Cake for the Soul

My last words before my husband and I parted company last night were “There’s no way anyone is going to pull me to my feet and get me dancing,”

Sunset café at 6.30 last night was hosting a taster session “Expressive Movement”. Yes, you are right the clue was right there in the title – movement. Also mentioned in the tag were words like writing and space and joy – three words that combine to define my sweet-spot. I had packed my bag with poetry books, notebooks and a plethora of pens under the impression that I would find a joyful space to write – and cake to eat. I thought the music would be something in the background, soothing and creative. Any movement I planned to do was the pencil kind across a blank page.

There was a group pf chatting people crowded around a low table. They had the sofas and the soft chairs underneath a large patio umbrella festooned with fairy lights. There was a scattering of teapots and cups. They chatted as if they knew one another well. They were young people, tall, slim and pretty – everything I am not (apart from the pretty my husband gallantly said as I retold the tale this morning over breakfast.) We were separated by more than just furniture.

Let me just tell you about normal Friday nights. They are shell-shocked, recovering-from-the-battle- that-is-work nights. I can’t string two intelligent thoughts together – some would say that it’s not just Friday nights when I can’t do that. I spend the night thinking about housework but not doing it, thinking about ironing but not doing it or thinking about the weekly shop but no doing it. So “Expressive Movement” was a real break from habit.

Bear in mind it was the writing and space and joy I was there for. The call was to take off shoes and socks and stand in a circle. I was happy to part with the shoes but kept my socks on. I wasn’t happy to reveal a corn plaster on my little toe. I was down to my last one in the pack and didn’t want to lose it. A man as young as I was had come in for a cup of coffee. He wasn’t dressed for movement of any kind. He was cajoled into joining the circle. We held hands and walked one way, then another while some jungle beat played through the speakers. I have to say that there was no skipping or dancing or anything remotely energetic at this point. We walked around the room on our own stopping every so often to breathe deeply, lift feet, raise arms and strike an interesting pose. We did jazz hands and waggled rear ends every so often.

We broke off into pairs. This is when I realised that the bunch of people I assumed knew each other really didn’t. There was a shyness about people as they paired off. The man as young as I was drew close. The young, tall, pretty people were a little intimidating.

The next bit was called “fight or play”. No touching was allowed. We were not supposed to thump anyone, accidentally or intentionally. The music changed to a different tempo and we struck kung-fu poses and swung arms, blocked pretended blows and backed off. My partner would have been floored quite swiftly if the fight had been for real.

We stopped to talk to our partners, talking about what we thought had happened. I thought it was all about shrugging off the straitjacket of small talk and pleasantries. He confessed he had no idea what is was all about. We swapped partners and I teamed up with a young and pretty youth.  We were encouraged to add sounds. Had it been a cartoon page there would have been “Pow” and “Zap” in spikey orange boxes. It was surprisingly cathartic. It is something I have done on my own in the past but play fighting with strangers had its appeal.

We stopped and were issued with paper and pens and encouraged to write down words and phrases about the experience. Sadly, there wasn’t enough time to write a poem, rhyming or otherwise.

Push

Poke

Kick

Hurting no one

Release

Letting go

Free

Actually, that’s pretty poetic! We were to put the paper aside and find a space somewhere, sitting or lying down. The music was plant music – soothing, gentle, making no demands on us. Some struck a meditative pose. Others; like me, just leaned back in a chair against the wall and closed eyes. There was no guided meditation exercise. I was not asked to imagine anything. No one told me to picture my feet melting into the floor or any other such stuff.

Another change of music. We were roused to our feet, back in the circle. It was a little like the ockey-cokey with knees bending, arms stretching, left leg in stuff but without the ra-ra-ra at the end. The jazz hands were back and the waggling rear ends. Where people might have been a little restrained at the start, they were beginning to throw themselves about more jubilantly.

There was a selection of different musical genres and we were told to just express ourselves. Some of the music was classical and we launched around the room with invisible partners. Some music was pure disco and the place took on a night club feel for two or three minutes. Some was jungle stuff and we leapt about aping monkeys.

Another pause, this time to retrieve the paper and draw something. Wax crayons were rationed out. Some set to the picture with brows furrowed and tongues licking lips.  My art aspirations are limited at best. I wielded my orange and green crayons well aware that I couldn’t draw what I wanted to convey. Words are my media not crayons.

One last circle time, walking one way then the other and the session came to an end.

I admit that I was a little wary at the start. I didn’t want to be ambushed by something new age. Move the whole thing into a forest clearing and, yes, alarm bells might be ringing. Stick a golden calf in the middle of the circle and, yes, I’m leaving the room. It wasn’t like that. I think it was just tapping into a more playful side of people and creating a safe environment for them to let go.

I am a thinker. I read books a lot.  Much of what I do in my free time is solitary stuff. I like my own company. Being with others and being creative movement-wise had released an unfamiliar energy. I was buzzing. It was a good buzzing, not a bad buzzing. I felt that I had given myself a good stirring up inside. The stagnant deep in me had shifted.

“You live too much in your head,” said God. “So much of what you do is carefully choreographed and there’s little space left to play. This evening you let loose the child in you.”

I liked the child I discovered in me.

Carmel by Numbers

One meeting

Two opposing sides

One apparent trouble maker – Elijah

One genuine trouble maker – Ahab and all his history and

                his abandonment of God

Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal

four hundred prophets of Asherah gathered from the

four corners of Israel

One speech delivered to

One crowd

Two opinions – either God is real

                or Baal is

One fence to climb down from

One challenge – choose who to follow this day

Two bulls cut into many pieces

Two altars

No fire

Six hours of calling on the name of Baal,

                shouting and dancing

No response

Six more hours of frantic prophesying and

                blood letting

No answer

Twelve stones harking back to

Twelve tribes once claimed by God

One deep trench

Four large jars holding what’s precious

                water in a time of drought emptied and filled

Three times

One man – Elijah

One prayer

No dancing

No chanting

No frantic prophesying

No blood letting

One single bolt of lightning

One sacrifice consumed

No wood

No stones

No soil

No water remaining

One crowd on their knees

One name on their lips – “The Lord”

One declaration “The Lord – He is God”

Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal dead

                Slaughtered

One man defeated and running away – Ahab

One single raindrop

One almighty storm

One drought ended

One resounding victory

Running Into the Fire

It has been a troubling time. So many skirmishes across the globe. I don’t suppose it is any worse than it has been in the past, it’s simply easier to share the information on social media and the like. It feels like the world is in freefall, tumbling over a cliff edge of sorts, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

I have been reading Psalm 74 over the last few days. Asaph compiled a list of all the things that the wicked were doing to God’s place of worship. It was as if they had taken axes and hatchets to the walls and the ceiling and set light to it all.

Asaph was talking about the temple or the tabernacle but he could have been talking about people and communities today. God’s apparent inactivity bothered him, enough for him to declare;-

“Why don’t you do something? How long are you going to sit there with your hands folded in your lap?” Psalm 74:11 (The Message)

This is sometimes where we stop. We have said our piece. We have waved our fist at heaven and, for some, we have thrown down our faith. There cannot be a loving God in all of this.

Asaph didn’t let the wicked get the last word. He didn’t hand the victory over to them. He began to list the mighty deeds of God. Maybe some of the things on his list were not current victories – but they were great and magnificent ones.

God doesn’t need to know about His victories. He doesn’t need to be reminded of them – but we need to be reminded. We need to know that we follow a God who crushes the head of his enemy. We need to know that He stops floods and dries up rivers.

The word “Leviathan” means “twisted one”. Satan in his conversation with Eve twisted the truth. I suppose he was the original “twisted one”.

People have been acting on twisted truth. Whether that leads them to carry a torch and chant Nazi slogans, or hire a van and intentionally drive into a crowd of people, wounding and killing so many – they have twisted the truth.

It seems like a deluge or a flood. It is relentless. No sooner has the boat been righted then another wave hits. It would be nice to have the wild floodwaters dried up (v15).

I was reminded of a poem I wrote a while ago. The topic given was “Fireman”. I had been reading the accounts of Moses, Aaron and the Israelites journeying through the wilderness.  It wasn’t an easy journey. There was a lot of twisted truth being hurled about. The fireman I pictured was not running into a burning building but was a man running into different kind of fire.

There is a sense in which when we truly grasp what prayer can do we can be like men and women who run into the fires that hot words and heated arguments can create. We take with us love and compassion, and the certainty that God is there in the midst, and throw these things at all things ugly and hateful. The last few lines of my poem end with a promise - “And the fire stopped burning/The plague ceased/And all wounds were healed.”

A Glorious Fire

You should have seen the fire

It was glorious!
Blazing with a blistering heat

Furious flames

Choking smoke

And all it took was
Just a small spark

An abundance of

Driftwood in the wilderness

Exploding out of Egypt
Tumbling around barren places

Rebellious attitudes

Rumbling complaints

Dry spirits
Parched hearts

And arid souls

And I lit my match
As I whispered in the shadows

“Why him? Why not you?”

And their covetous eyes

Gazed lustfully on Aaron’s staff
“Why him? Why not us?”

Their shout echoed among the sand dunes

The ground split

The earth opened its mouth

And swallowed the jealous ones

And fire roared from heaven

Consuming men who envied
And people ran from the flames

Screaming

Embers glowed dull red

Sparks quietly hissed

Not extinguished

The fire smoldered

I whispered again

To twitching ears

 “They were the Lord’s people…

And Moses killed them.”

And they gathered

And they grumbled

God’s wrath was ignited

Flames of a different kind
Licked at His stiff necked people

Disease crawled over their faces

Gouging holes

Ripping flesh

Weeping blood

And I danced

Among the fallen bodies
Skipping through the flames

Laughing riotously

“Did You really think

You could do it, God?

Take a sin-stained people

And find your image in them?

Look at them!
Look at you!

Yet again I win

You lose!”

Then I saw a man running

Aaron

Armed with incense

And fire from the altar

Ran into the plague pocked crowd

Making atonement

Standing between

the living and the dead

And a shadow fell

Hinting at
Another time, another fire
Another place, another plague

Another man

running into the crowd

Making atonement

And the fire stopped burning

The plague ceased

And all wounds were healed

It was a glorious fire

While it lasted!

Treasure Consigned to the Archives

A while ago I joined on online book club.  The focus tends to be Christian literature and perhaps not the kinds of books I would naturally turn to. They can be quite academic and challenging and usually highlight how little I know about most things. The opportunity is always there to contribute to a discussion on the current chapter but I am content to merely read. I don’t feel equipped for anything more.

The current book is “75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should know” by Terry Glaspey. We are over half way through and I can count the masterpieces I have known on the fingers of perhaps one hand, certainly not two, and definitely not counting my toes as well. I have loved the sigh of familiarity as I have come across a known poem or book or painting. The sighs have been few and far between.

“The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ” is a series of over 400 pictures recording the life of Jesus in the gospels. Every story, every miracle, every encounter Jesus had is drawn and painted. James Tissot, in his early days, painted scenes of life in Paris and women dressed in the fashions of the day.  I googled his name and some of the pictures were familiar.  I’d seen them somewhere, posters on walls of cafes, perhaps. They had the “Oh, yeah,” factor but I’d never known the artist’s name.

He looked for interesting settings for his women and in on one place, the Church of Saint-Suplice, he had a religious experience, a revelation, a vision. He had been a Roman Catholic Christian, a lapsed one. You can always take the boy out of the Roman Catholic Church, but taking the church out of the boy is different thing entirely. He painted a picture of his vision.

He went on to paint a series of pictures based on the gospels.  He travelled to the Holy Land and made sketches of the landscape and people. He wanted to provide a visual guide to the life of Jesus, from a kind of eye witness viewpoint. He wanted his pictures to be realistic and not idealised, sentimental or sanitised in any way.

People queued up to see the series of pictures when they were shown in galleries around the world. They would stand before them in hushed silence or kneel weeping in front of them. This was exactly the response that Tissot was looking for. He wanted to evoke a personal response in people, help them to imagine the scenes they had read in the Bible and make it real to them. They were published in book form which proved to be a best seller. Obviously not everyone liked what they saw. They had, perhaps, been brought up on the equivalent of the series “Jesus of Nazareth” with Robert Powell and his blue eyes. Now they were confronted with the equivalent of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” with all the blood flying everywhere.  Sometimes there’s nothing compelling about Jesus’ serenity amid horror, but people choose the serenity because it doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable.

The chapter in the book ends with these lines:- Once a large draw to the Brooklyn Museum which raised the money to buy the complete “The Life of Our Lord Jesus” series through enthusiastic public donations, the works are now rarely exhibited and are stored in their archives.”

I read those words with such sadness. I imagined Tissot looking down from heaven with tears in his eyes. The very purpose for which he created them – to be seen and the power of them to bring Jesus alive to them – was no longer happening. Consigned to the archives and very rarely seen is not the end he was looking for. Yes, I appreciate these things need to be protected. Art deteriorates, colours fade, frames buckle and time dismantles treasures if permitted. I think it’s just sad. In today’s world there’s a hypersensitivity to being offended and no doubt some people would be offended and the exhibition taken down. I still think it’s sad – archives and some temperature controlled cupboard somewhere and a powerful tool for bringing some people into contact with Jesus is switched off.

I wonder if Tissot would have been happier knowing his paintings were falling apart through age, but being seen, rather than being protected with no one to look at them.

It makes me think of all those other powerful tools that could bring people into contact with Jesus being hidden in drawers and cupboards. It’s like the man with the one talent burying it.  He thought it was too precious to risk losing but it did no good buried under six inches of soil.

I’d like to think that I was making the best use of my gifts and talents to make Jesus come alive for people. Faith is a risky business. There are things that are supposed to out in the world and seen. I’d like to think I have assigned nothing to the archives.

Friendship...

friendship begins when

I know myself alone and

I cannot keep breathing if

no one knows my name

my face and frame or

the thoughts I think or

the things I hold dear

a birth certificate with fading words

on folded yellow paper

records time, place and parent

nothing to tell of

the candles on my birthday cakes

my love for James Arthur

or the tears I shed when he left

you know those things – my memories shared

you know I exist

because I reached out and

entrusted you with “me”

and in the touching and embracing of you

and him and her and they

I became something more than just “me”

An Abuser? Not me!

Confession time. There is abuse happening in my house. It’s not an everyday occurrence but became sufficiently bad at the weekend that we called in an expert to deal with it.

I am not the victim. I am the abuser. My husband isn’t the victim either before you start matching up any bruises you might see to any comments he made about walking into a door.

Sunday afternoon the washing machine stopped working. We won’t go into why I was breaking rules about the Sabbath. I understand entirely the fact that I have a whole week in which to do the washing and I shouldn’t be doing it on the Sabbath. It’s just that I like a full load and sometimes that doesn’t happen until the Sabbath.

The door wasn’t closing or locking. There was no satisfying click. No button pushing. No gurgle of water. No gentle turning of the drum. Nothing.

It wasn’t an old washing machine. The sticker on the machine assured us that we could expect 10 years’ worth of washing. We hadn’t had it 10 years although time seems to flash by sometimes. On a previous machine we had replaced the door at least twice so the problem wasn’t new to us. Apparently, so I read somewhere, doors on front loading washing machines were always needing to be replaced.

I once stayed with my brother in Spain. I wasn’t actually staying with him as he was in hospital and I was staying in his flat whilst visiting him. He also had a broken door on his washing machine. A screwdriver rested on top of the machine. There was a knack to manipulating the screwdriver to close the door.

The expert, an earnest young man with a very large tool bag, and no replacement door, diagnosed the real problem – abuse!

“You’re slamming the door” he accused. He swung his arm in a short arc, acting out the offending action. “The inner mechanism of the lock is made up of plastic. The plastic bits can take only so much abuse before they break.”

Dis he actually use the word abuse? I think so.

I felt very ashamed.

He repaired the door in five minutes but the lecture lasted considerably longer. I could see he was a man who cared about appliances. His touch was gentle and his voice, addressed to the machine, not me, was soothing.  He was less so when he turned to me once the task was done. He gave me a tutorial on how to open and close the washing machine door, watching me with eagle eyes, and hovering nervously in case I got it wrong. Satisfied that I knew how to so it properly he added a sticker to the washing machine door. It wasn’t a five step reminder of how open and close the door properly but his name and number if I should resort to my abuser habits and break the little plastic bits again.

Later, I told my husband about the young man, the fact that the washing machine was working and passed on what I had learned about washing machine doors and the right treatment of them.

“Abuse, huh?” he said. He has bushy eyes brows, my husband. They danced a little before settling down.

There was clearly an implication being made. It would seem that the washing machine wasn’t the only object of my abuse. That’s possibly true. I promised myself when we bought a new cooker a couple of years that I would never let it get to the baked-on spilled messes of the previous one. TLC – tender loving care could be applied to any number of gadgets about the house – actually the house in general.

But what about people? Am I a people abuser? Do I slam the door on them and break what’s fragile in them? I worked for a while as a waitress in a local hotel. The day I left the manager said that it had been a pleasure to see a gentler, more patient side in me develop.  What? Was I that bad?

I confess that many of the conversations God and I have are about my people skills. They are not absent by any means. I’m not always gentle. The actual interaction I have is mostly gentle, but there’s a not so gentle mental commentary going on. One of these days the mental commentary is going to cease to be merely mental I fear. Something will slip out. How I think about something or someone will affect what I do or say.

Kindness to washing machine doors is one thing, but kindness to the people around us is something else. People also need that gentle touch and that soothing voice. Yes, sometimes they need to face up to realities but they don’t need to be slammed. The world slams people. The media slams people.  Social media slams people. And sometimes the church slams people. And what’s fragile in people breaks.

Is it really that hard to be kind?

We have an expert at hand who doesn’t just tell us to be kind bit, through the life of Jesus in the gospels, shows us how.

I am Usain Bolt

I didn’t watch the race. It was Usain Bolt’s last race and a final opportunity to gain another gold medal to add to the collection he already had. The script didn’t go as planned and Justin Gatlin won the race.

I know little about the world of athletics. It has been hampered, as many sports are, by performance enhancing drugs and Justin Gatlin doesn’t have clean hands, or clean arteries, where drugs were concerned. My husband wasn’t happy that Gatlin won. He chuntered on for a while about athletics being reduced not to good runners, diet, exercise, hard graft and the will to win but down to which drug company does the better job. In a world where coming in second is not celebrated the pressure to resort to something other than talent and hard-work must be a temptation.

The husband chuntering continued for quite a while. He didn’t have a good word to say on Gatlin and he wasn’t alone in that. That Usain Bolt was beaten was not the issue.  Being beaten by Gatlin was a big issue. I’m not sure why life time bans have to be overhauled, or how eight year bans can get reduced to four years. Do the goal posts of banned substances shift and change so much that athletes get caught out? Does the cough mixture they used to deal with a tickly throat contain the wrong combination of chemicals? I can’t believe that it’s all accidental.

“Let’s be Usain Bolt in this,” I said to the unhappy husband by my side.

Usain Bolt was the real winner not of the 100 metres, but of something of greater value.  Beaten into third place he found the time to give Gatlin a hug and congratulate him on the win – and not through gritted teeth or with a mental image of running the man down with a big lorry. 

"He [Gatlin] is a great competitor. You have to be at your best against him. I really appreciate competing against him and he is a good person." 

The general reaction of the athletics world was something other than Usain Bolt.

"Why should we celebrate Gatlin's win? No-one wants to see someone in their mid-thirties who has had two drugs bans win the 100m. We don't know what lasting effects the drugs he has had in his system have had. It makes a mockery of the sport for me," said one three-time bronze medal winner.

“You can't sweep things under the carpet. The people who run the sport have to sort things out because we are not supposed to have moments like this,” said another Olympian.  

I know where they are coming from. I have a real problem with Christians letting the side down. I think because of their faith they should above things like adultery or abuse – but then I’m not above the smaller abuses. This morning God and I were talking about my lack of self-control.  I’d been playing around on Facebook and done one of the quizzes.  Morgan Freeman was about to tell me the truth. Apparently I don’t have to lie down and surrender when faced with a chocolate bar, I don’t have to cram it into my mouth and claim I coudn’t help myself. Self-control, God reminded me, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit – I am without excuse!

There is a generosity that seems to be absent from the world these days. I remember reading this verse many years ago from Psalm 20. 

“May we shout for joy over your victory and lift up our banners in the name of our God.” Psalm 20:5 

It shouldn’t matter that I was not in a good place at the time. It seemed that just about everyone I knew was succeeding in life, flourishing and blessed. I was crawling through my days, barely hanging on by the fingernails. To celebrate their victories when I was living through failure seemed a big ask. It was a big ask to demonstrate generosity when I was living in poverty. I think I chose to shout for joy convinced someday I would have my own victories. My life and times then. as now, were firmly entrusted into God’s hand. 

Sometimes it's not just the victories of other people that we don't celebrate - it's our own victories too that we fail to shout joy over. We stain them with "Yes but, I could have done better".

Was it a big ask for Usain Bolt to hug and congratulate Justin Gatlin? Bolt didn’t think so.  If anything Justin Gatlin showed courage in facing s hostile crowd. That could not have been easy. To know that this time it is just you and your hard training, without the artificial stimulants, that also takes courage. To I know that you are running against everyone’s hero and will perhaps end his dream that takes courage. To reclaim what you once tossed away – that takes courage. Maybe that’s what Bolt saw and congratulated.

I would like to say “I am Usain Bolt” but I have a long way to go.

The Power in a Poem

I reunited myself with the Velocity Café Poetry night yesterday. It had been a while since I was last there. We had a falling out, Velocity and I, although they were probably unaware of it, over a poetry event I tried to organise with them and they double booked the night and I had to find another venue at really short notice. Deeply stressed by the whole thing I swore never to cross their door again – you know, as you do. So I didn’t, that is until last night.

I had stopped going for other reasons – our church prayer meeting is on a Thursday night and I love the fellowship and family bonding that goes on. Some people have moved on to other places taking their poetry with them. One woman used to present, not poetry, but some kind of short story prose thing she claimed to written in the hour or two before the poetry night began. The stories were often on occult themes and seemed to go on forever.

Of course, there was the whole guilt thing about bikes! The café’s main business is bikes. There is a workshop at the back and an Information notice on the wall about prices for mending your bike on your own or getting someone else to help you. They have a ladies cycling club too. I feel I ought to have a bike tied up to the railings outside rather than flat-tyred and abandoned in the shed.

Listening to the poetry can sometimes be a challenge. I don’t listen well to poetry that I haven’t written myself although I am improving. The cafe has wooden floors which really doesn’t help. The noise of the coffee machine is distracting.  It’s not a physical environment that is conducive to poetry readings.

One man read a funny poem, a first draft he insisted, imagining what life would be like if we were like spiders. To have the capacity to pull string out of our bottoms might be helpful. Perhaps if we had some spider qualities, we might have a better understanding of them and there would be fewer spiders washed down plugholes.  

Another man read a poem, first draft he also insisted, about living in Inverness. Once upon a time, the city used to be a place you stayed one night on the way to somewhere else. It doesn’t have its own attractions. There is no busy city nightlife – or busy city day life, come to that. The poem was about all the things you can’t do in Inverness.

Another man read six poems about Donald Trump. He sent his younger daughter out to check on the bikes for some of them. He was not a fan and the poems were scathing of Trump’s presidency – amusing, but scathing.  

As I was listening I thought about freedom of speech. Another country, another leader and the scathing poem read out loud would put us all in prison, listeners and readers alike. Poetry and song has the ability to carry a strong message and is viewed as a threat in so many places.

One of the many books I have read over the holiday was a science fantasy written by George R. R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones series. The storyline was set in a world where the lines of society are clearly marked out. People follow the occupation of their parents regardless of talent or ability. A famer’s son can only be a farmer, not a doctor. The people with the privileges and wealth maintain it and the people without those things struggle day to day. That sounds all too familiar! A fisherman’s daughter breaks with tradition and the book is about the how and the why and the consequences.

Throughout the story poetry and song are used to pass on a message of victory for the down-trodden and defeat for the ruling classes. The poets tap into the mood of the population and stir emotions. Put their words to music and sing them over the world and they become as powerful a weapon as any missile. The ruling class threaten to pull out the tongues of the singers and chop off fingers of the musicians. Censorship doing its worst. Someone steps in to save the day and the changes happen and every lives happily ever after. We are still waiting for that to happen for us.

When I enrolled a creative writing class at the college many years ago, one of the assignments was to write on event in three different genres. I wasn’t sure what a genre was. The event I chose was an alien occupation. One of the pieces was a short story on the theme of the body snatchers. The second piece was a diary entry of a burglar breaking into the clinic where the body swapping was going on and making the discovery before being caught and body swapped himself. The third part of the assignment was a poem from the perspective of a fly on the wall. I discovered quite early on that by changing a line or two, or a name, I could make my own political statement with it. I posted it onto s poetry forum way back when George Bush was president. Someone commented that the FBI had probably opened up a file on me and I was now considered a threat to American democracy. I dug out the poem last night and did a name change. 

The Fly

I am a fly, I am a fly

And I spy with my million faceted eye

That the American president is an alien spy

And the earth’s population is going to fry

I am a fly, perched quite high

I see everything with my million faceted eye

As I watch and I see events pass by

I know Mr Trump you’re an alien spy

I am a fly, a tiny sly private eye

I know and you can’t deny

That I’ve seen everything with my million faceted eye

My, oh my, what secrets I could spill to the FBI

I am a fly, just for you I’ll turn a blind eye

For in my own way I am an alien spy

The world and I don’t see eye to eye

I know they’re out to get me as I fly by