I heard a woman speak and offer searching questions on The radio today: Why is it we exist; why are we here? My spirit leapt; at last! A voice is primal-seeking For substance-meaning, life-intentionality.

Ah, me, This veritable she Was perorating gravely on her business goals.

Thus it was Sunday listening; post-truth, and being broached In gauche post-modern style, its unaccomplished mush And so I thought to write you down this due consideration "

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Once would there be, and prompt and early, across the nation A mighty chime to sound out nine, signing the Station With solemn mind announces time to broadcast likely Faith-elevated Doctors of considerable sorts, Them shedding light in general

In those unheard of days, the audience house-trained, taught; There was the Third, then there was Light, but with the Home These trinity stopped work and rested on the Sabbath day. A cornered market – no, in fact, there was no market

The time of Radio 1 and such had not yet come. The jolly pops From dawn till dawn interminate did not prevail An only lonely ghostly distant eerie young-like thing purturbed At nights the waves with white noise, driftings in and out

Where gormless Horace Batchelor would his ruse, his rules purvey Which guaranteed the gormless listener wins ‘the football pools’; Another dated phantomesque phenomenon. Hucks will remember Luxemburg, with squirming warm affection

Ah, simple days, the days when things were seemly sure Less calculated, more ramshackle, done with much more feeling The light bulbs dazzled had no shades, uneven ceilings Slanted; we called it home

Soon was to come – a few years down the line, and yet Some time before the BBC moves, and reneges to pop A band of seaward privateers’ rave music; floating shops, Airwaves with hoardings

These gondoliers at sea (in following money) interposed Anchored offshore in creaking scrapyard dhous regaling loudly Daily to local audiences, peppered ads in pandemonium Of jaunty raunchy music; throngs adored them, heartwards moored them

To first choice to be tuned-to, to hear new emergent singles. Profuse a BBC bruised haemorrhaged listeners; siren-lures Having the nation swept from its stalwart standard stuff And soon by mainforce called, a rapid radio rethink urged

Note the nice art, a canny sort pushed primal force for change Blithely had gamed things so to go unnamed, indeed had feigned Had made this phrase: ‘youth-culture, its permissive revolution’; To overshadow business breaking bad on Redifusion

In fiftysix or seven ITV first breathed, phoned home, A television channel off the leash, no statesman’s watchdog Its scheme brought in commercial funds, a copious subsistence From trifling fancies dressed up nice; mass advertisments

Hot driving seat in living rooms from Bath to Berwick An instant life change broached from Roche to Lerwick Its upstart god sprung fully-armed from out the head of commerce Nor else to be rehoused

Alas, beforehand hegemony made Beeb a sole provider Customer satisfaction not invented, thus allowed their call, The scatter of the schedules, broadcast platters of the day, And people sat and watched or listened, whiled tediums away

Thus Sundays stood yet honoured not in breach but The observance; and manners, kind polite consideration Were sweet survivors, the empiric strength of British passions In great measure respect the essential cue to do religion

Observe commerce was actual nurse and agent blaring boombox Of overwhelming hectic musics, TV hogmanays Danced every day from dawn to dusk in civic roundelay With candied added value:

Broad brags of trade marks cauterise brand listeners’ brains ‘Take anything you want’ said fair concupiscent refrains Regular as like taxes, death, their come-ons kept on coming Filing the ears with reared desires: Get ideal homes NOW: Stunning!

And fancy goods, new plastics, Addis, entroviaform, A world was being opened, prised, by manufactured toys Jingles in peoples’ hearts were playing on their serial sighs Releasing passions’ fires, desires; their inmost lurid demons

The thing took off, in avalanche took over common reasons Ballooned a topsy-turvey land inperative pretension And expectation, air-castles of dissociation throned Lusts’ musts above one’s income

These then the borders reivers, buccaneers of creeded hearts When seeded billion pollens, wrung de gustibus contortions Astute extortions brash supplanted widespread graced decorum Allowing kowtow

And crazy chaos, craven customer solicitations Eliciting by effect ‘anything goes’; and so a rose By any other name called freedom, stole by traction In, and brought in faction, leading license by the nose.

The shops, the pops, the over-shoulder hanging locks Stores, supermarkets, cash and carrys overflows of boose Open all day, all you can eat, the bottomless coffee cup; Excess’s paliaitial wisdom missed its mark, gave us the slip

Instead was bred overplus great furror for ‘one’s inspiration’ And reverend ‘creativity’ the ‘arts and stuff’; the fashion A rennaisance heralded, foreclosed, indulged, poetics The world, alack, expressed themselves, purloined their fifteen minutes

The planet heard, was vitalised, began monetise our visits First Spain and The Ballaerics, Greece; ..ah, no, not Aquitaine Too near, expensive, Aquitaine, set on a merry plane To Spain we bundled money down its main proverbial drain

Yearly our peregrinations made fast-forward hyper-gains (Do note my use of idiom; selling fervent latest names Of cool consumerism; branding-led entcements’ party games Deck out the passage)

The forward destinations exponentially now ranged And Florida becomes passē, Antarctic’s silent waste Or Andean Cordillera give rough remote terrains In our visions high momentous hove such epic paradigms

Backdrops on which to paint our ‘there’s no limits’ frenzied faze There are two a penny cruises, let’s process in two by two Along with psychic holidays from (being my contention) Comensurate engagement with a ravaged state of things

Our grand New Zealand visit, ah, of course, Lord of the Rings, And Mechico, Tequilla, drug cartels meet murderers Safe gated mansions, herded in, with shopping malls hereto We tour the goldfish bowl!

Our living packaged, plasticised, and fibre enervate Clinically sanitised of course, aesthetically authentic Swimming in a la carte we glide from furthest shore to shore Expecting and perplexing, ever self-assured

Soul-lowly hungry Olivers thrust begging bowls out candid Niggardly tourist passers-by go rogue in togs top-branded Suffer few coppers flung among, their greasy palms to blandish; Fairweather Pharisees

Meantime on British shores perpetual marketplaces bulge Malls pouring through rude customers, cram brimming overstocks, Ultra-production’s super-saturated sponge in groundswell Proliferates abounding

A risen surge, such malls had prised an open chink with fists Which riven, and given early to ITV; pop radio; Wore flaws, applause a nation roared, so coursed a holy cause: Commercialism

Its ecumenical secular soaring ubiquity Gave global wayside shrines, set up with icons brave And running mad disciples pilgrimaging clustered brawls Regaling spoiled resources

Surreal: in serial, social, mayhem earth’s resources hauled Into the trash pond grandly in a throwaway mad mode Aeons of decades dump waste refuse into lifeblood seas The wealth of earth attainted unashamedly

Anon along with mirth a ton of cursive dispossession Alike been squandered, laundered, on our sunny jamboree Has hit the deck, or rafters, like last chance saloon bartenders; Our Sunday suits got crumpled

Like those machines which gobble up our splendid fumefree cars Issue their metal boxes, crushed, a mess, like our lame days Comfort confines us likewise, then next straight we goes our ways Into a wooden casket

Sundays were freed, unfettered, but their term dreadfully dull Suddenly all distraction ceased, fell great industrial rest Everything closed except for Church, from Aldershot to Hull Time’s nomads stranded

Argives becalmed on shores awaiting embarkation winds Feeling delay right heavy, waiting weighing spirits down Nonetheless drear ennui its patent wholesome scourge effected And rebel sorts considered

Clash of the Titans pitches held no teleported sway Cash of the Raybans hovered still some six decades away Nor a collateral clatter broke alarmingly each day We turn our calendars

Enstamped another senior mode was franked by grattiude A harbour-bar prospective shimmered elsewhere, lit horizons Death strewed a light, and Sunday silence plumbed it sounding Impromptu on it Unwelcome day then Sunday, empathised as death companion Locus The Church itself bore faithfully among its grounds Sunday then, messenger, brought bad news conscious foremost - So shoot it down

Foster palava, drown with sentient onboard raid incursions Throw out Messiah with His Sea of Gallilee Go expurgate life, then instate insatiate yens elsewhere; This chair?

Footware? Or drive-by shooting holiday? Have an affair? All the regalia paraphernalia whose hallmark flogs obsession Possessions and acquisitions told in Legion manifest Contestants for this turf are manifestly extreme unction

Knockabout, throwitout, no tomorrow Saturnalias Daily shillelaghs, accordions, ukeleles, ceilids Noise for the boys, twirled parasoles for girls; Meanwhile real-life sore wars bankroll a planet

Incident days come in and bearing brandished urgent colour Manic swing flashing lights, slip-tags bright messages on fastenings Chucking delights at acolytes excited like hyped children; Kind winning voices

Selling, extolling, excelled in cultivation, going maundering On strolls inconsequential; absence strewed amongst the lilac fields Soft-scented fined imaginings wind a pungent garland; Comatose, and you feel a million dollars

Everyone’s up for everything in this vaunted pastoral Golddiggers, action-figures, up for millionnaires Impudence streaming, passes round the sweatmeat cream eclairs Groomed for impugning

The actuality of solid matter-of-fact: Oh, what a tawdry world we live in – what we make of it Make stinking-fish of religion, and then attribute its doors With wars, destructions, drop it in the junk room

Pass it away, inter it. Dance, devour life’s action, serve it! Putting away oneself, one’s best election promise Out of a wassail bowl pour off full stoup of tribulation Raise up your knees

Let’s all go round and round in hula-hula stupor schmooze Hopelessly thinking nothing, nothing thinking stands to lose Carving up glories of the earth, a theme park run amuck There’s naught religion gives us matters like the monster truck

Our ends are all economic, money matters satistify Easing this nightmare whisper, a carpet lifting on the stair As wanton winds make an entry, send up loathsome chilly air Caught on the chest, come contrary, appalling Bacchic cheer

A session of concession gives respite, prorogues the day Semesters thence forthcoming find despite another way Scattered with thorns laid acrid bare, embraced and laced with tears Harbinger confirmation, evidence to all your fears

Passing on rotten batons, futures going to unfulfilling Hear resonate in backwoods ungent anastasia trilling Is it a demon, does it bode contrition, something billing? Acute Salvation

Takes up your arm, salutes you, illywhacker; able willing To take a side, and know the side you take’s the winning Because provides a gift of love forever; forever-forgiving; thrilling! The Lord, The Lord, is lowly.]]>