Towards A Better World

Political Gimmickry

Have you noticed
How words flow from a politician’s tongue
Like melting ice cream:
An endless stream of non sequiturs
Disguised
As meaningful discourse
Sprinkled with emotional clichés such as
Freedom
Our way of life
True friends
The nation will triumph
Time immemorial
Or history will make it so?
That is the way they do things these days
Politically
These loquacious figurines
Carefully avoiding
Verbal evidence of their misdemeanours
As they babble on
In the Hanging Gardens of democracy
Not that this is something new
It has been the practice down the ages
It’s not newspeak* but oldspeak
Benedict Arnold’s are everywhere today
Though focus groups may conceal it
Elections are confidence tricks
Success is not an outcome of truth
But rather
A consequence of spoken mythology
Sprinkled with fear
Or greed
Or lies about a fictitiously perfect world
I am sorry
Yes indeed sorry
But I simply cannot imagine any circumstance
When I would be a votary of these out of control fabulists

*A term from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four

Sport

So the crowds roll in
Wearing the apparel of disciples
Ready to praise their heroes
Or condemn vociferously their foes
While the visual media play around with imagery
Generating spectacular folklore
With images of violent heroism
To keep the cash registers ticking over
Cheering and jeering follow
According to events on the playing field
As awareness of the real world is diverted
Poverty, illness, climate are not the focus here
Not the issues of true significance
All that matters is who wins
And the formulae of media publicity triumph…
A word with you on spectators
Why does that vociferous critic get your attention?
Why do you respond to his jeers
And give him significance?
You the performer are all that matters
He is nothing but a blow-fly infecting meat
While you are an actor on the only significant stage
So let him be
Heed not his condemnation of the deeds you do
Give him no attention
For his ego is no concern of yours
You are not outside the fence
Where loud-mouthed failures vociferate
But in the arena
Bravely prepared to triumph or fail
If you win
The victory is yours alone
And if you fail
At least you will never be
One of those noisy souls who dare nothing
And know neither victory nor defeat

Advertisement Pain

Look at them
Intruding ruthlessly into our lives
Mangling our experience
For the sake of profit
They have approval to do this
From all the agencies that rule us
The open market is sacred ground for us
Free enterprise must not be hindered
So advertisements have free reign as worthy causes
Permitted to encroach, impinge, trespass
And shatter artistic experience
Or tear down the drama of sporting achievement
As the money stream flows relentlessly on…
Do they tell the truth
These panaceas of profit?
Or are they simply lies dressed up as integrity?
One common man recently implied
That a worthy product advertises itself
While only the faulty need lies of support
Ah me
If only a glimmer of truth lies in these words
So much of our time will be wasted
And as I am old and running out of spare moments
To ease the pain
I have resolved henceforth
Should I find myself ad addicted
In my remaining days
I will sigh deeply
Switch off the incarcerated medium
And enjoy the gentle, dignified uncontaminated peace

Tears

Suffer the little children to come unto me…
Mark 10: 13-16
Desperate child of loneliness
Withering in an emptiness of care,
O how your cries pass me by as
I wend my way
Down crowded mercenary streets
There you are but a decimal dot
On a balance sheet of adult business.
How the droplets of your endless ennui
Fall into my eyes
Like no pain bargains from a chemist’s supermarket.
And the mourning sounds of your despair
Tinker with my eardrums
Like raindrops in a desert
Dissolving into mists
Of non existence,
While the rays of pain from your eyes
Bounce off my thick skin
Like festivals of sunbeams
Found down on Bondi Beach.
So there you are
Little thing,
Tiny piece of humanity
Savaged by the biting, cruel daggers
Of grown up indifference
That tears you apart

Until all that at last remains
Are the echoes of your tiny voice in the wind
And your tears falling as rain
Again, again, again . . .
O what have they done to that rain?

Guilty Stranger

So
You proclaim your innocence
Even though your case is weak
Express anger
Towards those who undermine your reputation
Even though circumstances define your guilt
Yes
You are guilty
Culpable, blameworthy, answerable
For what you have done
And what you are
A deceiver
Arrogant and self-praising
For whom the truth is not sacred
But malleable
Your words
Echoing in the halls of infamy
Ring around my brain
Like death knells
Mourning the demise of reality
Bland self-praise is your calling card
Your fake virtue
Sprinkled on our awareness
Like acid rain
Turning our thoughts
Into misadventures of the mind
That will haunt us down the years
Be off with you then
Far from the lives you contaminate
Begone
And put an end
To the sorry saga of your misdeeds
Before I discover who you are

royciebaby