The End of the Affair

BIFOCAL UNIVISION

http://bifocalunivision.blogspot.com.au

supplied the photo prompt

THE END OF THE AFFAIR

I am shutting you out of my life right now!

Surely you see the sign.

This is the end of the great affair

That we called yours and mine.

I simply cannot tolerate

Your nasty, sneaky ways;

How you're so eager to criticise

But stingy with your praise!

I can manage without you very well;

Don't imagine I'll be alone!

Why should I even consider you,

When you have a heart of stone?

Of course, you're not entirely bad.......

You're better than others are.......

I'm shutting you out of my life right now............

(But I'll leave the door ajar.)

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BRAIN-WASHED

I am turning my mind back now to a very different time,

When racial discrimination was not considered crime.

We all think we're clear-thinking with minds all of our own

Yet all of us are brain-washed from our birth if truth were known.

I remember the nineteen-fifties, when people toed the line;

After the ravages of War compliance was just fine.

Certain things just 'were not done'; we were beset by rules

Dictated by our parents, our churches and our schools.

I don't remember discussion, just a lot of unwritten 'laws'

That kept us on the straight and narrow, free from social flaws.

Whites just did not marry Blacks; there it was, in black and white.

But then, I'd never seen a Black man so that seemed all right.

There was no discrimination, because how could it arise

When even a Black man in a film was a matter for surprise?

I lived in a little village in the English countryside

And, looking back, I guess our lives were completely ossified.

They were comfortably narrow, in a way now quite departed;

Smug, unknowing, cosy but definitely not hard-hearted.

I repeat 'discrimination' didn't apply at all;

The subject just simply did not exist for us, as I recall.

Then I went to live in London where 'real life' could be found;

I lived in Earls Court with a friend,  travelled on the Underground.

Everything was exciting, everything was new.

I realised not all that I'd believed was really true.

My life was changed for ever in very many ways

But one scene has been with me throughout all my many days.

I looked out of the window and couldn't believe my eyes!

Even after the decades I still recall the surprise!

Coming down the Cromwell Road was a scene that seemed unreal.

It was so surprising I didn't know what to feel!

I looked out of the window and did a double-take!

A White girl with a Black man? Wow! For goodness sake!

It wasn't a case of horror or thinking it was wrong,

It simply was a little scene that didn't quite belong!

How could this be? How very strange! I couldn't quite believe it!

This was something utterly new and I couldn't quite conceive it!

As I watched the couple walk away, with loving arms entwined,

There really was great turmoil going on inside my mind.

Brain-washing is insidious; it works and we wonder how.

Ask yourself.... is it possible we're being brain-washed  now?

Maybe we are now cocooned and haven't got a clue,

Who knows what we're believing that, in time, will prove untrue?

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