Half-life

Clause 4              

Every person, perkin, chappy has the right to arm bears. Everyone needs a gun, even bears. Everybody can pack a shooter. When you go to the bank and are hustled and hassled by the teller, pull out your “piece”.  This will encourage polite and efficient service. (water pistols only) please!

Apples

Grapes; a certain racial harmony, from white to black

Clause 5

              

There will be a National Ombudsman with the power of a panel of high court judges and a budget equivalent to 0.5% of national GDP. The sole duty of this figure will be to protect the rights of individuals. Like an all-powerful Citizens’ Advice Bureau. It will have powers to fine large multinational companies and force abusive companies to indemnify individual citizens when there is an abuse. For example; the telephone sector is basically an oligopoly in which there is tacit collusion. There is price competition but all the companies know that it is in their best interests to make it as difficult as possible to unsubscribe. So that’s what they do.

A brief aside. Recently, I had this problem with one such company, and they had no physical address or fax number. I guess the holding company did, but I didn’t get that far. So, in order to unsubscribe, I rang the company to notify them of my intention to immediately do so. They said, of course, that I should ring such and such an extension number. The number was a high-tariff per second number that just left you on hold with nobody answering. This kind of thing has happened to me a million times before so I just get frustrated and report the company to the Consumer’ Rights Association. But imagine some poor old lady receiving endless bills and phone calls from a faceless monster. Who’s protecting people from this kind of abuse? Nobody.    

Clause 6              

All hairless persons are exempt from tax.

Amendment 1. With the exceptions of budhists, sinead oconor and new age vagrants

Clause 7

People will be dyed different colours according to their respective professions.     All teachers will be dyed pink, obviously. Lorry drivers fuchsia, Politicians and bankers black, taxi drivers puce and civil servants varying shades of grey. 

Clause 8

Tail-gating will be a capital offence

Clause 9: 3 sloths (analyze the cunning, or not so, play on words)

Clause 10

At 12 o’clock every day, everything will stop for 15 minutes. Nobody will speak, people will just relax, put down their phones, turn off the music, the TV, stop walking driving etc, no reading, no eating nothing, zilch.

Amendment 1:  special dispensation might be available for parachutists, heart surgeons and pole-vaulters. 

In  rut so here's the poem:

Valentine:

Not a red rose or a satin heart.


I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.


Here.
 
It will blind you with tears 
like a lover.

It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.


I am trying to be truthful.


Not a cute card or a kissogram.


I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.


Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.


Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

A New Constitution

Here is the new constitution.

1. All men are born with the same rights

    i. Amendment the first: You can lose some of these if you do bad things.
    ii. Amendment the second: You can lose some of these even if you do bad things by accident.

In practice, everybody should have access to food and shelter. They should be able to live a peaceful life without being subjugated or tortured or killed.

Gilty tests the water by the river near the house

 Gilty dictated the new constitution to me in a dream. It was a holy revelation. However, for reasons obvious, I have omitted all the parts that concern dog-biscuits and dog-rights abuses.

2. The Global Reeducation Internment Ministry (GRIM) will make people nice. Individuals will be "reeducated" when

a) They fail to smile at least 5 times a day
b) Don't say hello
c) Stop dancing in the kitchen
d) Say they don't like something they have never even tried (special dispensation for kids and vegan guests at cannibal eat-all-you-like drive throughs)
e) People who announce they are going to be horrible by saying, "I always say what I think" as if this were a kind of licence to be abusive
f) Anybody who is convinced he is right
g) personae /gits eating with their mouths open
h) Teachers using a lot of photoshop

A teacher using a lot of Photoshop

Reeducation will involve playing hopscotch naked while singing the Japanese national anthem.

What price a hug?

It's a rhetorical question.

3. All those in political office at whatever level, will be obliged to publish all of their patrimony and possessions and that of their immediate family every year. An independent auditor will scrutinize this data. 

Look at me! I'm transparent. 

Here endeth the first part of my sturdy constitution.

Today's poem:

Lights Out

I have come to the borders of sleep,

The unfathomable deep

Forest where all must lose

Their way, however straight,

Or winding, soon or late;

They cannot choose.

Many a road and track

That, since the dawn’s first crack,

Up to the forest brink,

Deceived the travellers,

Suddenly now blurs,

And in they sink.

Here love ends,

Despair, ambition ends;

All pleasure and all trouble,

Although most sweet or bitter,

Here ends in sleep that is sweeter

Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book

Or face of dearest look

That I would not turn from now

To go into the unknown

I must enter and leave, alone,

I know not how.

The tall forest towers;

Its cloudy foliage lowers

Ahead, shelf above shelf;

Its silence I hear and obey

That I may lose my way

And myself.