thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Jim Morris
The BBC
Angel
At his wardrobe,
Cord trousers,
Tweed coat,
Affecting,
A ‘radical’ look,
Horn-rimmed glasses,
Goatee beard,
Selecting-
A scenic route,
To Lychpole,
‘Exactly
Arriving,
what Mr. Pinfold,
In the early morning,
was expecting’.
Recommended Reading
Televisions, televisions, televisions,
Stately homes
Turned into prisons.
Legers everywhere, Picassos.
Politicians in casual wear-
Tony Blair?
The growth of plastic surgery-
With Clara’s mask.
A woman with a beard, well that’s old hat.
Sterilization, contraception widespread,
‘The Ministry of Euthanasia’
Well, not yet.
Love among the Ruins
By Evelyn Waugh,
Much more prophetically accurate than Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Jim Morris was born in Ireland on Saint Patrick's day 1961. He was brought up (and still) lives in the Barnsley. The Ken Loach film Kes depicts the kind of working-class environment he life grew up in. He is an Educating Rita type. He went back to education in 1983 and got a degree in Humanities in 1987. Since that time he has had various jobs in education but he never qualified as a teacher. He is currently Learner Support worker at Barnsley College. He has had poems published in The Haiku Quarterly, Iota, The North, and The Spectator, and has been published twice in The Chesterton Review (US).
Washing Machine
This Capitalist system like a washing machine;
A churning turmoil--turning people inside out,
Tossing them about, turning them upside down.
With all this technology-
The whole world topsy-turvy,
A hurly-burly with everything confused,
Spinning news (so we don't believe anything)
All tangled up, mangled up, through the wringer,
The end of our tether; lives rendered threadbare,
No proper rewarding job (Capitalism again)
No proper romantic love (pervasive Porn)
No proper family life (the Liberal Lie)
Let’s stop this Capitalist machine
Do it by hand (Distributism).
Let’s work together for a clean fresh start.
Let's start again afresh; let’s get our hands dirty.
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Militant Thistles