Educative

Caution: the odd poem may contain swear words.

CONTENTS: The real rule of law / Either, or / Dying to dye / Either-less / Opposites attract / YouView purview / This little piggy went to market / Natural / Deeds in needs / Thin ice / Your move / Nature or nurture? / Medical merry-go-round / Universal paradox / Telling / Invisible voices / Thera: opportunity lost / So much, so little / The condon / Sex edumucation / Advance Australia. Care! / Trauma tax / Robocops R us? / Pssst… best we forget / Metal maggots / Shit for drains… / Wanna bet? / Hidden heredity / Let it R.I.P? / Ice ages / Digital inoculation / Everything but… / Home improvements / Worry porn / Needs Vs proceeds / Roulette before, during, not after / D world / Food for thought / Science / Compound Interest / Gimme some credit! / Cutting ‘Zs’ / The Amygdala / The Amygdala song / Happiness / WTF? / Addiction / DV: Nature or nurture? / Cancer / Moonwalking luck / The holy grail of particle physics / The first two / Normal faces? / Are corals worth morals? / Youth / Religion / To be, or not to be… Gay! / More is less, more or less… / Wannabes / The law of four effs / Indigenous fate / Done in by dinosaurs / Corporatisation / Life on parole / Book learnin’ / Debbie does d’alas / The buck stops… everywhere / Fructose / Emotions / You game?

 

 

                The real rule of law

I’ve never been troubled by the law

Not even a traffic or parking ticket for…

Plain folk like me rely on justice assumed

State, Federal, council laws, process presumed.

 

But what is written, enshrined in constitution

Is constantly flouted, by professional prostitution

Enabled by wealth, status, religion, presumed privilege

Patriarchy, politicians, and networks, the winning edge.

 

All manner of criminals: rapists, corporate cheats, politicians

Corruption, rapists, fraudsters, tax-dodging practicians

Buy silence, hush police, self-proclaimed assured innocence

And the media monopoly’s selective protective fence.

 

Promotion of stooges as high-level public servants

And to Administrative Appeals, compliant sycophants

Investigative commissioners, THE right judiciary

Rigged Terms of Reference, fudged legal fiduciary.

 

The call to arms when a ‘mate’ is threatened

Close ranks, deny, obfuscate, blame-shift reckoned

Invoke Cabinet secrecy, public interest immunity

What hope for poor minorities, women, with such impunity?

 

 

     Either, or

The silliest of things,

To anger brings

Flawed perception,

Rationality’s rejection

The worst things feared,

From those endeared

Suspicions unfounded,

Cause troubles unbounded.

 

Or absolute trust,

Yet secret lust

Hidden infidelity,

Faked relationship reality

One-sided devotion,

No clue, no notion

Sudden revelation,

Emotional devastation.

 

Or committed relationship,

Based on friendship

Own self-admitted flaws,

Cause relationship sores

Change own behaviour,

Your partner’s saviour

Partner does same,

True love’s end-game.

 

 

                          Dying to dye

Humans discovered early, how to dye cloth

Insect, plant pigments, colours to show off

But Black was a problem, solved quite late

But hugely expensive, for the rich to sate.

 

To flaunt their wealth and assumed status

The rich wore Black to funerals: envy gratis

Then new dye tech, common and cheap

New norm: turn up as mourning Black sheep.

 

 

                                 Either-less

Driverless cars see, judge distance, heed traffic rules

Constant attention, programmed precision, these future mules

But responding to humans, their foibles and threats?

Road rage at robots, jay walkers, whose regrets?

 

Millions of kilometres driven in trials

Far safer, less accidents brings satisfied smiles

Just one in eighteen in traffic snarl situations

Sorts the mire of human-habit tribulations.

 

With safety of passengers and route priority

Versus angry other drivers’ callous enmity

Defensive software, no nous, nuanced view

Occupants/outsiders: the ‘winner?’ How? Who?

 

 

                         Opposites attract

Nearly all the Lithium in today’s Universe

Was created in the first minute of Big Bang’s burst

Expansion, far flung across galaxies, stars, planets

Rare, some continents, deposits’ scattered shallow pits.

 

Third lightest, metallic element, ore hard to process

Left-over liquids, a toxic polluting long-lived mess

So rarity, hard-won, monopolies: expensive

Now useful, high-tech, rechargeables pervasive.

 

Carbon, on the other hand, is common, ubiquitous

Being made, every second, in stars superfluous

Thermonuclear, high pressure and temperature

Hydrogen to Helium to Beryllium, unsure

Picosecond-chance collision makes Carbon endure.

 

One to two to three, then six protons: Carbon stable

Six electrons, un-filled orbitals, can enable

Carbon to share four electrons, with itself or others

Allows Graphite, Diamond, or compounds as ‘lovers.’

 

Single, double, triple bonds, with self or other elements

With repetition, lattice, side-chains, rings, it circumvents

Any molecular problem the Universe presents

Organic, inorganic, plus life on Earth’s presence.

 

Suddenly, intelligence, demand for energy store

Lithium and Carbon: new electro-chemical score

Light, rechargeable, uses portable or fixed

Opposites attracting, old and new tech mixed.

 

 

                       YouView purview

If every picture tells a thousand words

(Unless it’s an image of one-word turds)

Then what’s the motive and implication

This digital explosion’s supplication?

 

Words convey meaning, understanding, intent

Factual or detailed, showing what’s meant

Some malicious, lies-led, libel’s litigation

Showing culture, mindset, of author and/or nation.

 

Words in written form are open to interpretation

Digital: redacted, deleted, plus alteration

Spoken words add nuance by emphasis, intonation

Emotions, sent/received, non-verbal feelings’ creation.

 

“I wouldn’t do THAT to YOU Prue.”

(I might do it to others, but not to you)

“I wouldn’t do THAT to you Hugh.”

(I might do other things, but not that to you)

“I wouldn’t DO that to you Lou.”

(Others might, but I wouldn’t do it to you.)

 

So images: photo-shopped, AI-sourced, or authentic

Credible? Real? Borrowed or pathogenic?

Pictures used today, link causes to effect

Markets to protect, important things neglect.

 

“Look at moi!” Likes, by-product of influence

Ego, delusion, and yearning’s confluence

Or greedy gain from some poor follower’s pain

Projected image, mirrored thoughts’ eye strain.

 

 

        This little piggy went to market

Markets were a place for buying and selling

Now nebulous construct, a tool for the telling

Multi-facet mouthpiece, the Media: its face

Imposing social norms, instructing time and place.

 

Where to go, what’s popular, and, what to wear

How to look, what to buy and what to share

Who to wed, identity: vegan or anti-vaxer

Candidates, how to vote, aspirational catcher.

 

All knowing and all powerful, the most potent of gods

Blind respect accorded, worshipped by the supine sods

Seen and heard, Media spruikers, celebs and the ‘News’

Not so Market ‘Masters,’ elites from whom control spews.

 

 

                              Natural

The word ‘nature’ has several meanings

A person’s attributes, motives and leanings

Of particular type, ‘things of that nature’

A causal agent, the Universe’s legislature.

 

And the undisturbed world of animals and plants

With the adjective ‘natural,’ the status it grants

Trusted, genuine, no artifice, admired

Observable, explainable, not supernatural, conspired.

 

So anything possible, according to the known laws

Of Physics and Chemistry, except for human cause

Is a natural occurrence, inarguable fact

All else contrived, human mind artifact.

 

So four hundred species, observed in nature

Mammals, birds, seen living in same-sex stature

Means censure of gays is a  constructed mind-set

Prompted by ignorance, prejudice, hate to abet.

 

The political, religious, ideological purposes

To manipulate opinion, control, mind-set purchases

Self-interest, status, power, money the goal

For non-thinkers, a con, mind-eating black hole.

 

So should we, can we, assume imagined thoughts

Imposed, engineered, concocted, self-serving rorts

Nature cherry-picked, some good, some declared bad

When ultimately Nature’s all the Universe ever had.

 

So bushfires, drought, extreme weather unprecedented

Just Nature responding to changes as presented

Physics and Chemistry’s enabled new tools

By human construct: the burning of mined fossil fuels.

 

Denying, ostracising that which is empirical

While believing, extolling the super/unnatural?

Ignorance which suits a deluded mind is ‘good?’

As imaginings destroy the natural neighbourhood.

 

 

                   Deeds in needs

Progressive, regressive, new versus old

Change for the better, minor or bold

Helping, enabling, good versus evil

Needs not wants, or future peril.

 

Consumption, waste, resources gone

Food/supply chains, services starve-a-thon

Greed gains wealth, conquers a rival

Money buys comfort but not survival.

 

 

                             Thin ice

One minute the kindest, most caring heart

The next, raging monster, quick start

Nasty, hurtful, abusive yelling

Blaming, shaming, anger compelling

 

Then silent, withdrawn, reflective regret

Leads to giggling, back-rub, cuddle to forget

No discussion, resolution, else instant replay

Calm to ballistic, ten second delay

 

Doubting, questioning, challenging, no trust

Looking for problems, threats, on alert a must

Critique, catastrophize, always fear the worst

Imperfection, negativity, anxiety’s unquenchable thirst.

 

Anxious watch spring, winds up, tightly bound

Triggered by anything, nothing, explodes unwound

Tip-toe on egg shells, dread the rare apology

Lurking, awaiting, the next abusive anthology.

 

 

                                  Your Move

Now these things in childhood are not your fault

Bad parenting, your upbringing’s life assault

Then to adulthood, bad issues that you bring

Cause problems: alcohol, drugs, relationship wrecking.

 

So if your issues then cause harm to others

And you don’t do harsh self-awareness smothers

Then you do transition to a stage in life

When it IS your fault for causing new strife.

 

 

                      Nature or nurture?

Genes or environment? The age-old question

Many a theory, proffered suggestion

Behaviour and traits, resulting from?

Upbringing or inherited neural intercom?

 

We’re all born with neural templates

Activated, or not, by our infant fates

For example, no love, cuddles, soothing voice

Empathy template: lost, no choice.

 

No language heard, no faces seen

Talking template, face recognition’s been

Lost for life, like the man in U.S.A

Lost his infant sight, untimely way.

 

Mid-age, married, technology restored sight

Only recognize wife if she wears clothes right

Or the girl locked in silent room ’til thirteen

Language ability long left the scene.

 

Comms were aural, when brains evolved

Text and reading, no template devolved

The brain cobbles, adapts various parts

Learning essential before ability starts.

 

The learning environment gives nuance, modifies

Screens: tap/swipe/scan image and text relies

On less development and shallower skills

Understanding, analysis, critique, inference it kills.

 

Just as important, are default neural settings

No activation stimulus, no neural nettings

The brain switches to an alternative development

Survival mode for perceived endangerment.

 

Angry, stressed, vulnerable suspect

Minus the parenting baby brains expect

Otherwise normal nice, becomes survival’s vice

Psychopath, narcissist, or violent neural splice.

 

 

                 Medical merry-go-round

The carousel horses go up, they go down

The carousel spins, around and around

A visit to the Doctor or specialist means

“It’s a scan you need,” in our costly machines.

 

Scans for symptoms become full-body scans

Revealing other features, incidentalomas’ demands

Mostly non-threatening, but suddenly urgent

“Oh, good news, it was benign, just being prudent.”

 

Detections, surgery, health costs all increased

But so too complications, harm, after-effects, deceased

And despite these interventions, how much improvement?

Tumor mortality rates: flat-lined, no movement.

 

Prostate scan: “ Cancer! Oh… that Lumbar tumour first!”

Cut nerves to leg and bladder, limp and catheter cursed.

A third of the horses go up… but not down

The cash carousel continues, around and around…

 

 

                                 Universal paradox

Cold, unyielding, unrelenting, unforgiving place

The probabilities, certainties, loneliness of deep space

Vastness, emptiness, harshness, eeriness rife

Yet the origin, supplier, sustainer of life!

 

Recycled coalesced cauldrons of pressure and heat

Stars crush atoms, a thermonuclear unthinkable feat

Fusing new elements, molecular building blocks

‘Empty’ space seeded, supernova blows its socks.

 

Far flung atoms, aimless drift apace

‘Til gravity’s defining force, corrals them into place

The spider’s web of space, nebulae coalesce ‘prey’

New stars, galaxies born, like our own Milky Way.

 

Visible light will piercingly, forever wander

Revealing image, be its energy to squander

Wasted if no receptor drinks in the yield?

No life forms present, hence no optical field.

 

Lifeless matter, invisible infra-red light heats

Prompting enzymes from languid watery seats

Embracing electrons’ eager energy freed

Photosynthesis, stored fuel, nurtures life’s need.

 

As gravity gives, so invisibly it takes away

Stars consume each other in violent play

Forming Black Holes, atoms crushed from existence

No matter nor light can escape its resistance.

 

And amid the slow cycle of creation and destruction

The calculable violence of slow physical disruption

There are niches of light, warmth, geochemical bliss

Where star-born elements, molecules of life, allow us to kiss.

 

 

                               Telling

Space-time tells matter how to move

Matter tells space-time how to curve

Nature tells climate how to organise

Climate tells nature what survives

Atoms tell electrons how to confine

Electrons tell atoms how to combine

Morals tell money where to spend

Money tells morals how to bend

Religion tells wars where to start

Wars tell religion to take heart

Evil tells ambition to plot, prioritise

Ambition tells evil to con, win the prize

Politicians tell corruption: “Add to cart”

Corruption tells politicians miles apart

Privilege tells entitlement to expect

Entitlement tells privilege how to affect

Envy tells hardship to disguise

Hardship tells envy to demonise

Motive tells apathy, “No thanks.”

Apathy tells motive to shoot blanks

Anxiety tells aggression to explode

Aggression tells anxiety to reload

Ignorance tells lies how to advise

Lies tell ignorance how to surmise

Social media tells truth how to die

Truth tells social media the reason why

Groupthink tells caution how to evaporate

Caution tells groupthink how to alienate

Risky shift tells reward how to inflate

Reward tells risky shift: disaster, too late

Psychopathy tells behaviour how to pretend

Behaviour tells psychopathy how it will end

Coercion tells control how to play

Control tells coercion when to slay

The mind tells AI how to arise

AI tells the mind creativity dies

Fear tells hate how to catalyse

Hate tells the fear-mob why to despise

Hate tells the mind how to dehumanise

The mind tells hate how to normalise

The mind tells hate how to Auschwitz-Gaza-ize

The mind tells humanity to survive or demise…

 

 

                 Invisible voices

They spin, we vote, they win, they grin

Continue to rule with covert sin

Democracy’s quietly in the bin

The lobbyist-Voices’ kingpin.

 

The Voices we never see nor hear

Despite being loud and clear

Laws for profits in secret, no fear

Taxes avoided, top tier, free beer!

 

Clueless mugs conned easy-peasy

Donate THEIR Voices for free

Trolling the carers who plainly see

Elites, pissing on them from their money tree.

 

Lobbyist Voices: no tax, no loot

For roads, schools, health acute

Loyal bogans remain deafly mute

Destroyed Planet? Don’t give a hoot.

 

But First Nations People, dispossessed

Killed, stolen, neglected, oppressed

Locked up, ignored, exploited with zest

HOW DARE they make a VOICE request!!

 

Herded off country to reserves, shanty towns

Or Missions, destroyed culture, religious clowns

Language, clans, totems, song-lines lost

Ties to country, to wildfires’ extinctions’ cost.

 

So ramp up the rhetoric, lies for the racist

And justifications for the dumb pessimist

Plus the freedumb-fighting Nazi pugilist

Collectively spreading NO’s muck-mired mist.

 

Those who condemn China’s racial vilification

Blind to our treatment of the First Nation

Or “I’m not racist, but the Voice won’t work!”

NO-voters’ excuse for the racist jerk!

 

And the aggressive haters voting no

Their personal lives’ unhappy flow

“My life’s shit so I’m votin’ no!”

“Not helping those to get a go.”

 

Our just deserts, if/for our NO votes

Pariah status, shunned as tourist scapegoats

And trade sanctions, shunned at conventions

Nowhere to hide from the World’s reprehensions.

 

But our reward if/for voting YES!

Heart-warming tears, understanding’s caress

Healing generational trauma’s abscess

Brotherhood, family, we all coalesce.

 

Hard NO: racists, haters, sick-minded people

Soft NO: uninformed, closed-minded, follower sheeple

Soft YES: sympathetic, confused, kind heart

Hard YES: informed, empathic, humane counterpart.

 

 

                                             Thera: opportunity lost

Sinkholes were common in the old fields of Thera, now Santorini

When in 1976, a new one collapsed, trapping a man and his donkey

But strangely, this one not random: a perfect squared rectangle

Attracted archaeologists, excavations, lots to factually untangle.

 

They revealed an unknown ancient city, buried by volcanic debris

Three-storey houses, piped water, flushing toilets, for things excretory

Geologists found the volcanic island blew its own top clean off

With sonar-seen cracks radiating eighty-kilometre seafloor troughs.

 

With cubic kilometres of island explosively pulverised into the air

Such force would’ve given, the whole planet an enormous scare

With the noise and shockwave reverberating round several times

The hunt now on for “When?” as per various geo-physical ‘crimes.’

 

Timber from the old houses, radio-dated ancient: centuries BC well-nigh

Nile Delta sediments the same, from tsunamis ten storeys high

(Could this be when the seas parted for Moses’ exodus into Sinai?)

And the hunt for global ‘nuclear winter’ strife, sun-blocking debris in the sky.

 

Peat bogs in Ireland showed deeper buried layers whose age concurred

Three years of nil growth in five-thousand-year-old Bristlecone Pines spurred

The global search for scientific signs, data or history to accurately date

This catastrophic phenomenon that sealed so much of creatures’ fate.

 

Aztecs cut beating hearts from 20K young women to paint their pyramid red

To appease the wrath of the Sun gods, for sunlight for crops near-dead

Then the epiphany! The Chinese emperors, had paper, recorded history

Poring through ancient detailed records, 1628BC, solved the mystery!

 

The Sun, distressed-red for three years, food plants dying, mostly dead

Millions starved, died, ravenous rat packs eating dogs alive, food wars’ dread

Plus in that first bang! All Minoans (and memories of) on Thera gone

Their high-tech, including the ground-glass lens found, not passed on.

 

Now Galileo developed the ground-glass-lens telescope around 1600AD

Then four hundred years later, we watched men moonwalking on TV

So speculating, had Minoan techno survived, progressed at the same rate

Would the birth of Jesus have been televised, similarly au fait?

 

And what of other cultures, peoples’ discontinued contemporary rites

Australia’s unique Indigenous: 63K years BC, oldest continuous living cites

Gwion Gwion sophisticated rock art, started Pleistocene, post-last ice age

Gone, no lore nor explanation, at 1-2K years BC, another victim of Thera’s rage?

 

 

                          So much, so little

So many crises with no leadership solutions

So many leaders, so little ethical interest

So much self-interest, so little common good

So many facts with no vision to see them

So much vision with so little fruition

So much ignorance with no thirst for knowledge

So much knowledge with so little application

So much consequence with so little care

So much care with so little political clout

So much wealth owned by so few

So much poverty with so few deserving

So much destruction with so little foresight

So much hindsight, so few lessons learned

So much potential with so little future

So much future never to be lived

So much intelligence, so little moral compass

So much ‘morality,’ so little to just causes…

 

                       The condon

Why are people so easily conned?

The cloak of belief so readily donned

No fact, no basis, no evidence, just spin

The art of deception and trickery to win.

 

Magicians fool vision by deft distraction

But nebulous beliefs’ instant traction?

Proved facts ignored or rejected

Irrational thoughts by minds infected.

 

Cults , religion, scams, quack health cure

All spruiked by frauds, origins obscure

Swamped by followers clamouring to pay

Self-assured delusion, they’re on their way.

 

To happiness, saviour, enlightenment or wealth

Their hopes, their fears, the predators’ stealth

Celebrity endorsement value-adds faith

Succour, smug security, on a path safe.

 

The zealots relentless, as the tide slowly turns

Anti-vaxer’s kids die, religious concerns

The real enlightenment: ‘ I’ve been had!’

Should’a used a condon: mind-fact protection pad.

 

 

                                              Sex edumucation

Two brothers, barely school-age: “G’day boys. What ya doin’ done?”

“We watched a movie, a girlfriends and a boyfriends one.”

Pointing to his brother: “He… he…” struggling for words to sell

Brother: desperate head shakes, imploring ‘please don’t tell!’

 

Sex education. Shock! Horror! Ruination of the nation!

Sexting, nudity, online porn: all-day’s private optical dilation

Teens, tweens and younger, by promoted chance or rampant choice

All manner of sex acts, ‘self-education,’ with no advisory voice.

 

I’ve not encountered very much porn, but that, which I’ve seen

Shows pleasured looks and female cries, faked acting for the scene

Painful for the recipient, mostly sexist male priority, domination

Injurious for curious, unaware teens, porn’s false ‘normalisation.’

 

So write and publish words and graphics, explaining sex and sexuality

How to, why, health and warnings, of everyday, human reality

No judgement, frowns, just response, to youngsters’ questions asked

Good advice, fact-based source, for those eager would-be’s tasked.

 

Those who doth, publicly protest, with loud aggressive tilt

A closet pervert, porn-addict, deviate, a ‘sinner’ wracked with guilt?

Driven by fear of future Hell, and outing’s public castigation

Best do God’s ‘good’ will and work, bleat evil others’ condemnation.

 

 

    Advance Australia. Care!

Australians all give us a Voice

To help us to be free

We’ve old assoil and wealth for spoil

The World can plainly see

Our land abounds in murder lists

Of brutal trauma despair

In history’s rage let us assuage

Advance Australia’s care.

In humane gains then let us bring

A chance, to make, things fair…

 

 

                                   Trauma tax

All human embryos are female ‘til about six weeks

Then the Y chromosome, if present, testosterone peaks

Males: ovaries to testes, spermatocytes fill the space

Girl babies’ ovaries, born with 400K oocytes in place.

 

So a woman pregnant, at the early five-week stage

Embryo, rice-grain size, its life’s gametes formed, full gauge

Present in the one body at just five weeks’ gestation

Mother, son or daughter, plus their future procreation.

 

Life traumas suffered, induce epigenetic changes to our genes

So those suffered by a mother (or father) pre-natal means

From grandparents through to grandkids, three generations

PTSD, anxiety, depression’s mental health tribulations…

 

He: Uni sport-star, ‘A’ student, sudden feelings: intense cold

Severe insomnia, life ruined, “If I sleep, I’ll die, before I’m old.”

Found out unknown grandfather, froze to death at same age

The revelation, counselling, freed him from his subconscious cage.

 

She: severe mental health problems, a crippling obsession

A yearning, plan hatched to end her life, the depression

By jumping into a foundry’s molten steel to herself vaporise

‘Til she traced dead grandmother: Nazi gas chamber’s cries.

 

The subconscious brain’s phenotypic behavioural vice

Nucleus Acumben’s psychological inheritance price

So search ancestral history, past trauma’s incidence

The unexplained makes sense, your path to recompense.

 

 

                                   Robocops R us?

What future for humans, the artificial brain interface?

Computers, robotics, electrodes, our brains interlaced

Speak a new language? A brain software download

Quick complex decisions, no evidence-based overload.

 

Neurotechnology: curative, restorative, augmentative

Brain diseased, damaged, or born defective?

Bio-info-electro-mechanical, controlled symbiosis

But Big Brother reads our thoughts? Subliminal paralysis.

 

And personal defects, violent murderers or rapists

Known history, predilection, evil intent persists

Can’t monitor, and no death penalty deterrent

Brain interface to monitor, software to prevent?

 

But downside risks, as is always the case

Software malfunction, or damaged interface

Or software hacks, to cause evil behaviour

Computer-enhanced crime, no policing saviour.

 

So what will predominate, our human traits?

Or robotic logic, cold calculated fates?

Can emotions be learned, programmed to influence?

Or the robots, opportune, promote own continuance?

 

 

                  Pssst… best we forget

Well, done and dusted: Anzac Day again

Remembrance, solemn ceremony, solace with pain

But look backstage, behind the heavy curtain

No bling, celebs, big brass, nor help, for certain.

 

For those who served, Iraq, Afgan, Vietnam

PTSD, depressed, unemployed, self-harm

Addicted, family trauma, one-in-three homeless

Suicides: a thousand-plus, defenders defenceless.

 

The LNP deployed, exploited, then deserted them

Lickspittles volunteered them: Uruzgan opium profit problem

Set ‘our boys’ against civilian Taliban Poppy farmers

Blind-eyed commanders, now prosecution harmers.

 

But lavished platitudes, billions on war memorials

Heroics, sanitised, sombre histrionic editorials

Not Indigenous tracker-troops shipped to the Boer War

Left there, with the horses, the Last Post’s silent uproar…

 

 

                                   Metal maggots

If nominations opened, what would you choose?

The most practical, pervasive thing humans use

Scientific, discovered, developed, wide application

But unobserved, unknown, not attracting acclamation.

 

My nomination, based on observation, by any evaluation

Is magnets and magnetism, my awe-inspired salutation

Dull, inanimate, hidden but everywhere

Extremely reliable, long-lived with no care.

 

Lodestone, a natural magnet, discovered by the Chinese

Suspended by thread, shows direction with ease

Alloyed iron (Aluminium, Nickel, Cobalt) magnets permanent

The compass allowed navigation, thus global determinant.

 

Like poles repel, unlikes attract

Are magnets so, matter of fact?

Highly variable in size, shape, composition

Some permanent, others temporary, instant transition.

 

With magnetic flux most intense at each pole

And curved magnetic field between each unseen goal

Earth’s magnetosphere protects life from bombardment

Charged particles, radiation, deterred from descent.

 

Moving electricity in a circuit creates a magnetic field

Concentrated  in a tight coil (solenoid) magnifies the yield

Pure iron in/around the coil becomes a temporary magnet too

Switch off the current, the magnetism disappears from view.

 

Solenoids thus control valves, switches, relays and myriad devices

But if the electricity is fed to an aerial in pulsed slices

Bursts of magnetism emanate forth at the speed of light

When received by another aerial, the reverse shows its might.

 

Moving magnetism creates electricity by induction

Modulate the electrical pulses to send coded instruction

Size of the pulse: Amplitude Modulation, or duration: Frequency Modulation

Or binary code pulses, digital, for a radio or TV transmission station.

 

Analogue or digital, both have pros and cons

But moving magnetism has other useful electric inductions

As rotating generators yield Alternating Current electricity

Whose voltage can, be transformed up or down with precise specificity.

 

The A.C. pulses fed to the primary coil makes magnetic pulses

Which cut through a nested secondary coil to induce in its clutches

The same A.C. pulses, but with higher or lower voltage depending

On the ratio of turns of wire, primary to secondary coil intending.

 

Your electricity supply down your street is about eleven thousand volts

A transformer converts it before entering your house to 240 volts

Your phone charger transforms and rectifies the 240 volts

To the required common charge rate of just five DC volts.

 

Neodymium super-strong permanent magnets are found

In computer hard drives, car alternators, loud speakers, they abound

And also in brushless electric motors like in EVs, power tools

In countless applications, large and small, the electric muscle mules.

 

Stepper motors: digitally-managed, motion-control, positioning ants

In high tech, automated, systems, machines, industrial plants

Digital scanners, printers, disc drives, camera lenses, stage lighting

Medical imaging, robotics, 3-D printers and things for war fighting.

 

The avalanche of electric vehicles, driverless? just coming into view

A motor, no gearbox, control mechatronics, demand for magnets anew

And though I’ve but touched the surface of this electro-magnetic space

The winning evidence is so compelling, and so I rest my case.

 

 

                          Shit for drains…

Slessor’s country towns with their barrel mares

Soon became cities with crowded squares

And human excrement became a rank problem

Stench and disease, the streets, it clogged ‘em.

 

So underground sewers saved the day

Released waste to a convenient waterway

Brown mullet and paper drifting around

Polluted mess, environmentally unsound.

 

With solids filtered, still waterways decline

With drugs, meds, hormones, and urine

Fish sex changes, algal blooms, oxygen starved

And perceptions, care-factor, responses halved.

 

Amazon Indians five thou’ years ago

Crushed charcoal, with wastes to soils hoe

Creating Terra Preta, super-soils sow

Still fertile now, mined for sale, packaged to go!

 

So smart folks now see a waste resource

Nutrients, microbes, a fertilizer force

A triennial spread for improved soil

Happy crops, for bigger yields loyal.

 

And smart cities now with re-designed toilets

Small bowl in bowl to catch urine droplets

Stored in a tank, emptied by a tanker

Straight to paddocks, spread as dunder.

 

With humans still being, full of shit

A plainly obvious solution to fix it

Multiple problems, a solved job lot

Profits, not costs, with ‘No shit, Sherlock!’

 

 

                         Wanna bet?

Show me a punter, I’ll show you a loser

The obvious victim, a betting wallet abuser

The odds are stacked in more ways than one

So they only spruik of the fewer times won.

 

The gambling industry knows betting psychology

Lesser educated, hard life, identified sociology

Lives mundane, unfulfilled, they know where you live

Siting their pokies near those who give.

 

The gambling method’s designed in a way

To first anticipate, then zone in to play

Dopamine hooks you like comfort eating

It’s less about winning, the odds you’re beating.

 

Those least able, pay the high price

Losses, addiction, misery means thrice

Knowing their target, the dire consequence

Shows the industry’s vile negligence.

 

If sport is your vice, improve your chance

The following tips, your odds will enhance

Back the home team, as their home-ground fans

Boost team testosterone, beats match-winning plans.

 

And other things being equal, check team colours

More red the better, brighter than dullers

Boosts stressor cortisol in the opposing team

Confidence dented, opponents more mean.

 

But the best bet in life, with things not ideal

Don’t start, be a punter, a loser with zeal

For making things worse by getting sucked in

By the life-sucking parasites, evil’s twin.

 

 

                    Hidden heredity

How does a spider, via a fertilized egg

Pass on to offspring, how to spin a unique web?

No tuition, parental guidance, just innate skill

Programmed behaviour, triggered, not free will.

 

The female preying mantis does it with ease

And many spiders submit to their squeeze

The males lured to fertilize her eggs

Genetically driven, he literally begs.

 

With sperm transfer barely begun

The doomed male’s race is almost done

As the female starts to eat him alive

Vital protein for her eggs to survive.

 

With humans, our behaviour is nearly all learned

Or so say the experts, academic quals earned

And current theory accepted, learning equals memory

New synapses, axons myelinated, an instant recall directory.

 

But things confound, neuron-based memory theory

Like the Indian orphan baby, fostered, revealed recall eerie

New city, new family, no relation, surprised to hear

Him recite his family tree, correct names, an innate seer.

 

Amazon Indigenous shamans, have vast botanical knowledge

Unlearned, not passed on pedagogically, no training college

Ayahuasca: first vine leaves, then dimethyl tryptamine, hallucinations

Triggers come dawn, new botanical nous, unhitherto realisations.

 

Organ transplant recipients have long reported after

New knowledge, sensations, feelings, ascribed to the donor’s character

Parents, grandparents see behaviours, insights, beyond their years

In their kids. Bewilderment: ‘Not prompted by me nor their peers!’

 

A few years ago, some scientists arbitrarily assigned binary code

To the four nucleotides, the basis of all heredity, of DNA’s lode

Using standard polymerase chain reactor technology they converted

A whole ebook, complete with images, into chromosomes, DNA subverted

 

Each chapter a chromosome, in a test tube for two weeks left

The sequences then translated back, to text, no hopes bereft

When every chapter reappeared with just five minor errors

New insights, potential, unleashed by these triumph sharers.

 

Subsequent calculations showed all human knowledge and data

Thus converted, could be stored in mere grams of DNA, pro-rata

So by now I’m curious, thinking, extrapolating, postulating

Our memory’s not neuronal, but DNA-based, hereditary awakening awaiting…

 

 

                                                 Let it R.I.P?

Not just your average normal virus is Covid nineteen

No-one knows, where it’s going or where it’s been

But simple things gleaned, observations and research

Help prevention, elimination, to knock it off its perch.

 

Just one micro-aerosol, sized one fifth of a blood cell breathed in

You’re infected, cells invaded, for rapid reproduction to begin

Within two days (no symptoms yet) you’re shedding virus, infective

By day four, symptoms maybe or not, your viral load MAY test positive.

 

Unlike others, Covid virus invades every system and organ in your body

Blood, brain, even testes: impotent, no libido and/or sterile waddy?

As it moves through incubation, symptomatic for average two weeks

Then inflammatory, multi-system damage to tail off at twelve weeks.

 

Either way, even asymptomatic, damage is done to your immunity

To new strains of Covid, other diseases, with random impunity

So vaccines help, less virus load, less symptoms in the sickly phase

But they only last months, so booster needed, with new variant plays.

 

It’s days of infection, not severity of symptoms that predicts Long covid

So vaccinations help heaps, the virus load incubation curve less turgid

As Long Covid symptoms develop up to one year after infection

During which time, a new variant infection with even lower protection?

 

Now a virus that sheds, is load-infective two days before seen sickness

Means vaccines, though protective, become selective agents propitious

Willing mutations to become resistant, to the vaccines themselves

New strains, repeat infections, our immune protections’ empty shelves.

 

So, Long Covid: tissue damage, persistent, or autoimmune attacks after

By acute or asymptomatic, or appear post infection months later

Eg. brain syncytia fog: unable to read, comprehend do mental tasks

Or fatigue/exhaustion: brushing teeth is like Everest sans O₂ masks.

 

Or blood cell micro-clots, and inflammatory micro-tears in your capillaries

Shutting down function, in myriad essential systems and organ ancillaries

Bad luck! Either way you won’t keep a job. No work, no pay, no future way

Vaccines won’t prevent Covid or Long Covid, but will stay a hospital stay.

 

And Covid hides, forming Syncytia and jumps cell to cell, invisible, evasive

All the while destroying B/T cells, immune self-protection less persuasive

Immune recovery only STARTS five months after the infection founded

One hundred risks: Long Covid, comorbidities, brain/heart damage compounded.

 

Data shows Covid results in more heart problems, with higher risks of and to all

Arrhythmias, Atrial Fibrillation, stroke, lung clots, failure and attack’s dire call

Especially in smokers, diabetics, kidney disease and other pre-conditions

But also in healthy, fit, non-obese and no heart or risk-factor dispositions.

 

Worst I’ve read, for more than one year, a US woman, just thirty something

Ninety minutes per day power walker, then exhausted bed-ridden weakling

Brain fog reading loss, severe foot pain like walking on broken glass strife

No sleep, pain like a mobile on vibrate in her chest: she took her own life.

 

Eighty percent of those infected, get one or more Long Covid symptoms

Nearly ALL infections release mutated variants, most mild, rare bad victims

Each new mutant gets genetically closer to a lethal strain, vaccine or not

So wear a mask, quarantine, ignore self-serving popular opinions’ greedy plot.

 

My Vagus nerve, unsupervised, 24/7, controls my heart, lungs and gut

Don’t want it damaged, same as my vigilant immune system, but

If so, the constant surveillance, destruction of new cancer cells gone

Uncertain future, don’t believe the ‘ It’s mild, get it, get over it’ con.

 

 

                                             Ice ages

Geochemistry, palaeontology, the studied records show

Periods of warming, cooling, from data that we know

Ice ages past, each icy blast, a cold frozen planet

Seventeen thou years ago, now going the full gamut.

 

Internal Combustion Engines, the current human ICE age

Have over-run the planet, a plague, they’re all the rage!

Spewing gaseous oxides, a greenhouse warming world

The ICE age dies, by its own use, its banner soon furled.

 

 

       Digital inoculation

Social media: misinformation

Psychological indoctrination

So pre-bunk for initial prevention

Or de-bunk after, fact check intention

For cults, conspiracies inculcation

Get psychological vaccination.

 

 

Everything but…

Their medicine, their phone, their house

Their car, the clothes worn by their spouse

Their food, and everyday basic reliance

All good except that climate science.

 

 

Home improvements 

Don’t look at me with that tone of voice

Listen with your eyes, ears and heart

Let your subconscious do the walking

And your facts, not beliefs do the talking

You, I, everyone is annoying in some way, some part

To others, as are others to us. Be mindful, your conscious choice.

 

 

                               Worry porn

No fight, no resistance, no resilience, no gain

No patience, despondency means more pain

No worth, no confidence, no rational thought

Anxiety’s trauma, Dopamine’s tort

Fear’s trepidation, and Frequency’s affliction

Add Risk’s uncertainty: worry’s addiction

Delta FosB trigger rachetting higher

Dopamine spike needed now more dire

So break the cycle, lower the trigger

Devices, news-stress: problem bigger.

 

 

             Needs Vs proceeds

Shaped rainbow colours, the truth belied

Forty percent, of drugs prescribed

No help, no benefit, ‘cos they lied

Our genomes dictate, what they hide.

 

Clinical trials on young adult white males

The rest take their chances, with betrayals

With negative side effects’ sorry tales

Big pharma greedily boosts their sales…

 

 

          Roulette before, during, not after

Back to the Doctor for the result of her genome test

As maybe organ donor, for her son she wouldn’t rest

Incredulous, then angry, when Doctor told her gently

DNA shows you’re not the mother of your sons, apparently.

 

The test, based on a blood sample, whose embryonic origin

Is mesodermal, same as muscle, but by comparison

Skin, hair, nerves and teeth, formed from ectoderm

Relevance, revealed by persistence, memoirs of pregnancy’s term.

 

She ordered new tests, based on skin and hair cells

The conflicting results astounded, rang science alarm bells

‘Cos genetically, she was two people, a human chimera

To embryology, uterine gestation, a new knowledge era.

 

Most women ovulate, conceive around the fourteenth cycle day

Basis of contraception’s abstinence method, the age-old way

But a proportion of women in a cycle, regularly ovulate twice

And some, in a cycle, days apart, release an ovum thrice.

 

Multiple pregnancies, same cycles, producing non-identical twins

If implanted close together, embryos, placentas, identities merge skins

Only one baby born, the secret sworn, ’til something goes awry

Most commonly women, auto-immune disease cause underlie?

 

The miracle of new life, a complex and perilous journey

But destiny’s set long before the maternity ward gurney

In fact, with both parents, long before conception, implantation

Epigenetic change, induced by lifestyle choice, thwarting expectation.

 

So women for example, in the three months before getting pregnant

Not eating fruit and veg, switch genes on, or make dormant

Their daughters and grand-daughters, life-long impositions

Predisposed obesity, diabetes, and vascular disease conditions.

 

Likewise angry men, sons born with amygdalae enlarged

And smokers’ sons with physiology impaired, guilty as charged

So set your own, healthy house, habits not hard

Give kids the best chance in life, no genetic prison guard.

 

 

                     D world

In D world today there’s change apace

Quiet, unnoticed this exponential race

‘Til suddenly it’s here, all over the place

Irreversible, good and bad, in your face.

 

Digitisation, everything now codified

Binary, barcodes, blockchain, QR tied

Photos, books, music, mass communication

Our lives archived, Cloud-based supplication.

 

Deception’s side effect, we take it for granted

Anytime, anywhere, everything’s supplanted

By silicon chips, miniaturised, unseen, hidden

Newest must-haves, dumped old tech’s midden.

 

Dematerialisation, things we used to buy

Some for function, prestige or not ponder why

CDs, DVDs, camera, calculator, watch and maps

Even your TV, now pocket smartphone Apps.

 

Demonetising, with EFT, crypto, Paypal and credit

No cash, but ‘secret’ payment by financial edit

Cheap tech, ‘free’ Apps do whatever you want

Your private data, adverts, your payment font.

 

Disruption’s march, jobs, industries gone

Robotics, automation, technology’s song

Cheaper, more effective and transformative

Get with it or bust, the new brutal normative.

 

Disintermediation, the middle man gone

Agencies, lawyers, fees, contracts long

As blockchain, cryptos, Non Fungible Tokens

Peer to peer transactions for digital wokens.

 

DeFi and dApps, the next internet phase

Finance minus banks, crypto platforms erase

And Google, Fakebook and other data miners

Blockchain dApps, anonymous secure signers.

 

Democracy’s donor or debilitating drone?

Digital access, empowering tech for the poor and alone

But politics, donor-cronies and powerful elites

Fake news, social media, easier for cheats.

 

And the D world denaturing as species retreat

Degraded, denuded as depredates deplete

Divisive dissemblers drive the dissonant drawcard

Displacement, disease, and destruction disregard.

 

 

                          Food for thought

How good would it be, to have a kilojoule counter

That measured every morsel, your taste buds encounter

And even better, fats, carbs and protein amounts

And body fat stores, all recorded in detailed accounts.

 

When lab rats are fed eighty:twenty protein:carb diet

They eat their fill, then stop, leave, appetite quiet

But others fed twenty:eighty protein:carb mix

They eat and eat, seeming to not, get their fix.

 

The latter get obese, due to excess carbs consumed

As they eat for enough protein, but diabetics doomed

‘Cos they, like us, DO have a food monitor, called a gut

Our ingestions, signal brain via vagus nerve, hormones’ putt.

 

It works automatically, subconsciously, but is hijacked

By too much fructose, in sugar, and alcohol (the munchies!) in fact

So for you, self, and as parents, do breakfast with enough protein

Or be hungry, lab rats slurping carbs, snacking in between.

 

 

                          Science

Trouble, toil, black cauldron’s hushed bubble, boil

From witchcraft, alchemy, to, the likes of Fred Hoyle

Twenty K eggs, lizard’s legs, and lead for making gold

Bizarre birth, for science on earth, in, dark days of old.

 

Latin ‘ignoramus: We don’t know,’ so we’ll establish facts

Dogma abandoned as new knowledge, enterprise reacts

Empirical evidence supporting theories, acceptance overrode

Religion’s ‘ultimate and final truth,’ as profits surely flowed.

 

And wealth and education, with innate curiosity

With privileged position or patron generosity

Allowed individuals a life-time to pursue

Experiments and discoveries, bold theories anew.

 

Bestowed to men mostly, this life privilege

Women got married, served, why waste tutelage?

But some took their chance or forsook romance

Their quiet contribution, brought selfless advance.

 

The age of enlightenment, progress aplenty

Sired the need for discipline identity

With Physics, Chemistry, Geology and more

Addition of maths changed theory to Law.

 

Laws allow certainty: predict, plan, build

Inventive technology, does better lives guild

Empires, fortunes, and national supremacy

Science was by now, the height of ascendency.

 

The nineteenth century: medicine joins science

With Jenner and Pasteur, the clear early giants

Proved unseen microbes, cause decay, disease

Pasteurize, vaccinate. More success? Yes please!

 

Nineteen hundreds: molecular science, jumped to the fore

Antibiotics, DNA, genetics, pharmaceuticals galore

But the best boon to science was self-pollination

By computers, technology, wealth and automation.

 

The scientific method now firmly entrenched

A mystery to most, but whose curiosity, still unquenched

Hypothesis first, careful design, then do experiment

Variables controlled, analyse data, for conclusions, evi-dent.

 

For us the fun, the wondrous yearning, we seek to understand

The sea, the sun, the skies above, how earthquakes make new land

Our brains, physiology, science-based psychology, all old and new frontiers

The fiero we get, when we say “That’s it!” almost as good as beers.

 

With safeguards for fraud and misleading data

Discoveries get published with strict imprimatur

With result replication and peer reviews

Science is FACT, not opinion, nor fake news.

 

Frauds hijack science, exploit it for greed

With pseudoscience, quackery, it’s homeopathy you need

But placebo and nocebo, baffle science with intrigue

So what, who cares? As long as they succeed.

 

Then there’s those who seek to oppose, the basic facts of science

Big oil, tobacco, bigots religious, threatened false reliance

The hypocrites preach, they lie and impeach, yet in their daily compliance

Their transport, their phone, their food and medicine, all due to science.

 

The Achilles heel of modern science, lies in its specialist complexity

Neuroscience, nanotech, GM crops, all mystify mental dexterity

And evil types misuse the knowledge, for wars, terror, oppression

And reckless, ruthless, ignorant arseholes’, environment-poisoned obsession.

 

With cash to be made, puzzles to solve, to looming crises abate

The pace a-quickens, opportunity beckons, our “government’s” shut the gate

The question remains, should we refrain, as we seek our absolution

To keep the balance, good not bad, science: problem/solution?

 

But for all its glory and all the gory, negative achievement

By one single thing did science begin and over time ferment

History’s labeler, the solitary enabler, of all Einstein’s skiting

On this page, the tool of sage, that which we call: writing.

 

 

             Compound Interest

The magic of compound interest

Time’s stellar financial gymnast

Starts off slow, accruing potential

With ‘J’ curve growth, exponential.

 

With money, investments, it’s a great result

But otherwise a time-bomb disaster catapult

With quantity and time, things stack up

Complex, overwhelming, too big to clean up.

 

Debt’s an obvious one, principal compounds

Like greenhouse gases, CO2, CFC’s, nature expounds

And pollution: plastics, pesticides, chemicals rife

Our air, our oceans, water supply, all in strife.

 

Clean the world’s oceans? Impossible task

Ecocide’s march, nature’s growing death mask

Natural resources, metals, depleting, scarce

Opposite to mine sites, abandoned, toxic curse.

 

With eighty percent of people, living in cities sited

On estuaries, sea levels rising, problems expedited

Each decimetre rise, doubles the doubled damage

Compound interest, tramples the mitigating bandage.

 

The brain’s Beta amyloid breaks down when asleep

But screentime, workstress, insomnia’s creep

Sleep deficit, cumulative, slowly compounds

Too late, Alzheimer’s curse, incurable, confounds.

 

Each generation inherits, family emotional work not done

Adding to the problems, compounding messes, re-run

Chances, generational,hopes, dreams; trashed, sodden

Victims, mounting list, of society’s down-trodden.

 

 

                         Gimme some credit!

Credit, the great enabler, allows us in the present to do things

Paid off with interest as our unknown-known future brings

Bad luck, random acts, disasters, good times and bad

The only good debt being one, paid off, that you once HAD.

 

A modern construct, on trust in the future and growth it relies

A bank with one dollar lends ten, to hopefuls’ grateful sighs

Bankrupts, recessions, pandemic withdrawals, banks in trouble

Quantitative Easing, printed trillions, banks avoid financial rubble.

 

So the debt mounts and mounts, as rentiers claim wealth

As less capital is devoted, less productive investment by stealth

Finite reserves with wannabe consumerism by conjured credit

Things always go bust via unpaid debt, the inevitable, final, financial edit.

 

With emerging third world peoples, religion is supplanted by capitalism

Whereas with developed nations, religion is wedded to the same -ism

As our debt to nature accrues, compounds to unstoppable

It demands high human interest rates and payments improbable.

 

              Cutting ‘Zs’

We need adequate sleep, in order to keep, our brain in balanced condition

Researchers say, it’s not OK, to skimp this daily intermission

With three distinct stages, and five cycle pages, each with differing functions

Deprived of one part, the brain will start, to show a range of disjunctions.

 

Circadian melatonin, drowsiness dronin,’ to catch the nightly sleep bus

One hour timetable, if missed unable, next arrival to drift off thus

To longer stage two, to progress through, to deep sleep’s memory consolidation

‘Til ninety minutes later, emotions curator, REM stage: each cycle’s cessation.

 

A touch, a sound, something moving around, a threat, our safety to keep

All senses except smell, to the Thalamus ‘bell,’ an alarm to wake us from sleep

A weather change, something strange, too many blankets, too hot

When bed temp. tops, the twenty-nine degree stops, you wake, sleep hygiene’s sorry lot.

 

One critical upkeep, is R-E-M sleep, Rapid Eye Movement, eyes closed

At each cycle end, shallow sleep friend, where dreams weirdly composed

By subconscious brain, mental health to sustain, by resolving memory emotions

To clear the slate, for less ruminate, less stress, anxiety, worry notions.

 

But REM sleep’s price, it’s energy vice, too much exhausts the brain

Too much worry, then REM-sleep flurry, good sleep goes down the drain

Sleep deprivation, an abetting causation, of many a mental health problem

Depression, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, the cost is truly awesome.

 

Typical humans, always assumin’, trying to trump nature with

Modafinil: five days, constant gaze, no sleep, but one night on the fifth

Nil effects, on trial subjects, but like deep-dive hypoxic breath-holders, on-set

Guinness Book homage, early brain damage: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s regret?

 

Laboratory mice, REM-sleep sacrifice, die after six days deprived

Neural serotonin, likewise noradrenalin, shuts down in REM sleep, contrived

To ‘relive’ the memory, a purging reverie, to strip the visceral emotions

So memories traumatic, no more automatic, triggered panic sensations.

 

“I never dream,” the mistaken deem, but dreams are ever, only remembered

If the brain does awake, mid-metaphoric retake, or very shortly afterward

Then the next nod-off, after turn and toss, an hour, next cycle, next chance

Fragmented, vile, a vicious spiral, obesity, apnoea, acuity’s sleep round dance.

 

And like most things, cash register ka-chings, sleep’s become an industry

Onset apnoea, resulting hypercapnia, most common cause of sleep’s fragility

But research shows, (the body knows?), a life-saving protective function

With heart attack, preemptive fight back, a physiological injunction.

 

Snoring, wheezing, disrupted breathing, causes blood chemical changes

So with no breath, time for muscle death, now one hundred minute ranges

Versus one minute, much lower limit, post attack minus apnoea

Nature’s rival, preparation survival, via the disruptive insomnia?

 

With most sufferers, intermittent snufflers, apnoea caused mostly by obesity

Food intake yearn, which in turn, increases heart disease certainty

Solution confounds, spend some thousands, on CPAP sleeping machines?

Continue the sloth, or eliminate both, with exercise and eating regimes?

 

 

             The Amygdala

Genetic saviour, or culturally-redundant limbic liability?)

 

On sensory alert 24/7, quick-acting, subconscious

It ticks all the right boxes, but can be obnoxious

To protect from unaware threats coming near

The Amygdala’s response is anger or fear.

 

The fear response, to escape, run like hell

Sugars, fats, platelets and blood do legs swell

But if running’s no use, a quick switch to doppleganger

Take “d” out of danger, to fight, you need anger.

 

Primitive, subconscious, close danger to survive

The amygdala fires up fight’s, violent drive

Adrenalin’s pulse, breathing, sweating and, vaso-constriction

Paralysed pre-frontal (rational) cortex, there is no contradiction.

 

Served ancestors well, threatened wild beast attack

But today’s kids’ neglect, abuse, despair’s poverty track

Add alcohol’s shut-down pre-frontal cortex, lost reasoning skills

Domestic violence, one punch, un-restrained anger, kills.

 

Now flight or fight’s need in this modern world

Rare as rocking horse shit or arrows curled

But anger is common, its response the same

Needed or not, it’s a consequence game.

 

Neurons that fire together, wire together, habituate

Quicker rise to anger, less chance to contemplate

But awareness, historical cause, the will to pause

Can re-wire the limbic’s anti-social flaws.

 

And good reason there is, to change for the better

Cos anger harms victim, and doer, equally together

As fear and anger yield cortisol, the stress hormone

Whose feedback effects stark, are not widely known.

 

With acute fear, cortisol, the brain’s memory hijacks

All minute detail forever the amygdala stores, of attacks

Subconsciously triggered by sight, sound, smell, taste and touch

Anxiety, panic attack and PTSD, all bad feelings return, as such.

 

When anger is chronic, the fats, sugars, blood pressure stress

Mimic insulin’s bodily diabetic devil’s caress

And cortisol kills many a hippocampus brain memory cell

There’s fatty liver, heart disease, lowered sex drive as well.

 

And it destroys your telomeres, the end-unit caps

Of DNA on chromosome ends, the genetic “apps”

That facilitate cell division, immune system’s means

Of fighting infection, antigens, our natural cancer vaccines.

 

Good motives to pause, reflect reasons, for anger’s cause

Petty habit or childhood foment, to heal festering mental sores

Choose pre-frontal cortex, no limbic lament, lives down the drain

Reasoned thinking: not primitive, subconscious, crocodile brain.

 

With the onset of anger, there’s no conscious choice

The subconscious amygdala decides to give it voice

But there is a delay, for point eight of a second

Between conscious awareness and rash response beckoned.

 

The brain can think at six hundred words per second

Rational thinking time, to curb angry actions reckoned

So use your conscious will, the amygdala to over-ride

Less outcomes to regret, showing your ugly worst side.

 

       The Amygdala song

(to the tune of Funiculi Funicula)

 

VERSE 1

Last night, my mum decided I was grounded,

I lost the plot; I did my block.

Shouted, pouted, then I even swore,

Ranted, blamed and even kicked the door,

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

When I spit the dummy it is my amygdala.

 

VERSE 2

Just now, my teacher said to leave the classroom,

“Don’t act the fool; you’re just not cool.”

Argued loudly then I was quite rude,

Said “You’re brain is just a molecule!”

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

When I blow a fuse it’s ‘cos of my amygdala.

 

VERSE 3

And now, my life is feeling that it’s over,

I slapped her face; I trashed the place.

Punched her, kicked her, yelled and screamed abuse,

As a man I’m just a poor excuse,

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

Now she’s gone I know it’s ‘cos of my amygdala.

 

VERSE 4

But now, I’ve learned to take control of my life,

It’s really cool, more love less strife.

Use my frontal cortex just in time,

It takes over now I know it’s mine,

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

I’m no fool that’s ‘cos I rule my dumb amygdala.

 

GIRLS’ TURN

VERSE 1

One day, my friends decided to make fun of me

They first ignored me, and then they shunned me

I got angry, ‘cos they wouldn’t stop

When they laughed I really lost the plot

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

Now it’s worse, I’m double cursed, for my amygdala.

 

VERSE 2

Last week, my boyfriend said that he was dumping me

I was upset, he was my pet

Cried and shouted, “You are just a tool!”

Yelled at teachers, when I was at school

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

Now I feel a fool because of my amygdala.

 

VERSE 3

One night, this guy I liked set out to use me

He said he liked me, but he just lied

When he dumped me after you know what

I was seething, ’til I thought ‘Guess what?’

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

He’s a jerk, I’m pleased to shirk, like my amygdala.

 

VERSE 4

And then, some trolls on Facebook really trashed me

Upset my mojo, their plan to see

I ignored it ‘cos it wasn’t true

Can’t control me, make me feel all blue

Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, amygdalaaaaa…

Now I’m cool that’s ‘cos I rule my dumb amygdala.

 

                         Happiness

“Money can’t buy you happiness, son”

To a boy whose life has just begun

So what to do, on life’s fraught journey

To win the joust, of the joyous tourney?

 

First there’s this brain state’s known location

The LEFT pre-frontal cortex’s mid-gyrus station

Fires up in response, to perceived sensation

Flicks sad RIGHT’s gloom, to the LEFT’s elation.

 

For good brain chemicals, there’s WONDER and AWE

An achievement, nature, something you saw

And AMUSEMENT, nothing so healthy, as a laugh or smile

Or RELIEF, impending doom, elapsed for a while.

 

There’s also EXCITEMENT/NOVELTY and FIERO too

Passing a challenge, winning, a delight for you

CALM PEACEFULNESS, no worries, all needs met

And SENSORY PLEASURES, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch? You bet.

 

But there’s more to the story, in our genes we’re blessed

With NEEDS in-built, to challenge life’s test

SECURITY, safe, stable home, work and rest

INTIMACY, to share thoughts, problems, is best.

 

And the need to GIVE and RECEIVE attention

AUTONOMY, CONTROL over life, not detention

A feeling of CONNECTION to a wider COMMUNITY

MEANING, PURPOSE (goals), SELF-ESTEEM, not impunity.

 

But our genes equip us, with TOOLS and RESOURCES

To help us resist sad, negative forces

CURIOSITY, MEMORY, the ability to FORGET

The means to FOCUS, PROBLEM-SOLVE, and yet,

 

IMAGINE, know METAPHORS, EMPATHISE and CONNECT

Be RESILIENT, SELF-AWARE (react to, how others, I affect)

And to integrate all this, on a routine basis

Both RATIONAL and EMOTIONAL brain in stasis.

 

Happiness is contagious, misery: own company

Don’t measure success, by possessions or money

But experience of purpose, consequence for others

Make friends, hobbies, helping others, your chosen druthers.

 

Consciousness dwells most, in the present, reality

Ruminations, daydreaming, shift to past/future apogee

Regrets, anxious living, for possible future happiness

What can’t be changed, assured: likely means sadness.

 

Happy people think, least of the past

Or made sense and peace, with it, at last

An unhappy one’s captive, of events inflicted

Yet to learn, their choice not constricted.

 

But don’t expect happiness all day, every day

Misfortune, disappoinment, life’s helpful stray

Some sadness brings attentive, accurate cognition

Resilience, decisions, in a difficult position.

 

So use your resources, to get your needs met

It’s people you need, not wealth, the first step

Just look in the mirror, and crack a big smile

As simple as that, to light yer LEFT dial.

 

                           WTF?

What are the origins, of polite norms of society?

Unwritten rules, the difference, drunk or sobriety?

Words frowned upon, forbidden, there to dare

What age gives licence, permission to swear?

 

One way or another, we learn these words early

Parroted by little kids, makes most parents surly

“You mustn’t say that word, it’s not nice, not polite”

“Especially in public, at Kindy, not right.”

 

All cultures have baby talk: stretched vowels and switched consonants

But swearing’s hoovered up knowingly, with innate cognizance

“Are your widdle tootsies warm?” (It helps language learning x-fold)

“Don’t know what tootsies are Grandma, but my feet are fuckin’ cold!”

 

Adult hypocrites, we selectively swear post kindergartner

According to company: friends, colleagues, public, partner

“Well I’ll be fucked,” surprised revelation. “What the fuck?” bewilderment.

And “the-fuck yeah,” or, “absofuckinglutely!” show strong agreement.

 

Noun, verb, adverb, adjectival phrase, even an infix

The ‘F’ word does it all (and you thought it was just about dicks)

But there’s more; it can even clearly convey intent

With tonal emoji, “Fuck you!” you know precisely what’s meant.

 

So with grammatical use instructing meaning, tone and feeling

And emotional context: “Fuck off!” (anger), “Wanna fuck?” (appealing)

“Fuck!” (excitement), “How the fuck?” (awe), “It’s fucked…” (despondency)

The other variable is communicatory perception and thus respondency.

 

So as young kids know intuitively, swear words convey emotion better

Vents anger, less violence, lowers stress, a morale boost abettor

Builds camaraderie, promotes resolve (“Fuck ’em!”) in tough situations, abrasive

Raises pain threshold (Fuuuuuck!), and for supporters, not skeptics, is fucking persuasive.

 

 

                           Addiction

Addiction, a human affliction, many a life it’s destroyed

Gambling, food aplenty, drugs times twenty, etcetera to avoid

Scourge of mankind, so ill-defined, intelligent design’s rebuttal

We’re now on the cusp, this curse to bust, knowledge the means to scuttle.

 

Our brains evolved, a method to hold, our attention, drive to succeed

A neurotransmitter, receptor heavy-hitter, dopamine creates the need

A conscious craving, obligate behaving, to repeat the feel-good state

Impossible to ignore, neural candy store, demanding, it will not wait.

 

All addictions, without exceptions, stimulate the mesolimbic pathway

The trouble is, the ancients’ fizz, was healthy relationship interplay

Small groups, social, families parochial, supportive, dependent for survival

But substance discoveries, neglect “recoveries,” brought forth destructive rivals.

 

In human infancy, snug safe transparency, relationship reward comes easy

But relationships threatening, neglectful deadening, relationships seen as sleazy

No dopamine hit, brain still craving it, any substitute will do

Pathway repeated, resistance depleted, reward, pleasure overtakes you.

 

So any activity, sex, gaming, exercise, hoarding, repeatedly getting in the way

Of normal life, causing strife, to self, family, others each day

Is an addiction, dopamine’s conviction, trumps all life-giving actions

But activity repeated, the “hit” retreated, compulsion: do more, our reactions.

 

Today’s most common addiction, naive dereliction, young and old alike

Digital cocaine, for a developing brain, info-tech profit, the new third reich

Emotive dictator consuming, dopamine procuring, younger and younger kids hooked

Just as destructive, as drugs seductive, countless kids’ futures cooked.

 

Parents unaware, schools conned by scare, computers, smartphones a must

‘Essential’ for learning, ‘safe’ baby sitter turning, trusted pursuit to lust

Hyperstimulating screen images, brain-wiring interference is, permanent and certain

No bedroom internet unknowns, no kids given smartphones, or with trouble you’ll be flirtin’.

 

Social disconnection: Cingulate’s pain resurrection, and Limbic’s stress response

Increases the chance, no healthy resonance, but unhealthy addiction’s ensconce

No human rich experience, no empathetic coherence, feelings or emotions

Just obsessive compulsion, self-revulsion, tunnel-visioned devotions.

 

With substance abuse, a difficult deuce, the primary euphoric mind-state

Then feel-good dopamine, just like morphine, the addiction to consolidate

To both overcome, impossible for some, with no help nor intervention

Some don’t make it, others fake it, abstinence the best prevention.

 

Lab rats on morphine, and cocaine seen, a better choice than food

Wretched addicts, dopamine pragmatics, death by starvation servitude

But if transplanted, social life granted, a cage with normal friends’ interaction

Drugs ignored, life explored, adiction gone like magic, no attraction.

 

Nicotine THE most addictive, ICE the most destructive? All equally seductive

Science tells us, urgence compels us, our plastic brain’s re-constructive

Damaged social connection? You can heal them, and neglected neural pathways?

You can grow them, dopamine’s brainstem, relationships heal, all ways.

 

Neurons that fire together, wire together, those that don’t, fade away

Isolation-stressed body and brain, rejection’s reign, adrenalin’s flight or fight prey

But healthy relationships’ neuro-chemical scripts, serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine, norepinephrin

Repeated doses, positive diagnosis, people addiction’s Siamese twin!

 

 

             DV: Nature or Nurture?

Covertly dishonest, manipulative, isolating, belittling

Controlling, emotionally abusive, violent, beguiling

Intimate partner abuse, or domestic violence: deliberate? inevitable?

Degrading, debilitating. Terminal? Inexcusable? Explainable?

 

Evidence shows, common traits of these monsters:

Narcissist, psychopath, violent, jealous controllers

All mutually exclusive, traits on their own

Variously combined though, an evil clone.

 

Infant parenting, toxic, or lack thereof

Abnormal brain-wiring/habituation, unseen result of

’til adult relationships, symptoms appear

Charismatic one day, then predator to fear.

 

Two sub-groups identified, ‘vipers’ and ‘pit bulls’

When hurting partners, vipers calm, heart-rate lulls

While pit bulls are angry, stressed, pulse-rate hot

Vipers psychopathic, pit bulls not?

 

Controllers created by emotionally-distant, non-attentive parents

Triggering brain changes: adult insecure attachment adherents

Variant ‘A’ monoamine oxidase mutant gene switched on

By toxic family environment: aggressive, violent brain to set upon.

 

Cuddle, nurture, teach sorry to activate empathy template

Narrow window before age three, otherwise psychopathic fate

Spoil, smother, reward temper tantrums by giving in, not saying “No!”

Centre of attention, emotionally desert him, narcissist the way to go.

 

In addition, nuanced overlays fill out the sorry picture

Experience, family, role models, and culture’s stricture

Sexism, lack of respect, conformity, and religious tradition

Inequality, acceptance, norms of society conditioned.

 

So combine two or more of these damaged traits

A monster in waiting, unknowing partners’ future fates

Advice to women: learn, look for these traits’ signs, symptoms

Upbringing history, trust gut feelings, exit early, avoid being victims.

 

                               Cancer

Word or sentence? Supportive suggestion when diagnosis made

Cautious optimism, born of cure-rate and progress displayed

By surgery, immune stimulus, chemotheraphy and diet

But high expection, promise not met, raising hope’s disquiet.

 

People have long organised as social groups reacting to environments

Sensing both threat and opportunity, storing knowledge, for future events

Specialised in tasks, sharing, communicating, making decisions for common good

With genetic variations, lurking, to survive new changes, arise, as they could.

 

Imagine the awe, when researchers saw, the same characteristics held

By cancer cells, tumours NOT monoclonal, but sameness now dispelled

Multicellular complexity, in ‘dumb’ cellular clumps, while

Seeming nefarious, same survival tactics, and smart human guile.

 

Tumours are multiclonal, with differentiation of tasks

Actions programmed, reactive, proactive, not random asks

Like humans they choose, to live in locations, organ Bethlehem

Cause genetic changes, and helping behaviours in other cells around them.

 

And Fusobacteria, cancers also cunningly recruit

On their surface, their own protective flack-jacket suit

Whose enzymes break down, Chemotheraphy drugs

On metastasis, with them go these antibiotic-prone thugs.

 

Tumour cells are epithelial, they proliferate, stay put

Receptors ‘sniff’ the blood, detect threats, trigger survival output

They also morph into mesenchymal cells, and in the process transition

Via hybrid-like stem cells which can evade, reprogram drug rejection.

 

Chemotherapy no match for newly resistant cells

Some mesenchymals leave, as the tumour re-swells

Via lymph and blood, hitch to other tissues which endear

Then send back signals, “It’s good too, over here.”

 

So the cancer metastasises, spreads, like humans do

To form new outposts, new resources, opportunities to view

But their cunning will be, their timed ultimate demise

New knowledge to trick them, lull them, then fatal surprise.

 

Meanwhile there’s diet, gut bacteria, our microbiome

Antioxidants, the right microbes in their colonic home

They tweak if present, our immune system to a prime

To detect/destroy new cancers at formation time…

 

            Moonwalking luck

It took nine years, to put a man on the moon

Primitive technology, happened too soon?

The unknown unknowns, the amount of luck

The unaware participants, plenty of pluck.

 

Aldrin, suiting up, before going aboard

Pocketed a pen, no reason, accord

Unlike the planning for the return

Bounce off the atmosphere, or just burn?

 

Within two degrees to get it right

Next thing the splashdown, within sight

Which patch of ocean? The weather calm?

Retrieve the men, unknown health, no harm?

 

Manual flying, missed planned landing site

One minute’s fuel left, further on, got it right

The rest is history, watched on TV

Seeming ease, but lucky as can be.

 

Back in the Lander, pre-liftoff prep done

One hour’s air left, countdown begun

Pre-mission test-fires of Lander’s rockets failed

Four of six trials, bad odds prevailed.

 

Then horror, revealed, ignition switch smashed

A careless knee-bump, survival hopes dashed

Then an ‘Aha’ moment, ‘The pen, in my suit!’

Jammed in hole’s contacts, gave rockets’ needed boot.

 

And findings years later, the Moon’s secret renown

At the time of the landing, the Sun horizon down

When ‘up,’ direct sunlight, causes massive static charge

The dust stuck to Lander, becomes a lead barge.

 

‘NASA’ meteorologist, former NSA employee

Unsure of forecast for planned recovery

Used secret access to spies’ weather data

Horror! Storms, wild seas, their schemata.

 

He pleaded, cajouled, no source to reveal

They relented, ‘better’ judgement repeal

Splashed down, calm and clear, his new site

Other: wild storms, death trap, he was right.

 

 

         The holy grail of particle physics

Protons, electrons, gives atomic matter charge

Neutrons add mass as atoms, elements enlarge

Atomic Number, protons, determines elements

Electrons: behaviour, like human dependence.

 

Electrons pair up, opposite spin, in energy levels (orbitals)

With outer-most orbitals full, secure, stable

But elements with un-filled, craving security

They lose, gain or share electrons, the basis of chemistry.

 

Loss, gain or sharing allows elements to combine

From security comes compounds, thus life to shine

But noble gas elements with filled outer-most levels

Are inert, un-reactive, snobby secure ‘devils.’

 

The primary atomic building blocks: protons et al

Are all composed, of lesser particles as well

There’s a mesons, leptons, muons cartel

With quarks, gluons and bosons they dwell.

 

In nuclear reactions, elements fuse and combine

In fission, they decay, a staged half-life line

Particles and radiant energy issued forth

Matter to energy, life-giving/destroying force.

 

Now atomic mass attracts, gravity’s the game

Solar orbits, galaxies, behave predictably the same

But calculations show, atomic matter’s only part

The hunt’s on, for invisible, dark matter’s heart.

 

But I’ve cracked it, the answer, all on my own

Their abundance, ubiquity, especially home-grown

Not protons or neutrons, but a lack of neurons

Dark matter, dark energy, is a mass of morons!

 

 

 

                               The first two

Humans are born with, a hundred billion brain cells

But very few “wired,” joined, except in limbic dwells

Implicit memory: subconscious, permanent, but no sense in time, place

Strong emphasis on feelings, in future arise, emotions retrace.

 

Implicit memory: primitive, non-verbal, aimed at survival, succor

Tracks attention, sounds, touch, faces: angry, sad, happy, vacant, pucker

It’s all we’ve got ‘til after age two

Your experience ‘til then, life-long affects you.

 

Then explicit memory: hippocampus, cortex, short or long-term

Recalled at will, verbal, with time, place, circumstance affirm

Compared to implicit: subconsciously triggered, no notion

Old feelings, sweaty palms, no context, confusion, unexplained conscious commotion.

 

Genetically primed to expect consistent attention

That’s safe, secure, soothing, reassuring prevention

Of anxiety, stress, disruption, discomfort and hunger

All which change brains for life, when two years or younger.

 

His Fourteenth Century castle, Frederick the Great ordered

Which language developed? Soundless room, all babies hoarded

Fed, changed, no nurture, no lullaby, put back in their cot

None thrived, every one died, their first birthday reached, not!

 

Some of us are born with, genetic variations, which

Means a lesser experience triggers/cancels, a genetic switch

Or causes epigenetic changes, that predispose problems

That can even be passed on, to kids’ kids: natures gems.

 

Babies are born masters, reading minutiae facial expression

Smile, they smile right back, to maintain your obsession

In order to bond, form attachments secure

With primary care-givers, Mum, Dad, siblings for sure.

 

But cortisol from stress, due to angry face, noise, abuse

Cause anxious brain changes, insecure attachment induce

That as an adult, creates relationship problems you see

Controlling, bullying, common cause of tragic DV.

 

Adults use explicit memory, to reason, plan, act

Semantic (facts), episodic (when), procedural (how), make sense, allow tact

But subconscious implicits, permanent, old, will confuse, abstract

As relived old feelings, out of place, re-enact, actions cracked.

 

Our brains are born with all sorts of template

With window in time, at which experience must activate

But with no experience, life’s opportunity lost

Apoptosis, cell suicide of templates, by two years: compost.

 

Or genetic requirements, expectations thwarted

Normal neural development then distorted

Unemotional, distant, neglectful parenting

Or well-meaning but ignorant, robotic, just as damaging.

 

Fall of the Soviet bloc revealed thousands of little orphans

Nurture blunted, development stunted, hidden neural distortions

Adopted by desparate childless parents in the west

Adolescence revealed an unempathetic, willlful guest.

 

So up to age one, pre-language, smother with love, attention

Then cortisol, with mild rebuke, correct behaviour mention

To develop, fine-tune, the appropriate sense of shame

Else adult: social avoidance or arrogant narcissistic blame.

 

No nurture, lost empathy template? Psychopath for life

No taste of vegies, umami by two? Avoidance rife

Use it or lose it seems harsh at age two

But ultimately rests, as a parent, with you.

 

                         Normal faces?

Bowed, bent, straight or angley

Thin, fat, drooped or dangley

Two-toned, fake, implant wangley

Ant-eater or helmet: had the snip?

Long or short, prone to drip?

Penis variety is not an issue.

But labia are, all the same, right?

Hairless cleft, puckered tight

Labia minora out of sight

Any deviation must be abnormal

Porn shots normalize the supernormal.

Needless surgery real men don’t wish you…

 

 

                     Are corals worth morals?

At first glance, it came straight at my eyes

A bold manoeuvre,considering its size

Cricket-ball flair of erected fins, contrasting colour

No lion fish bravado, my dive would be duller.

 

Coral reefs’ amazing intrigue, each unique in some way

Big is bold, brash, bountiful, but bordering on boring eh?

With eye for detail, persistent search, the small, the quirky reveal

Diversity, niches, relationships, symbionts, colouring so surreal.

 

Complex communities based on complex needs

Warm saltwater, eighteen to thirty degrees nil exceeds

Else zooxanthellae, micro-algae that colour, make food

Are ejected by the polyp, toxic, outta here dude!

 

Photosynthesis that makes all plants’ raw material: glucose

Uses Carbon and Oxygen from CO2’s inflows

While Hydrogen is split from water using light energy

Then the dark reaction makes glucose, perfect synergy.

 

But at thirty degrees, the dark reaction stops

The light reaction continues, excess Oxygen the polyp cops

Higher O2 from the algae is destructive, toxic

Ejection leaves the polyp bleached white, starving, but hypoxic.

 

Bleaching aside, corals need shallow, clear water

No light, no photosynthesis, no residential quarter

but seaweeds are macro-algae who compete for space

So fertilizer speeds seaweed growth all over the place.

 

Farm run-off, sewage nutrients, seaweeds smother corals

Over-fishing, less herbivores, more seaweeds, lost morals

The long ‘grass’ hides borers, their tunnels weaken structure

So waves smash corals that otherwise resist rupture.

 

Reef-building hard corals’ skeletons are calcareous

Relying on pH 8.2, otherwise skeletal future precarious

As CO2 dissolves in oceans to form carbonic acid

pH is dropping, corals weakening, dire predictions valid.

 

All shellfish, many O2- producing plankton share the same fate

Will humans wake up, care, act, before it’s too late?

A world of dead oceans means extinction on land

Priority of strategies, how will you lend a hand?

 

                  Youth

“I don’t know… these young people today

Not like it was, seen, not heard, back in my day.”

But is it fair, to generalise, criticise and compare

When life’s so complex, opportune, but trouble’s everywhere?

 

Western youth now know so much more

With internet access to knowledge galore

Their depth and reasoning skills now so sophisticated

The best of them make adults, look smartly constipated.

 

But a growing proportion, though born with potential

Lack nurture, get neural subversion, a life at best marginal

With emotions the primary driver of all human behaviour

Upset, angry kids, no aspirations, education’s not seen, as, any saviour.

 

Abuse, neglect, toxic parenting’s effects, on developing brains

Together with genes triggered, by above, potential fast wanes

Add elites’ obsession to maintain position, to widen inequality

With foot on heads, they gleefully raise, the ladder of opportunity.

 

Thirty percent of white-born males, have “faulty,” mutant, variant “A” gene

For monoamine oxidase enzyme, a problem, it would seem, not at all seen

‘Cept kids in DV, poverty, aggro, it switches on, by eight, now aggressive, violent

Expelled from school, violent crime, jail, marking time, angry, not silent.

 

But there are interventions: neuroscience, awareness, counselling

Not useless chaplains, behaviour plans, educrats meddling

“Experts:” idiots with brains, who can’t/don’t/never did teach

But impose failed US/UK crap, at hapless teachers, they dictate and preach.

 

Same for girls born, with “R” variant Serotonin Transporter gene

Unlucky with a cold, distant mother, untreated PN Depression’s silent scream?

Childhood Anxiety Disorder, results from this trigger

Adult transition, full-blown depression, the problems get bigger.

 

But again, awareness, caring, simple counselling in early school years

The plastic brain, fixed problem and more, gloom quickly clears

With these girls now more resilient, to, life’s unfair score

Than their peers not born, with this cruel, DNA “flaw.”

 

And there’s poor nutrition: a full belly satiates hunger

But not genetic need: our gut’s bacterial umber

Junk diet-reduced flora: anxiety, immunity, vagus nerve feedback

To young brain’s cingulate cortex: depression’s internal claque.

 

Then there’s Autism, ADHD, disorders unexplained

But evidential overuse, antibiotics (other drugs?) on gut microbes sustained

Killing the good ones, Clostridiums flourish, neurotoxins deliver

Developing brains, killed neurons, it only takes a sliver.

 

And screentime alters brain wiring in kids under two

With rapid, repeated visual change, not normal infant view

Learning problems obvious by age eight, and indoors close vision

Grows myopic eyeballs, glasses for life? Your parental decision.

 

And paedophiles aren’t born, they’re created by adults

By sex abuse, extreme violence witnessed, scary DV occults

Then puberty, Limbic memory rewires, the brain’s sex orientation

To those whose age matches, their last-known safe, secure, tragic life oration.

 

So many of these horrors, now generation-perpetuating

Obscene money to wealthy, elitist schools educating

Un-needy pampereds, lavished funds in direct proportion

To huge cost of judiciary, jails, crime victim’s GDP portion.

 

It’s one thing to get, kids to attend school

But learning’s last priority, when things are not cool

Dark emotions are the reason why kids disengage

From learning and school, when they’re full of that rage.

 

If it’s “I’m alright Jack,” and you have no sympathy

Then think selfish reasons, to chuck your antipathy

Cos one dollar spent, on early school interventions

Saves sixteen bucks at teenage, now minus those intentions.

 

                                Religion

His daily habit, Father Murphy, walked around his patch

Saw little Mary, at her stall: ‘Catholic kittens for sale, new batch’

With contented smile,”Bless you child,” he went upon his way

‘Til some days later, same path he trod, to his dark dismay

‘Atheist kittens’ now for sale, to Mary, he nervously said

“But surely child, these are the same kittens, or do I be misled?”

“Yes they are, but now their eyes be open,” panicked him instead.

 

To some, religion, is a joke, to others deadly serious

Those whose life is quite defined and ready to be querulous

To judge and preach, with solemn beseech, to piously impose

Their rigid mindset, concrete views on those they see as foes

With smug delusion, zealous collusion, new converts they propose.

 

The home-birth of sexism, inequality, near everywhere you look

It’s all about fear, money, and power, over women’s brook

And our god’s better than your god, he is the one and only

Breeds hate, oppression, war, terrorism; everything “unholy”

And yet they claim, done in the name, of saviour of poor and lonely.

 

So what’s the go with the human brain, that it is so easily tricked?

For unquestioning faith, enduring passion, but facts ignored, cherry-picked?

It is my proposal, our genetic disposal, to succumb to relationship deficit

Resulting from lack of essential, social, intimate, human interactions, it’s

The gatherings, norms, worship that the brain engages, foresakes, to befit.

 

Mammals, humans, evolved the Smart Vagus, to read safe, secure friends

In interdependent, social groups, versus anxiety, stress, upon which also depends

The dorsal anterior Cingulate Cortex, noting social acceptance or exclusion

And the Insula’s mirror system, reading feelings, and expressed confusion

Then dopamine’s ultimate, feel-good hit, all the above, plied by religion.

 

And while this outwardly’s no bad thing, for, lives otherwise lacking

Eg. In days of slavery, and today with some moral good, helping, positive tracking

There are many more expedient, expendable indoctrinates and hypocrites

Groomed, promoted, sent forth to influence, subjugate, impose, kill, in order to fit

Religious interpretation, promulgations, designed to permit, its sanctimonious remit.

 

So some devotees are decent, caring, live life, by the ‘commandments’

Many, hypocrites, pretend, delude with self-pronouncements

Some dismiss, explain everything, as God’s will and plan

Many condone evil, dishonesty, a means to an end began

‘God spoke to me, gave a sign,’ that makes me a very wise man.

 

Women submit to lives, men’s convenience, slave-like, second rate

Forced or indoctrinated, by scriptures well past their use-by date

Culture and violence, genital mutilation, women’s fate remains dour

Men form cults and religions, to amass wealth, control and power

Good versus evil, greed versus sharing, the balance worsens by the hour.

 

                 To be, or not to be… Gay!

Too hip for the straights, too straight for the hips

Arbitrary choice, or cultural eclipse

So given a choice, who’d choose to be gay?

A lifetime: prejudice, hatred, discrimination, never passe.

 

Some babies, machihembras: ‘First woman, then a man’

Dominican Republic, boys with vagina, surely not God’s plan?

A genetic flaw, enzyme missing, but puberty rights the wrong

A penis grows, manhood flows, like ‘she’ was a boy, all along.

 

Families thus blessed, are considered lucky

The boy raised a girl, not seen as yucky

Highly revered, soclally accepted

Opposite for gays, most countries, rejected.

 

At six weeks gestation, a rice-grain embryo

We all are females, human default bestow

But testosterone gene, on Y-chromosome

Begins production, of male gender syndrome.

 

If testosterone reaches a critical level

Change begins: ovaries to testes, more testosterone bedevil

Clitoris to penis, labia to scrotum

A boy to be born, symbolic totem.

 

At eight weeks gestation, testosterone again

Level critical, begins changes to the brain

Most notable, at puberty, sex orientates to females

Hetero norms, and behaviour, thus prevails.

 

If at eight weeks, testosterone tanks

The default female brain fills the ranks

So at puberty, attraction to males

Ignorant homophobes mouth their tales.

 

The reasons known, for testosterone deficit

Alcohol, stress, some medications, definite

And mum’s antibodies, placenta leakage, from previous-born brothers

No choice, brain-wiring set, despite later druthers.

 

And as if to prove, gestation’s importance

Testosterone leaves a lifetime circumstance

The relative lengths, of ring to index fingers

High: ring longer, lower: ring lingers.

 

And if high in early years, it has been

It suppresses your natural, hair colour gene

No pigment, no colour, then blonde it is

Till levels drop off, real colour to squiz.

 

With girls, oestrogen out-guns, male hormone

So post thirty, true blondes, no longer known

From a bottle, thus bleached, to impress

But I must admit now, I do digress.

 

At eight weeks gestation, with testosterone high

Adrenal hyperplasia, the common reason why

The default female brain, rewires as male

Attraction to girls, lesbian, at puberty, looks female.

 

Some evidence suggests, proteins influence fate

From genes on chromosomes X and eight

Epigenetic change or inherited alleles?

Known environmentals ‘oil predisposed wheels?’

 

So, to be, or not to be, irrelevant question

Four hundred species, gay, nature’s discretion

Cultural decision, brainwashed to hate

Why not left-handers, same choice, to tolerate?

 

More is less… more or less…

“But dahling, you see, it’s permeate free.”

“More for our money, better for us honey!”

Advertising implied, but the facts denied

Marketing con, milk’s beauty salon.

 

Taste, looks, pasteurised, reduced-cream, homogenised

Little difference, your choice based on preference

But permeate free, no choice, while OK in tea

Won’t froth for cappuccino, hit n miss like Keno.

 

Permeate contains, the vitamins, minerals, antibody strains

All health-giving factors, ‘sold’ as milk’s detractors

‘Permeate free’ implies organic, filtered, poison free

It’s sold, more profit, watered-down milk: better, false posit.

 

               Wannabes

Privileged prats with their boater hats

Their cricket bats, monogrammed spats

Superior airs, secure smug heirs

Gilded stairs, to educational wares.

 

Future superannuated, ‘talent’ patented

Like ‘gifted/talented’, insecurities multifaceted

They sing their school song long after they’ve gone

Hold each others’ dicks, to keep the faith strong.

 

They talk themselves up, like the rugby cup

They fuck things up, rich Daddy covers up

But state school grads, to society value adds

While elitist school cads, just think they’re better rads.

 

Best claim to fame, drop the old school name

Their marital aim, pretentious wife, thinking same

Detractors cop frenzy, “It’s class war envy!”

Pollie puppet heavy: “Cut leaners’ levy!”

 

Too many wannabes, unfairly seize

By connections or sleaze, positions, power, ‘expertise’

Not by merit, legalese, perpetuate system squeeze

To deny entry keys, to despised ‘social disease.’

 

And the countless kids, whose poverty forbids

A future, not on the skids, while the rich club rids

A school funding chance, the means to advance

Political gaze askance, no will to enhance.

 

The cost to GDP: wads, these second-rate plods

To women, misogynist sods, judges, banks play gods

While egos, fidelities roam, promotion by genome

The same syndrome, caused the fall of Rome.

 

The law of four effs

What have we got, in our human lot, that makes all the obvious difference

Between tigers or goats, dolphins and stoats, and us in our assured preference

The same primitive brain, no evolutionary gain, except our pre-frontal cortex

Rational thinking, complex tasks shrinking, despite a variable context.

But minus this cortex, regardless the pretext, a la hapless Phineas Gage

Or alcohol’s rage, amphetamine’s cage, the loss of intelligent engage

Reduces us all, mammals large and small, to nature’s law of four effs

Fear it, fight it, feast on it, or fuck it? Our subconscious, primitive, behavioural clefs.

 

Indigenous fate

Eenie, meanie , minie, mo

Catch a racist by the toe

If it squeals, let it know

‘Call out’ the racist so-and-so.

 

The maligned, reviled Aussie Aboriginal

The fair-dinkum, all-round, real original

The oldest, continuous, Earthly culture

Inventor of, the make-shift gunya.

 

And the boomerang, rhythmical didgeridoo

Bark paintings, ochre rock art, petroglyphs in situ

But their best achievements chronologically

So many firsts, even pedagogically.

 

Lessons learnt, taught by ritual

Totems, clans, overt, not virtual

Genetic strength un-weakened by marriage

While the elites of Europe, no in-bred disparage.

 

Tourists marvel, flock, to cave art, Dordogne

Oz rock art, pre-forty K years, record fordone

By diversity, sophistication, and technique

The earliest by far, and still proudly unique.

 

The first to farm, harvest grain grass seeds

Grind flour, bake biscuits, bread for their needs

Build towns in places whites deemed useless

Happy, thriving, permanent, no ecocide stress.

 

The earliest people living, south, so far

Tierra del Fuego settled, forty K years, later memoir

The frozen Oz ice-shelf, only one thousand Ks distant

They saw off the last ice age, cold clime resistant.

 

Their knowledge, adaptability, to enormous change

Through rainforests to ice-age to desert, the continent’s estrange

Living with, not destroying, nature’s interplay

Respect, not malice, the Aboriginal way.

 

But not so white men who invaded, dispossessed

And missionaries, their culture, they coldly suppressed

Massacres, poisoned waterholes, flour, stolen kids

Yet no retribution, terrorism, nor freedom bids.

 

Documented cases in western New South Wales

Landed gentry, on Sunday to church, sing the Lord’s tales

Then raids on tribes, men killed, women raped by a toff

Babies buried neck-deep, whence their heads kicked off.

 

Despite the survivors being herded off country

To reserves judged useless by white effrontery

For free labour, stockmen, servants and concubines

The beginning of the end, of dialects, songlines.

 

No Google, no books, these songlines oral, learned

Each knew four hundred plants, survival thus earned

History, culture, tradition and knowhow passed on

Allowed a fifteen-hour working week, liesure, culture rubicon.

 

The anguish, the turmoil, caused by loss of identity

Survivors, descendents’, chronic despair propensity

White placenames: Massacre Inlet, Black Gin Creek, Slaughterhouse Gully

Reminders, boasting? Insult’s ongoing sully.

 

With statues, monuments to white pioneers defended

Despite their known deeds of genocide rendered

While Indigenous memorials to massacres vandalized

Continued racist trashing, of any hopes realized.

 

Sacked en mass when obliged to pay wages

Unemployment, lost status, alcohol’s rages

Welfare, porn, domestic violence: generalised and media hyped

Do you a good turn before bad, all I’ve met, not the stereotyped.

 

But bad men, evil men, and neglectful women there are

Kids the victims, the next generation’s copied repertoire

So the decent folks, whose reputation is similarly unfairly trashed

Need to take control, break the cycle, banish, rehabilitate, unabashed.

 

Post invasion history is littered, with great deeds little-known

Of search and rescue, nurtured survival, kindness shown

To whites in distress, like the crashed German aviators

When Kalumburu men, in two days ran two-thirty Ks, despite cruel curators.

 

And Joh, Queensland ‘Premier,’ for mining crony mates

Destroyed houses, ran communities off country, sealed their fates

Then decreed AIDS, let to spread, undetected, untreated

Would kill off communities, their future defeated!

 

Albert Namatjira, made a fortune from his artwork

Can’t tax animals, so government saw it as a lurk

Disgusting pricks made him an Aussie citizen

So they could tax him, but ignored the other denizens.

 

But tribal past, no noble savage, grotesquely patriarchal

Girls unborn, promised to multi-wived old men, archival

Two men in dispute over the same woman, though absolved

Both her thighs speared, problem solved.

 

Urban youth crime, disaffection, self-destruction, despair

No worse than whites, abused , neglected, beyond repair?

But the penal system’s disproportionate incarceration

Makes Australia, Aussies, the bigoted shame nation.

 

Then there’s the ‘Aboriginal industry’s’ white blood suckers

White aspirational junk retail, church shops, sly grog truckers

At any remote community, visit the shop and the dump

Transient, un-needed, low quality, pricey, sold to the naive chump.

 

And the shonky builders of brand new homes

Hot water system, shower, sink, inside walls, no plumbing roams

My blood boils at the over-worked, diligent remote nurses

V useless Landcruiser gubinmint fatcats, black and white, line their own purses.

 

There are green shoots, of hope, pride and enterprise

Those with vision, those who care, the women, young, old and wise

The clear-faced, spirited, innocent kids

An educated, plausible, deserved future, one the racist forbids.

 

Done in by dinosaurs

In a universe, thirteen-plus billion, patient years of age

Our fragile, unique Earth, four-point-six billion years on stage

Gravitationally floats through empty space

A quiet speck of galaxially-improbable grace.

 

Fossil records show, nine tenths of all species

On Earth have extincted, now decomposed pieces

In five major, separate, episodes of anihilation

Resultant dead bodies, animals, plants, now oil, coal seamation.

 

Last episode, sixty-five million years previous

Saw dinosaurs, countless other species, leave us

The cause of these destructive global cataclysms?

A warmed planet, climate change, not biblical “decisions.”

 

Evidence shows these catastrophes, by chance precipitated

By eruptions of lava, or with dinosaurs, a meteorite conflated

Conflagration of coal ignited, or limestone decomposed

Massive yields of CO2, then atmospherically exposed.

 

Dissolved CO2, causes carbonic, acidified oceans

A warm anoxic soup, whose anaerobes yield gaseous, toxic potions

That poison the air, to plant, animal despair, extinction’s imminent mass

Now fuel, energy guzzled, by voracious, human, urban morass.

 

But it’s the all-consuming, dollar-obsessed, plague human presence

Fossil fuels, cement, melting clathrates, nitrogen-cycle malfeasance

That the palaeobiological, geochemical, atmospheric, climate-history evidence

Shows with certainty, with runaway climate change, there is no other chance.

 

The already-changed, meandering, lingering, northern, Polar Jetstream

With unusual blizzards, storms, floods, heat and droughts, all-new extreme

Southern shift of climate equator, Atlantic Conveyor Current one-third slowing

Record Polar ice-sheet melt, shows unequivocally (inexorably?) where we are going.

 

Its fusion fuel, our Sun will eventually consume

An engulfing, swollen Red Giant, planet Earth it will subsume

Last life on Earth in two billion years, bacteria adrift in hot, salty pools

Now fast-forwarded fate, run-away warming, by climate-denied fools.

 

If the ignorant, the apathetic, the greedy, have their say

With science diminution, political ablution, and psychopathic corporate sway

The meek shall not inherit, bacteria once again will

Climate raging, the times are a-changing, the Earth’s not ours to kill.

 

                              Corporatisation

(World Domination, Decency’s Domino Demolition)

 

Political recidivists dog whistle, vilify, lie to cause fear

Security, terrorism, unionism, but seldom corporations, we negatively hear

Cos their covert, collusive connivings, blatant as they are

Are politically untouchable, their connections reach so far.

 

They fund their self-interest, ideologue, right-wing think tanks

That together with paid lobbyists, persuade government ranks

Behind closed doors, secret audience outscores

Any common-good fixes, for urgent National flaws.

 

Their monopoly media secretly, seductively, sucks surrender

Of our cognitive, cultural, democratic freedoms, to render

The mass population as compliant, shallow-think clones

To acquiesce, keep corporates, on their privileged thrones.

 

Fossil fuel cronies, stopping, climate change action

Denied science, tax cheats, opponent legal exaction

Imported cheap labour, union decline, working-poor slavery

Workplace deaths, apartheid economic, a world, cruel, unsavoury.

 

Their destructive business model, known, denials maladroit

No desire to change, resources, scarce, still to exploit

So change the narrative, persuade compliant masses

To save the future, geo-engineering, will save our sorry asses.

 

Palliative care for planet Earth, as it surely dies

‘Good’ intentions, side-effects momentus, our biome quietly cries

As people, governments walk lock-step, prison guards purely cerebral

Each step closer, ultimate gas chamber, economy still quite febrile.

 

And the internet’s invasion, of privacy, surveillance

Data retention, health care, educational reliance

Digital prison, consumerism, rampant digital colonialism

Corporatized smart web’s, imposed cultural imperialism.

 

While offering “friendly, free,” must-have software platforms

Dispensed connective media, search engines, now social norms

To furtively invade our devices’ controls, browsings, photos, posts

To steal our personas, sold on to advertisers, spies, unknown hosts.

 

The final nail, in the coffin of democracy

The ultimate dream of the elite’s autocracy

Is “Free” Trade Agreements’ insidious propensity

For corporate control of national sovereignty.

 

So with corporate welfare, the taxpayer bleeds

But scores of just causes, denied their needs

The jobs, the industry, versus biome misdeed

Does corporate existence, justify its creed?

 

                       Life on parole

He put his age up, to go to war

He never spoke much, about what he saw

Blown up, unconscious, by an incoming shell

All his mates dead, a remembrance hell.

 

Home in a hospital ship, metal bits still in him

Discharged, abandoned, no care, sink or swim

A career, born of intelligence, no longer a future

Alcohol, self-medication, no mental health suture.

 

She, eldest of eight, a violent, drunken dad

Married into money, a daughter happily had

Then death by aneurism, husband suddenly gone

In-laws tried to take daughter, opportunity shone.

 

Wealthy Sydney hotel chain owners, the one where she resided

Bar patrons did a whip-around, winning lottery ticket provided

The means for escape, a train to far northern Queensland

Where ill, with daughter, another (war) escapee kindly lent a hand.

 

The resulting relationship bore five more kids

The lottery built a home, bought successful real estate bids

But the subconscious memories, hidden traumas endured

His and hers, anxiety, depression, the alcohol, not cured.

 

A war movie, artillery sounds on TV would put him behind the couch

Sobbing, foetal position, PTSD’s power, grim vouch

RSL, Anzac Day no help, just painful drunken recall

The only survivor, no mate to talk to, commiserate with at all.

 

And unknown to all, their genomes passed on, science now sadly shows

Epigenetic changes, to their kids and grandkids, cruel life-long blows

Anxiety, depression continue their intrusive bleak toll

Wars, DV might be history, but the victims’ victims, always on parole.

 

 

                  Book learnin’

Been countless debates, about education, in this nation

Teachers, curriculum, testing, funding, all obfuscation

‘Cos the real issue is: why truckloads of kids don’t want to learn

It’s what’s important, significant V unimportant, their lives discern.

 

Reasons, not wanting to learn, are varied, complex and unpalatable

Sex abuse: one in four girls, one in seven boys by eighteen, calculable

Bullying, mean, emotionally-abusive, violent step-parents

Domestic strife, despair due to dysfunctional and poverty concurrence.

 

These kids don’t shed anger/despair at the school gate each day

Become model students in the classroom that way

Their levels of anxiety, stress, anger, the dominant portent

For all interactions, the defining line: important or irrelevant.

 

Emotions, the primary driver of human behaviour, yet

Until the all-consuming problems are addressed, to forget

Not only are they largely ineducable, the adolescent years

Are the genesis of adult mental health burden fears.

 

Poor nutrition exacerbates, wrong gut bacteria, via Vagus nerve

To Cingulate Cortex, anxiety’s source, depression’s curve

As Cortisol pounds the gut, where feel-good Serotonin’s made

Aspiration, motivation, behaviour, education, these plans all fade.

 

Parent absenteeism, long work hours, large mortgage, ‘affluenza’ habit

Kids seduced, addicted, intellect time-sponged, by device sabbat

Sleep-deprived by addiction: phones, games, internet distraction

Click bait, popular media culture, potent influence, school counteraction?

 

In addition, there’s same-sex-second-sibling syndrome

Younger toddler, older sibling out-thinks, out-muscles, out-competes at home

Subconscious withdrawal, opposite interests, behaviours, as a result

Teachers, parents alarmed, behaviour, achievement, no cause to exult.

 

And the ‘Mum’ll buy me a new one,’ parental ‘bestie’ mistake

Kids given everything, no expectation, earned goals debate

Mum/Dad, all homework, assignments done for them

Then teenager, left stranded, confounded, angry drop-out mayhem.

 

Misbehaved girl: “I don’t need science. I’m going to be a defence lawyer.”

To the young girl, replied: “What use will you be to an employer?”

“Aren’t legal trials based on forensics, evidence scientific?”

Career goal ignorance, career goal exclusion, equally morbific.

 

And after-school workaholics, twenty week hours, come to school to sleep

Traineeship’s great, but learning not in scope of job-skill reap

They’ll tell you, unlike work, manners, pleasant, cooperative, do tasks?

“You don’t get paid for school time,” when a teacher asks.

 

The junior league jerks, who may be representative heroes of any macho sports

Main aim to pack-hunt, bully, disrupt, challenge, laugh loudly at rorts

Sexist smut for young female teachers, they don’t grow any smarter, just older

The stars of tomorrow, misdemeanours make news, embarrass club, sport stakeholder.

 

And screentime addiction, lost attention span, now rampant by age four

Little kids, teenagers, sleep-deprived, suddenly time poor

Porn, sexting, social media, gaming, not school, the compulsive priority

Damaged brains, false norms/perceptions, performance inferiority.

 

Parents doing booze, drugs, epigenetic factors, induced, passed on, conceal

Increasing numbers, learning disabilities, misdiagnosed excuse, and real

Toddlers and screen time, behaviour, learning problems too

Under-performing statistics, national tests, politicians pursue.

 

Besides poor achievement, uncooperative, rude, disruptive, abusive assaults

And vandalism, personnel time, stress, investigating, counselling faults

Striving to burn-out level, teachers, the only ones caring

Opinion, the media, ‘experts,’ politicians, parents, no blame wearing.

 

But when there’s a problem, as is always the case

Non-teachers, ‘experts,’ pop up all over the place

Teachers, pedagogy, curriculum, unions the impediment

So failed ideas, from US, UK imposed, failure pre-evident.

 

Systemic imperatives, new curriculums, national testing, performance pay will not

Improve results, provide info, teachers don’t know (learning avoidance plot)

Increased workload, lousy pay, bludgeoned teachers, no incentive to stay

Address effects of neglect, abuse, toxic parenting, EARLY, the only way.

 

Discipline, punishment, ‘management,’ may work sometimes for some

But these damaged kids: arousal, anger, retribution, common outcome

Better to calm them, meditate, analyse scenario/self

Teach awareness and tools to reflect emotions, regulate oneself.

 

The benefits are enormous, not just for education

Work/life relationships, parenting, DV, health, incarceration

Emotions awareness, simple neuroscience taught right from the start

Curriculum-immersed, not an extra, but a neural age-flowchart.

 

And so to the good kids, one reason why teachers soldier on

They’re nice, polite, well-balanced, good supportive parents, a graduate echelon

They’re keen to learn, keen to do well, and they do, teachers note

Excellent results, successful careers, and their own kids they promote.

 

                    Debbie does d’alas

Why do cyclones hit at night?

Designed to cause maximum fright?

Power, lights lost, sounds of ferocious wind

Nature’s revenge on those who’ve environmentally sinned?

 

Cyclone Debbie couldn’a been worse

The wind, the rain we’d grow to curse

Twenty-four hours of destructive gusts

The eye-wall twice, restistance busts.

 

Two-fifty K wind force, an awesome spectacle

Creating debris, in every open-space receptacle

Leaf confetti on windows, walls, crevices, posts

The ability to trash, Debbie demonstrably boasts.

 

Meanwhile, trying to infer our probable fate, and

BoM reported Debbie forty K Nor’east Hayman Island

At same time Hamilton recording two-sixty Ks from West

Buys Ballot’s Law: centre MUST be south of Hammo, lest

 

BoM’s radar failure at Bowen caused them to lose it?

While it noisily snuck across to Shute Harbour, then smit

Airlie, Mounts Marlow then Julian, two bites at the cherry

As the eye-wall slashed this way, then that: unnecessary.

 

Tropical warm seas, at least twenty-six degrees

Latitude five to fifteen, for coriolis spin ease

And surface to stratosphere wind-speed difference

Less than ten Ks, else no development preference.

 

And phytoplankton help, hot seas to cope

Release dimethyl sulfide, with genetic hope

Cloud-seeding atmospheric condensation nuclei

Cause sea-cooling rain so they may live to multiply.

 

Many get sucked up in whipped-up aerosols

To the freezing stratosphere, like micro-parasols

They make their own anti-freeze, to survive

Returning as rain, their lives casually revive.

 

So to much relief after a night and day, Debbie slowly departed

Our hopes dashed when alas it seemed, that the gods had now farted

We copped an all-night, light-show, twelve-hour rain storm

Constant hundred K winds, lightning, thunder: the new norm?

 

The energy unleashed, in two days, a sight to behold

Smashed boats, houses, shredded trees, coral dead, cold

No humans lost, but the cost! Should voters buy the lie

Big coal and gas, electricity cheaper, ’til we all fry and die?

 

Oh, hang on… water’s back on, no more toilet bucket

But power will be at least two weeks, and only if we luck it!

But we’ll grin and bear it, the cleanup, the green ants, be it thus

As people round the world have it far, far worse than us…

 

 

              The buck stops… everywhere

It started with barter, my root veg for your fish

And dowries? A cow for a husband, their wish

Then commodities, agreed value, native metals, obsidian

Gold, silver, shells, even rum, the currency meridian.

 

Then coins, then bank notes, nationalised denomination

Cash security, and lending, birthed banking approbation

The value of cash, backed by gold reserves owned

By sovereignty, ’til Nixon, ‘seventy-one, financially intoned.

 

‘Sell the gold,’ not needed, it’s the era of credit

‘We’ll just print cash,’ national wealth we’ll edit.

The world soon followed, and banks, business wallowed

In cheap ways to profit, from real assets swallowed.

 

Inflation, interest rates, house prices, real estate, went rank

Bottom harbour schemes, asset stripping, bankrupts’ septic tank

Recession, then consumption, credit cards boomed, as wolfs on Wall Street

Masters of the universe, new games, with regulators to beat.

 

With Greenspan’s Rand-inspired Objectiveist zealotry

Risky deregulation, lapsed governance by narcissist bigotry

Ruthless ideology: let the rich get much richer, any means are fair

When asset-price bubbles burst, for the poor people no care.

 

Need to build, invent? No! Finance: untold billions to be made

Confect wars, sell arms, CDO’s packaged, low-doc loans trade

Bubble bursts, GFC, ordinary people, those whose price paid

Big nobs scott free, taxpayers, jobs, superannuants betrayed.

 

National recessions, and debt defaults, mums and dads the victim

Quantitative Easing, money printing, government solution’s dictum

Zero interest rates, more credit, spiralling gargantuan debt

Cheap credit, hoovered by Wall Street et al, real projects: forget.

 

Executives meet targets, obscene bonuses paid

The ethical stench, group-think entrench, of how the new game is played

Borrow to pay share dividends, or buyback shares to concentrate

Share price, dividends, ‘performance,’ to maintain the bonus floodgate.

 

No funds for business re-investment, nor real value maintained

Working folks’ superfunds, investments, leveraged, in hollow logs chained

And banks’ negative interest rates, even on mortgages! Trust?

The question: not IF but WHEN, the giant bubble goes bust.

 

And quietly in the background, cash is vanishing fast

Nations, banks restrict withdrawals, the criminals, the rich, the new caste

Hording cash, tax havens, cos electronic credit leaves footprints forever

So governments monitor, control, confiscate, tax, but rich people? Well… Never.

 

Credit card companies reward willing retailers

Who refuse cash from customers, nice profit retainers

While governments withdraw, all the large banknotes

Cash gone, negative savings interest, digital bank gloats.

 

The world in total, has only one-point-two trillion in cash

If all US people, asked the banks for all their own stash

The mint would, to print all that required currency

Take twenty years of frantic systemic errancy.

 

And what future banks, with blockchain technology?

Pay direct, phone to phone, sign legal documents, same methodology

Your own secure digital wallet, no bank, no charges to pay

Instant, no credit card, the Chinese Alipay or WeChat way.

 

So your ‘cash,’ safe in the bank, with tangible asset backing?

No gold, no silver, just a cloud-based ledger, ones and noughts, lacking

Any real value, probity, security, in binary code that’s virtual

Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin anyone, when the buck stops?… It’s evidential, eventual.

 

Fructose

Fructose is a sugar, five carbons long

Glucose is one too, but six carbons strong

But Glucose is essential for all living cells

The start of respiration, in mitochrondria it dwells.

 

Now Fructose is like poison, its death toll runs amuck

In places like Australia, we eat it by the truck

Load it on our liver, like an ignorant hungry dork

Killing ourselves surely, with our own spoon and fork.

 

So why do eat Fructose?, I hear you loudly cry

It’s cos it taste so sweet, and addictive by the by

It’s added to most foodstuffs, a trap to make you try

A hundred times now greater, than decades just passed by.

 

Sweet is a treat we like to eat, it’s in our genes for sure

The problem is to make it sweet, cane sugar isn’t pure.

It’s Sucrose, which is Glucose, joined half and half to Fructose

Or man-made, sweet corn syrup, Fructose again, same dose.

 

So eat synthetic sweeteners, some ignorants will proclaim

But compared to “healthy” sugar, more weight-gain you will blame

When food tastes sweet but then no rise, in blood, Glucose level

Metabolism plummets, no kilojoules burned, it’s like the work of the devil.

 

But doesn’t fruit have Fructose, so ripe, sweet and juicy?

That is a fact, I’ll grant you that, but here’s the simple doozy

The skin, the flesh contains the best, by way of anti-oxidants

Avoid the cancer, eat fruit not juice, then Fructose is no consequence.

 

A glass of orange contains the juice, of five wholesome fruit

To eat five oranges in one gulp, would likely make you puke

So what’s the problem with consuming this awful bloomin’ Fructose

And how does it manage to stealthily bring, death’s dark door so close?

 

The first one is, the liver it is, where Fructose goes to breakdown

Same enzyme path as alcohol, same liver, in which, some would drown

Yields same toxic fats that clog arteries, and cause fatty liver syndrome

And on top of that, Leptin resistance, makes you feel like a drone.

 

With Leptin resistance, the brain’s persistence to hunger, is not done

So despite full belly, we still crave and eat, sugary sweet cream bun

Still further to this, the brain depresses, the sympathetic nervous system

So lethargy rules, and gloom sets in, as weight-gain’s biggest victim.

 

The next stop’s easy: vicious cycle, stroke, heart attack, or onset diabetes two

Bombarded by diets, by now you would say, “What on Earth should I do?”

Know the facts: average person eats nineteen teaspoons per day

You’re thinking, ‘Sugar? No I don’t, nowhere near, no way!’

 

Know, avoid the hidden sugars, put in processed foods to seduce you

Read lablels, make choices, keep your daily intake at six teaspoons will do

Cut down on sugar, eat fresh fruit and veggies, some exercise, results you will see

Without stupid diets, and easy try-outs, a healthier slimmer you’ll be.

 

Emotions

You are an alien, crash-landed on Earth

Morphed into human form, living in Perth

How would you act, devoid of emotion

In order to hide, any hint of that notion?

 

How could one tell, this absence of trait

So universally known, we subconsciously contemplate?

With sixty face muscles, in strategic places

Variously combined, can express, six hundred faces.

 

No matter the country, the language, the culture

Fear, anger, surprise, sadness, joy, disgust, contempt, the juncture

The same small muscles unerringly make, the same seven faces

That subconscious brains know, across families, races

 

So wired in DNA, just seven of these faces

Auto-expressed as each, of these moods graces

Ubiquitously the brains, of all ethnic devotions

You can hide your thoughts, but not, innate emotions.

 

People may forget, things you lightly said

They may remember versions, mainly false instead

But one thing etched in memory, never to repeal

Is at the time you acted, how you made them feel.

 

You game?

Never walked past a phone shop or gaming store

Looked in, unsurprised, by what I saw

Always busy, eager customers of all ages

Thus the multimedia, device con rages.

 

Compile, record, edit; voraciously viewed, time cheated

Compressed time and space, stimulus-concentrate repeated

Excitement, compulsion, adrenalin’s pulse rate, and sweaty palms

To young people’s brains, unknowingly doing, hidden serious harms.

 

Mythic, animated, heroic; action-packed, repeated surprise choices

‘Occupied, educational, digital training,’ say FOMO parents’ voices

Designed deliberately addictive, the sustained stress response

Yields aggressive, alerted, overactive alarming behaviour ensconce.

 

Adrenalin, cortisol: inflammatory disease and immunity weakened

All else perceived boring, school engagement and learning lessened

Development disorders progress to mental health diagnosis

Confused reality, daily functioning, even post-drug-like psychosis.

 

Humans, the only animals with a life-stage called adolescence

Gaming inhibits patience, and other adult traits like resilience

While exposing kids to adult trauma, and repeated violence

Ten year-old veterans become thirty year-old adolescents.

 

And a related problem, doubled in recent years

Gambling addiction embedded, to trap young peers

With virtual currencies, micro-transactions buying rewards

‘Loot boxes’ bring advantage, status, but addictive overlords.

 

The knowing developers, profiteers of this digital scourge

Their own kids forbidden, to low-tech schools they urge

While most schools seek to preach, and digitally out-do

Laptops, tablets, coding, infotainment, shallow learning to ensue.

 

Our genetic proclivity for multi-sensory input to learn

Versus rapid images, 2-D, repetitive sounds, no real world discern

Destroys colour, sound perception, imagining, and creative skill

Buy/play games at your peril, ‘cos it’s all so easily downhill.