases
Muscle tone improves
Localised circulation brings colour
The heart beats faster
The stomach churns
Emotions stir
The tongue moves
The mind is engaged
Hands clasp
Hearts reach out
Souls meet
Lips touch

Years pass
The work is hard
Wear, tear, and care
A tomb is raised
Dust becomes dust
And the world turns

PUPILS DILATE

I remember, at college, being fascinated to discover how very biological attraction is.  We see someone we are attracted to and our hormones take over, and a bunch of physical things follow from that, effecting skin and muscle tone, the size of our pupils, blood flow, the release of endorphins in the brain, etc.  This physical excitement is what we call romantic love.  It feels great, but is necessarily short lived.  Our bodies cannot maintain that level of physical excitation for more than 9 to 18 months at the outside.  Romantic love, wonderful as it is, has to give way to something far more grounded and real;  a mature love that is deeper, often more painful, and borne of commitment rather than biology, needs to take its place.  Hollywood has done us no favours by telling us that Romantic love is the pinnacle of love when, in fact, it’s merely a first step.

BLAME

The complex mechanical
Accident that is me
Is free to follow its programming
Without guilt
But if the machine breaks down
Or suffering occurs
Then it is God’s fault.

BLAME

I’ve known plenty of thoughtful atheists in my time, and this poem isn’t about them.  I’ve also had plenty of bad-faith conversations about my religion that have, more-or-less, used this as a template. The problem of pain is a real one for the Christian, but to make any sense at all, one has to adopt the Christian’s assumptions about the world and good and evil.  The outsider to the system is saying something meaningless (and dishonest) when invoking categories they feel do not, logically, exist.  You can’t object to the moral quality of suffering (calling it cruel or “bad”) if you don’t believe suffering or categories such as cruelty and “badness” exist.  In a mechanical world, where the universe simply follows its programming, the idea that anything that happens in it is good or bad is, basically, and illusion (a creation of human imagination, rather than an objective thing).  It renders sitting in judgement on a universe in which God might exist, both contradictory and meaningless, since none of the premises are accepted.

ORIGIN

In the beginning
Before we knew we were machines
And before love was a chemical reaction
GOD…

ORIGIN

Origin is a creedal statement; an affirmation of a first principle significant in my own life.

These poems are copyright © 1998 Philip Craig Robotham, all rights reserved

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