Instigate your war
Machinations don’t surprise
Cool heads’ clarity
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haiku: Mother of Wars
Author: Ciscography
Creator, Writer, Blogger.
January Diets Are Not For Me
Come January and a plethora of dietary advice hits us like an Alpine avalanche.
You know the score, you’ve overeaten for a week or more and you dread getting on the scales each morning, right?
Well, I for one don’t really believe in diets. I think you have to mindful all year round, including Christmas. Sure you can eat a bit more, but I often skip breakfast, or have something really light at that time, if I know I’ll be partaking in a feast at night. I might drink more water too.
A week or ten day’s overindulgence could take weeks to put right in terms of losing that weight you’ve rapidly put on. So I simply don’t do it. I am not perfect by any stretch, I just say no to that extra drink, I don’t get drunk and I rarely overeat – even at Christmas.
Ultimately, prevention is so much better than cure. A ‘diet’ for me is for life, not just for January.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
UFOs Or Satellites? Take Out The Trash!
Mystery objects in the sky have tantalised humanity for longer than we think.
Even some Renaissance paintings have strange looking craft depicted in the sky, which bear a remarkable likeness to descriptions of present day UFOs. Such phenomena back then would probably have been put down to the work of the devil.
Today, however, we might have more ‘logical’, even rather prosaic explanations, like space rockets and the launching of thousands of satellites.
One thing is for sure – if we are to believe the number of satellites now orbiting the earth, – the skies are certainly getting a little crowded up there. After all, we have all seen the news telling us about satellite launches since 1957, Sputnik et al.
There is much justified criticism of the amount of junk, particularly plastic, in our oceans which threaten wildlife, yet not many give a thought for the vast amount of rubbish seemingly spinning around us, which could either fall on our heads at any time, or represent a hazard for other potential rockets carrying humans into the mysterious realms of space.
Logic would imply that at some stage, someone, or some authority, is going to have to deal with this ‘trash’ in the sky. I can’t wait.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Poem: Pat 1.0 (update)
A girl from the future, she’d said,
a real chic-chic-whirr!
Pat was her name, dark high heels and
clinging pink dress, a row of
little red buttons before me
which (the paperwork said), would ‘lead
to other worlds’.
So I pressed the bottom button, a thirty
second hologram projected from her eye,
a précis
from my time to hers: “My god!”
I said, all-a-gaga,
“she really makes President?”
Button two appealed to my
sense of history. “I can be
any figure you like,” she giggled. So
I thought of Genghis Khan and
recoiled, I mean
I fell to the ground—
the stench of his breath and
bloody blade! so real,
but even he had a human eye.
Button three was ‘anywhere, anytime’,
so there we were in a darkening
Berlin bar, surrounded by
art deco, lots of nods and smiles;
I felt the spirit keenly, the zeitgeist
over my shoulder, whispering: ‘seize
the moment, this
brief,
precious time’.
And then she stood and sang for me
like Piaf, posed
like Dietrich, sizzled
like Kitt, singing how old fashioned she was but
I just wasn’t a millionaire, although
“zat, darlink,” she purred, with a brush
of mink on my cheek, “vill be easily
fixed!”
I felt
a little like Faustus before
Helen of Troy, though
she was no Mephistopheles;
more legion, everything rolled into one app.
All this time her top
button had intrigued the most.
“Go on— pat it!” she said, smoking
cross legged.
“You see?” She kicked
off a heel, letting
down her futured hair.
“Yes,” she whispered, pulling me
close, “and I, my sweet,
am just the beta version.” I looked
briefly
down on Metropolis
from floor 159, so brave,
so new.
Some things, clearly,
would never change
Poem © copyright Francis Barker 2012
Lincolnshire Places and People
Lincolnshire people are indeed unique – I should know, being one of them!
I sometimes think we do suffer from being ‘in-betweenies’, that is neither northern or southern. Well, the simple answer to that is that we are East Midlanders, of course.
I certainly don’t mind being called a ‘yellowbelly’ and, in all honesty, my part of the county in the south is admittedly extremely flat.
That said, I am very fond of the north of Lincolnshire; the Wolds are gorgeous, reaching as high as 500 feet around Normanby le Wold, and the coast has some of the finest beaches you will ever see.
But perhaps one of the greatest glories of Lincolnshire as a whole, is the quality and diversity of our ecclesiastical heritage. The range of churches is stunning and the county town of Lincoln has, in my opinion, the best cathedral in the whole of England.
copyright Francis Barker 2019
