Woke Up, Grow Up, Clean Up

by John Fairlamb
Inspired by the teachings of Ken Wilber and Richard Rohr.

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Woke Up

It’s time we woke up!
This word—this ordinary word—
Has somehow transformed itself into a slur, an insult, a curse.

“You’re WOKE,” they exclaim,
Their faces display their disdain!
What’s the horrendous crime of which I am accused?

The crime of anti-racism—deliberately calling it out when I hear, see, or sense it, anywhere.
The crime of being thoughtful for the feelings and sensitivities of others.
The crime of championing human rights for everyone, but especially minorities—
And compassion for my fellow human beings.

And who are my accusers, sleepwalking their way towards destruction?
They’re stupefied and hypnotised by the gaslighting that makes them think they know
ALL THE ANSWERS—about what’s wrong with the world.
And they apparently know who’s to blame.

They’re very good at making accusations, and they’re having a field day!
They say:

“The immigrants are stealing our jobs.”
“The immigrants are getting all the benefits.”
“Transgenders are just blokes who want to perv on girls in women’s-only spaces.”
To name but a few of the nasty lies they make up.

They don’t trust Sadiq Khan because he’s Muslim.
They’re convinced he’ll bring in Sharia Law in London.
Bacon and booze will be banned.
Drag queens, they claim, want to corrupt children—turn them all gay—
By reading them stories whilst wearing a frock.

They don’t trust vaccines, thinking
Bill Gates wants to implant microchips in all of us
So he can control us like robots.
And on and on the conspiracy theories abound.

Wake up! Stop believing these lies.
You are being controlled—but not by microchips somehow implanted in our brains,
But by the daily barrage of propaganda plastered all over the news.
And it’s costing lives.

Take a look at the state of things.
Stop being sucked in by misinformation.
We ALL need to wake up—face reality!

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Grow Up

Grow up!
This behaviour—this bullying behaviour—
That seeks out the ones they think weak
And pummels them daily with hatred and lies,
Then scapegoats them for everything that’s going wrong—
This is behaviour of mere children. Very immature.

They have magical thinking:
“If only this or that specific problem could be sorted out…”
“If only this or that group of people—or this AND that group—could be sent away…”
Then all their problems would be solved at once.
This is behaviour of mere children. Very immature.

And when someone tries to point out the nonsense, the lies they’re being told,
They shut their eyes and put their fingers in their ears.
They will only listen to one “source” and believe everyone else is lying through their teeth.
This is behaviour of mere children. Very immature.

They accuse others of pushing things on them:

Gays pushing their “lifestyle.”
Immigrants pushing their culture.
Muslims pushing their “religion.”

Where in reality, they push their heteronormative “lifestyle” on people who are not.
They’re eager and insistent on pushing their religion on others.
They are evangelical about their support for the political ultra right-wing.
This is behaviour of mere children.

So as the Good Book tells us: “It’s time to grow up.”
We need to take responsibility for our actions
And ensure what we do is ethical and honest.

In the great “Love Chapter”—1 Corinthians 13—
It says we were once children, but the time has come for us
To put away childish things.
And by implication:
LOVE—and love is a doing-word—is the grown-up way of being.

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Clean Up

Now let’s be real.
I don’t want to resort to all that “Us and Them”
Rhetoric that passes all the blame on everyone but ourselves.

Truth be told, we all fall flat on our faces from time to time.
We march full-speed ahead—and bang our head—
On the streetlight pole we didn’t see.

We make mistakes.
We too can hurt people with a thoughtless word—
Or when we let our frustration get the better of us,
Or when we cannot keep our temper and the red mist descends.
Fact is: we can’t deny,
We’ve all hurt someone sometime.

But groups and communities have come a cropper too.
Greed and hate have caused people to gang up on the innocent.
Apartheid, the Holocaust, Slavery—all products of society’s sins.

So we need to Clean Up!
Face our shadows, as Ken Wilber says.
We need to admit that they are not “his, her, or their” faults—
But mine and ours.

We need to see them for what they are,
Admit to them,
And then—maybe with some guidance from others—
Figure out how we might address them.
How, if possible, we might go about making amends.

And might I humbly suggest,
We start with a heartfelt:
“Sorry.”

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Little and Great Bookham

Miniscule marks on a map pinpoint their location,

Just south of the London conurbation,

Little and Great Bookham have quite a story to tell.

From the time of the Domesday Book, 

So many illustrious and infamous inhabitants who started out, passed through or passed away there. 

I suppose it is not surprising that people who made a living from their writing were drawn

To a place called Bookham

Indeed a few notable writers have spent time there,

There was the poet, the playwright, the profligate and the politician

And that was just one person, 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 

A great deal about him can be and has been written

Jane Austen used to go to stay with her uncle and aunt. 

The Reverend Samuel Cooke of course wrote sermons,

His wife, Cassandra Cooke, like her niece, was also an author.

‘Emma’s’ ‘Highbury’, it’s surmised, was in fact Great Bookham.

Clive Staples Lewis - inventor of The Pevensie children, Mr Tumnus, 

The White Witch and Aslan

Spent his formative years under the tutelage of Mr Kirkpatrick 

While war was waged across the English Channel

  

Not long after, relatively speaking, Newly-wed Prince Albert, later King George VI

And his bride, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later “The Queen Mum”

Spent their honeymoon at Polesden Lacey,

One of Bookham’s three stately mansions.

During the Second World War, 

In another of Bookham’s great houses, Eastwick Park to be precise,

Canadian Armed Forces found accommodation,

As did the King and Queen of Yugoslavia in the Old Rectory.

In 1943, a little boy was born in Great Bookham,

Who grew up to be the bass player and songwriter for Pink Floyd

Roger Waters’ dad left soon after to fight in the war,

 but sadly never returned,as he was killed abroad. 

Though it might seem quite ephemeral, but Louis Essen, Scientist,

Discoverer and calculator of the precise speed of light,

And inventor of the highly accurate measurer of time, 

The atomic clock, ended his time in Bookham.

And with that, I close the book on the yarn of Bookham, Little and Great.

By John Fairlamb © 2025

Tolerance

Daubed on the Berlin Wall - Four Picasso-esque heads

Two are happy smiling faces, looking at each other 

Two faces grumpily look the other way. 

The title of this Mary Mackey artistry - 

(First painted in nineteen-ninety - and then again in oh-nine (2009))

On an historic relic of division 

Tolerance

Carl Popper wrote that unless we’re intolerant of intolerance, tolerance will lose.

But what exactly is Tolerance?

My understanding is that it's the willingness to accept things that we do not like or agree with.

Tolerance is a tool in the hands of the people with power.

It’s they who decide where and when to apply it.

And when they do they expect gratitude and adulation in return.

In other words, it’s a master-servant thing.

The ‘tolerated’ must always “know their place”

And that that tolerance is not irrevocable.

There can be no respect in toleration for when respect enters the room, 

Toleration must change and become acceptance.

Many marginal minorities have sought tolerance,

Never dreaming that the overlords might be capable of more.

Racism, bigotry and prejudice are not halted by tolerance,

They merely go into hiding - but they’re never really out of sight

Even though they think they are.

Tolerance is but a first faltering step in the right direction - towards true unity.

It cannot remain as merely toleration but must grow and develop in acceptance, even love.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

Jewish people were compelled to pay to be tolerated -

With the infamous Tolerance Tax

And even though that specific tax didn’t last forever,

There’s always been a price to pay for the oppressed.

Tolerance in Britain, was the 1967 Sexual Offences Act

That removed anti-sodomy laws 

But that acquiescence came with many caveats,

Such that in 1988, Margaret Thatcher 

Brought in Section 28

Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Islamophobia, Xenophobia - 

Let’s just call it hate - now demands to be accepted.

A luta continua - The Struggle Continues

We must be extremely intolerant of hate

And combat it with LOVE. 

by John Fairlamb (c) 2025

Fact and Opinion

 Fact and Opinion

I was taught that there are two distinct categories of information:

Fact and Opinion.

Fact is what we know to be so,

Observable or at least deducible

It’s the holy grail of any crime detective in solving a case.

Fact is science. Science is facts

As much as we like to think we know that we know that we know,

The truth is, no-one can know all the facts

This leads us to something of a grey area of spirituality and religion. 

Proponents of any religious system hold

That their dogma and doctrines, the content of their holy writ 

Belong in the first category: fact

And teaching of anything different is ‘mere opinion’

Or more harshly - heresy.

One might think that the other category should be

The opposite of fact: falsehood, fiction

But actually the other category is opinion

At least that’s what I think!

You see, there I express my opinion -

You’re free to agree or disagree, as you see fit.

Opinions are an individual’s perception of reality -

It might be correct, in which case the information is also fact.

The one who holds an opinion assume they know the relevant facts

But this is where it becomes problematic

We like to think that we base our opinions on facts.

Opinions can be, and often are, just wrong.

We can be mistaken about the facts or maybe we were misinformed.

Opinions might be based on prejudice.

And this is where opinions become dangerous

Especially when they masquerade as facts.

Wait! There’s another category of information: Misinformation.

The deliberate attempt to misrepresent the facts or conceal them

We also call this propaganda when employed by powerful people

To manipulate the masses.

It’s my opinion that propaganda exists everywhere

And whether it’s governments or individuals who control the media

There’s an agenda that relies upon

People not knowing what’s going on.

This poem is not meant for young people

This poem is not meant for young people

It’s a poem about dreams and aspirations

Of course young people must dream big and aspire

To change the world and make it better

To fly, and as many a school motto does imply,

To aim high!

But this poem is not for young people

We’ve been fed the line: 

You can do anything you want to! You can be whoever you want to be!

But that’s not reality

There comes a point that, for one reason or another

Our long-cherished aspirations are

Simply not within our grasp.

Here’s the hard cold fact:

Life is not a level playing field

We’re not all the same

And it has nothing to do with how hard we work

Whether it’s intellect, looks, physical strength or money in the bank

Some people have more than their fair share while others miss out.

This poem is not a lament

Just because our lives don’t turn out 

as perfect as we might’ve once envisaged

Doesn’t, or shouldn’t mean that all’s lost.

It’s all about what we do with the cards that have been dealt to us

We all admire the people who rise up 

above difficulties in life and achieve a lot. 

You might not have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth

But have you made the best of what you’ve got?

 

Sylvain et Lola

 

They couldn’t be more different:

Sylvain in his sixties and Lola, her twenties

 

But each has known trauma.

 

The older trauma was the younger’s.

Just a child of ten,

Not sure what was happening when

Lola watched his mother go through a “violent depression”.

Could he lose her? – What would happen then?

 

His mum did come through that traumatic time for her, and for him.

 

Sylvain – the violence came much more literally and suddenly

And more recently (sadly homophobia is not dead).

 

Out of nowhere, he was set upon by thugs who threw him to the ground,

Hurled homophobic slurs at him while they kicked and hit his dancer legs with iron bars.

Not young, Sylvain feared for his life.

 

As the two shared their hardest times,

you could tell that the telling was to some degree a reliving

of those awful moments – and tears were not far away.

 

Yet the telling and the tears

both for themselves and for each other

were healing and strengthening.

 

As the two shared their hardest times,

Lola and Sylvain found a solidarity

And they agreed that tough as those experiences were,

They both emerged stronger.

 

Context

Watching Drag Race France – Season three – the sixth episode was a make-over challenge where the contesting queens were assigned an older LGBT person to makeover into a drag character to walk the runway with them. Lola Strega (drag name) was assigned to make-over Sylvain. The poem is about the conversation the two had while Lola did Sylvain’s make-up.