Category Archives: Being Prepared

The Effect of Words

In the ebb and flow of conversation

Words convey much more than facts

They are used ON you!

 

They can, for example, encourage, chastise, cheer you, pull you down

What they always do, because they are intended to, is to affect you

If you do not realise this, you will become a victim of words

 

Every time someone speaks to you

Ask yourself the questions “Why have they said that?”

And “Why in those words ?”

 

The answers might not suggest a bad reason

Most people do not use words as a weapon

At least not all the time

 

But they do want the words to have an effect.

The Supermarket Mouse

I must stay positive, I really must

Scampering across this film of dust

Whiskers tremble on twitching nose

Alert, examining empty shadows

Mice, who once were spoiled for choice

Now mourn their loss in squeaky voice

Tiny claws make tinny sounds

On bare metal shelving battlegrounds

A dozen different types of bread

Empty spaces here instead

Beans and pasta, once stacked proud

Now all gone, with the crowd

Long life milk disappeared

Hoarded selfishly, and not shared

Toilet rolls that made a good nest

Vanished suddenly with the rest

Long gone ancestors and early forebears

Told of shortages in the war years

Awry the plans of mice and men

Failed to stop it once again

COVID-19

This orient-born global threat

A cloud passing before the sun

Its silent shadow crossing our lands

Killing without a gun

 

The world awaits the final account

Holding its collective breath

Invisible, insidious, stealthy, amoral

This viral agent of death

 

There is no border it respects

No peoples beyond its reach

‘Self-isolate’ is the official advice

Don’t panic-buy they pathetically beseech

 

Come the time when those left re-emerge

Grateful to be disease free

Only to know it will happen again

A Malthusian catastrophe