Student Loans
Student loans are a folly
An imprudence close to lunacy
Because
Graduates are essential
To the survival
Of every society
It is a tragic misdeed
To impose financial punishment
On every student
For dreaming of betterment
For daring to meet the challenge
Of learning in a needy world
It is also alas
Part of the free enterprise syndrome
The open market
The balanced budget disorder
That intrudes into everyday modern life
O yes
What fools
Leaders thus infected are!
How stupid!
How dunce-like!
How simple-minded!
For every new academic
Provides inevitable return
For the investment in her or his learning
New taxes
New purchase of goods
And, heaven forbid,
The occasional new discovery
That will enhance society forever
War Guilt
Killing innocent fellow humans
In warfare
Is never justified
There is no valid reason for any war
So
Ignore cunning combat discourse
Or even victory celebrations
Often a false narrative underlies the belligerence
Convenient crimes are attributed to the chosen foe
Lies so often follow to seal the deal
Then
Every command delivered with rage
Is a tragic example of poisonous guilt
So often linked to deadly ambiguity
With reasons given so rarely the only choice
And each time there is the beat of drums
The Gaza conflict
Is a cataclysmic event in my lifetime
The carnage and desolation chill my bones
That ill-starred land
Has become a lunar landscape
Fellow humans have nothing but stark wreckage
And tears
And cries of pain
And hunger that endlessly grows
There is no reason
Valid for such a situation
No excuse for the infinite suffering
The spiritual despair of so many innocents
So count me in you obsessed men-at-arms
I share the pain of the victims of your tragic deeds
News
Well now, here is the news
I wonder what has happened today
Is there another
Pedestrian in critical condition when hit by a car?
Knife assault at a shopping centre?
Woman murdered by her former lover?
Teenager drowned when swept from rocks?
Elderly victim of a flood?
Court case concerned with rape?
Car crash with four deceased?
Neighbour accused of hate crimes?
Father tried for killing his three sons?
Multiple homicide by cooking toadstools?
Police officers shot dead by terrorists?
Australians murdered in Mexico?
Mass drowning in rain and flood in Brazil?
What’s that you say?
No such headlines today?
Well then, that’s it
Such is life
So what is the news?
What events can you share with us?
Well
They have found a remedy for liver cancer
And
Global warming
And
Depression
And
For dementia
O my!
How boring!
Endings
Long
Have I wandered down the streets of life
My tattered old body
With its pacemaker heart
And aching limbs
Cries out in pain now when I walk
Time is not my enemy though
But my adjudicator
Telling me with a firm voice
That even kings traverse a road
That has a dead end
There’s a terminal destination for everyone
Yes
I can feel that in my aching bones
An ultimate prophesy
But my crumbling brain still keeps enumerating
All my struggles
All my soul-destroying failures
All my pathetic unfulfilled dreams
Yet here I am
Still breathing
Still beset by life’s problems
Still struggling determinedly to be wise
And
Still afflicted with my own infinite inadequacies
That is why
I now tell all who know me
Not to fret
On my final day
As then all the hue and cry
Will fade away like mists in the morning
Perchance To Dream
Dreamers have a place in the world
They are not obeisant to outdated customs
Traditions or practices
They see beyond the pall of conformity
And catch a glimpse of the far side
Of Gödel’s circle of entropy*
So many times
During mankind’s storyline
Someone has a dream of stepping outside
Our world of normality
So man has flown
So we hear a voice from the antipodes
So Armstrong has strolled defiantly on the moon
It is so easy to stay within worn out convention
To eat your food from McDonald’s or Hungry Jack’s
To watch a TV tragedy that sells you underwear
To delve into your shock jock’s mind for awareness
But waiting for you
If you care to look, is a fresh vision of a better world
A way of seeing things differently
In a new light
So your understanding startles you
Therefore listen to new versions of things
Occasionally
Give the innovator a chance to be right
And sometimes
I repeat sometimes
You will travel to an undreamed of destination
*Gödel’s incompleteness theorem suggests we all have a circle of awareness beyond which we falter.
royciebaby