Redundant

 

Tear stained,

mould grained

grey, green walls.

Too small for one,

but foetid cage

for three.

Cloud high flat

a piss stink lift

from ground.

 

Back soon

 

Fifty yards of

fresh clean air,

fags or maybe bread.

Past the shabby,

shuttered shop

the city centre calls.

 

Not long

 

Cash for one pint,

a walk and think..

Hitched rides then

shivered, shelter sleeps.

Growling guts

from bin grabbed

food. Stinking,

sweat soaked skin,

no walls.

 

Just a break

 

Green fields,

gold beach

and soul,

sought sea.

Beauty more than

can be said,

Beachy Head.

Hale Bopp

 

Pharoah feared the portent showing,

Brightly in the evening sky.

Though the priests were wise and knowing.

None could tell if they would die.

Comet passed and was forgotten.

Egypt turned its face to sun.

Four millennia after Pharoah,

Comet made its great return.

Hale and Bopp foresaw its coming.

Told of its celestial route.

Dirty snowball, bright and glowing,

Spread its tails across the sky.

Intruder in the night sky showing,

Who knows what, to you and I.

From a higher source though, some knew,

What the comet tail contained.

Those thirty nine took steps so fateful,

Leaving through, closed heaven’s gate.

Even though some might pursue it,

Seeking truth, or hope, or peace.

Our snowball is just cold and rocky.

Swirling round dark, empty space.

Farewell comet on your journey,

See you when you’re next around.

Brothers

 

This was written in 1989 after the body of Roberto Calvi was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. He was meant to have committed suicide, but that would have been so difficult that many people believed immediately that it was murder. Calvi was a banker connected to the Vatican and he had links to organised crime. Bricks in his pockets, and some other symbols, suggested his death could be connected to freemasonry. Specifically, the powerful Italian lodge Propaganda Due. More recently, the mafia have been accused of his murder. The ‘Gelli’ referred to in the poem is Licio Gelli, also known as ‘God’s banker’. The reference to Bologna concerns a terrorist bombing of Bologna railway station.

 

Brothers

 

Brothers tied in secret bonding,

Meet at night and intone rites.

Sworn to fight each others corner,

Stand together, side by side.

 

Fraternal bonds are sworn in earnest,

Traitors will be disembowelled.

Tongues torn out from secret breakers.

Savage oaths are learned then vowed.

 

The architect receives their blessing.

Jabulon, their compound god.

They fete the builder of the temple.

Solomon’s sepulchral arc.

 

Do they just have mystic purpose?

Giving praise, and doing good.

Intoning harmless rites in aprons.

On the level, as they should?

 

No, the task is much more furtive.

Forming bonds for future use.

Granting brothers petty favours,

Or great corruption and abuse.

 

P2, the prime of masons lodges,

Represents the goal they seek.

Buying politicians favours,

Foul exploiters of the weak.

 

The world they seek is far from mystic.

Papal banking, fascist bombs.

While widows of Bologna weeping,

Gelli still is rich and strong.

The People’s Temple and the Jonestown Massacre

 

Jim Jones led the People’s Temple which was a Christian cult that also had socialist political objectives. Jones led a small group that started out as anti-communist, but then became left wing when it sensed that ability to tap into a leftist groundswell in California. It grew much larger when it managed to affiliate with a protestant group called The Disciples of Christ.

 

In the late 1970′s, Jones moved his followers to Guyana where he set up an agricultural commune called Jonestown. The People’s Temple members believed that they were going to create a paradise on earth, but the reality was poor food, hard work, sickness and torture in the form of Jones’ vicious system of discipline.

 

Congressman Ryan flew to Jonestown from the USA in 1978 to investigate complaints of abuse. After an unsatisfactory visit, Jones sent gunmen who shot Ryan and members of his party. Immediately after this, Jones initiated a mass murder and suicide event in which more than 900 People’s Temple members were killed.

 

In this group we see the typical ego centred, charismatic leader exerting absolute authority and the promises of paradise. In this there was to be a paradise on earth before the heavenly one and the religious imagery was merged with an extreme political ideology. There are similarities with the Heaven’s Gate cult which joined its religious mysticism with Ufology in order to tap into the popularity, at the time, of interest in extra terrestrial phenomena. Jones saw a popularity of communist ideology in California in the sixties and seventies and successfully tapped into that.

 

This was one of the worst examples of the dangers of following a persuasive, but deluded man to promises of paradise that end in misery.

Heaven’s Gate Cult – Mass Suicide

The Heaven’s Gate Cult was a combination of authoritarian political and religious ideas and UFO believing crank science. The leaders, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, adopted various names as is typical of cults founded around the power and ego of the leaders.

 

This group was different from many others in that there is no indication of sexual abuse within it. Indeed, the group had a monastic type organisation and some of the male members underwent surgical castration to get closer to their imagined androgynous ‘other level’ beings.

 

In 1997, 39 members of the cult committed suicide to leave their human body ‘vehicles’ and go to the other level with the assistance of the Hale Bopp comet. Two other members who were away from the centre carried out copy cat suicide later. Like David Berg, leader of the Children of God, who believed the comet Kohoutek would herald an apocalypse, and the biblical astrologers who saw the coming of the Messiah in a bright star, religious delusion looks to the sky to reinforce the claims of its leaders.

 

In this case, and in many others, the outcome was the tragic deaths of those drawn into the fantasy.

Murder and Suicide in the Solar Temple

 

A total of 74 members of the Solar Temple cult founded by Joseph diMambro were murdered or committed suicide between 1994 and 1997.

 

This Christian cult, recreating some Rosicrucian and Masonic ritual combined with New Age mysticism, apparently believed that they were going to the star Sirius after death.