Writing Still

Voiceless

O how dark is the silence
So cold and calculating
Primacy discredited
Beautiful people denied a voice
With callous acrimony
Invented reasons sway an argument
With cruel overtones
Of racial prejudice
False allusion
And voiceless emptiness
Questions arise
As to why time’s judgement is ignored
Discarded like offal in a graveyard
Tagged like cancer in the lungs of the living
The answers are such sad reality
They scream out at you
Harsh
Deafening
Distortions of truth
That ring around the sky
Like storm in an upper-class tea cup
To echo in chasms of unreality
And so the status quo remains
Early death
Poverty
Excess imprisonment
Educational failure
And mores destroyed by big business
Such imposed taciturnity
Is so debased
So ignoble
So black-hearted
That it will remain forever
A fetid sample
Of the white man’s justice

Unholy War

It is a crime
If civilians suffer
When bombs rain down from heaven
With deliberate intent to kill
When even children and the aged know no safety
As it rains hot metal
And they die in their thousands
In a deliberate, purposeful war
As torn apart houses
Create a fitting moonscape of demise
In a panorama of victimisation
There is no excuse for this
No valid reason
Yes
This is a consequence of the warmonger syndrome
The excuse of the trigger-happy hawk
Backed by his military industrial complex
To commit war crimes
That reenforce his political agenda
His nominated enemies have no integrity
Deserve
No compassion
No destiny other than dying
For that is the way revealed by his ugly public image
So all triumph to him who arranges this
But the killing haunts his victory
Death as his agenda
Is a triumph of ignominy
That will stain the pages of history
With the blood of innocents
As the dirges ring out
Amidst the immeasurable despair of injustice

Yesterday’s Man

O I am yesterday’s man
Because I remember things…
When the air was fresh and not murky
When tempests were rare
When friendly gentle breezes cooled the days
When wildfire was an infrequent danger
When all the rivers ran
When the water in the lake was clean
When droughts were unusual
When floods were infrequent
When koalas all had a place to live
When bees did their work untainted
When glaciers were not melting
When ice at the poles was not vanishing
When species flourished and survived
When sea levels were not rising
When insect pests did not invade the earth
When farms flourished according to plan
When ecosystems knew no damage
When the globe was not warm
When heat stroke was uncommon

And when an industrial corporation
Did not shape the weather

Submarines

Eisenhower got it right*
We must beware of military power
Once weapons were not a market enterprise
Now they are and the racket is war**
So we need enemies
Foes are profitable
If you haven’t got them, you can invent them
Concocted fear makes the turnstiles tingle
And the stockpile of weaponry grows
As the warlike investors harvest the returns…
Which brings us to submarines
Aha!
Now that is a lucrative machination
So costly its makers foretell the profits with delight
Nuclear powered too
But don’t worry about the eternal atomic waste
That like the huge cost
Is a matter for future generations
Our great great grandchildren
Poor souls
So many social unsolved problems still
Health, education, housing needs,
All vital. immediate, costly, ongoing
And ignored by this weapon from the corporate masters
So questions arise
Is it true to surmise
That a need for this machine exists
That’s it then
Is there a man so filled with dread
Who never to himself has said
“There is a foe under every bed
So dive, dive, dive in the red.”

*January 17 1961 President Eisenhower coined the expression “military industrial complex” and warned of its dangers.

**In 1935 Smedley Butler, a distinguished American general, said in a speech and in a book that war is a racket.

Recollections In Old Age

When you are old, time grows in importance
You’ve been there before so remember things
The past is like a book
When you open it you can never tell
What page it will be at
But you read on thoughtfully
In ways that you have learned
If you have been lucky, happiness will ensue
As you relive again a joy
Sometimes though a tear may come
If sadness has been your lot
That is a crucial point
Your viewpoint will be an outcome of what you have done
Kindness and love are magic
Strong catalysts
That when remembered lift your spirits
So take care if your life has been brief
If you are young and ingenuous
Find a friend or a troubled soul to help
As soon as possible
Be giving with kindness
When you discover someone in pain
Ready to lend your hand
To an acquaintance beset with troubles
Imagine yourself in a similar situation
Share the suffering
Inflict kindness any way you can
And it will follow
As surely as the human mind can predict
That you will have a memory
To lighten shadows
That come your way in your later years
This above all
Remember
There is no better way to find joy
Than to give it to someone else
That golden rule
Can change your life
Indeed
It can change the world

royciebaby