Steph’s Poems – 3
(for all you fans out there)

Admiration Confirguration
Love what you admire
And become it thereafter
A haunch and sideways gaze
Embarrassment through extracellular assumption.
-A cigar. So hot
You look with it.
Behind the pictures communicate volumes;
Beautiful, electrical, quality of flint.
-Cold and real
Firm, and yet missing it.
Subjective reality
Wears out from within.
But the honest appetite for truth refreshing.

A Design for life
A Design for life
A Design of life
The Design of life.
A design amidst the mayhem of a 4D chess-board game?
Forgotten moves, behind pauses spent
Waiting.
And if the move is well observed, or anticipated just the same
Then questions fly, about the why, to grow in
Understanding

3/1/05
Cumulative cultural change;
Ecstacy of new ideas.
Just Brain Drain on those who’ve done the nurturing?
Mirage of originality,
Allures your admiration.
But you’re spouting has an all familiar tone.

Mullings over Ginger Cake
If love enriches the very part,
Then let us love some more!
Pack away our rumoured selfish genes,
And dance until we’re sore.
-Your love for me, like sweet perfume,
If only you could know.
Does it protect you, my dear, to keep you from the know?
-Or do I merely fear the failure,
My inability to commit?
I know my fluttering ‘heart’ too well, perhaps,
So will deny it before it, retracts.
-Could anyone not be forced to love
When it expresses it’s feelings for you?
Do I fear that if I recipricate
My love ain’t spontaneous and true?
-And yet for all your ‘failings’, I haven’t lost the scent
And feel that time with you, is surely time well spent.
Perhaps, my friend, we should take a leap,
A dip in the dark, a risk elbow deep.

MC
Proliferate
Substantiate
Communicate,
Is what I’m doing here.
To pull the threads, and so unwind,
And in doing so, to peer…
At all the ins and outs of thought,
And feeling with time to dream.
Unpacking time present, and so to endulge
And smile upon what is seen.

GUd Life 20 – New Year

Well, what can I say of the new year? There are plans afoot to harness the “passion of compassion” generated by the Asian tsunami disaster to make 2005 a breakthrough year for greater debt relief, more generous aid and better trade access, and the global response to the tsunami disaster is an expression of the public’s demand for action to tackle poverty. While 2004 was a year which ended in the horror of a natural disaster, 2005 is a year that can start with the hope of human progress and a year of opportunity when – from the foundation of hope – we can, I believe, see real change with the realization of shared vulnerability and linked destinies of peoples throughout the world. Having been humbled first by the power of nature, we have since been humbled and inspired by the power of humanity and the extraordinary power of human compassion to build anew.
I think that the tsunami had emboldened global leaders and people to a wider mission to tackle global poverty. I do not think there is “compassion fatigue” on behalf of the British people; on the contrary as 2005 also marks the start of the UK’s year-long presidency of the G8 group of industrial states and, from July, of the EU, Britain is proposing that debts owed by the world’s poorest countries, to institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should be written off . Very generous indeed. And a doubling of aid to $100bn (£55bn) a year. Better trade terms to help poor countries to build up their export capacity while rich countries dismantle their protectionist barriers. Britain effectively has only until the G8 summit at Gleneagles in July to make progress on debt and aid. The chancellor’s ambitious plan for a $50bn international finance facility – a “live now, pay later” scheme for the poor – faces an uphill struggle for acceptance. Without immediate action, Mr Brown said, the world would renege on the pledges made at the UN to halve poverty, provide universal primary education and cut infant mortality by two-thirds, all by 2015. Almost every world leader, state and international body had signed up to the millennium development goals. “But already, so close to the start of our journey to 2015, it is clear that our destination risks becoming out of reach, receding into the distance.” However, I feel that the tsunami has created a once in a generation opportunity to deliver for our times a modern plan for the developing world – a new deal between the richest countries and the poorest countries. One in which the developing countries are not supplicants but partners in a war for peace and against poverty.
Escaping from the number mumbo-jumbo, all I have to say is that the worldwide demonstration of sympathy and support shows that even if people are divided by geography, race, wealth and ideology, we are not and we cannot be moral strangers. We are one moral universe. And the shared moral sense common to us all makes us recognise our duty to others. I hereby pay tribute to the work of hundreds of volunteers who have supported the tsunami relief effort. The generosity of the public and the dedication of charity workers is inspiring. It’s amazing work. People are volunteering and raising money for the tsunami appeal and other appeals.
The world is in good hands folks. Our hands! And I am confident that there is still hope for a world which reacts as sympathetically and reverently as ours has to the earthquake and tsunami disaster. I feel so light having got this off my chest and so,  junta, I will get back to my bitter sweet acerbic witty self.