STREAMING

They were moving pictures of us at our worst -

The blessings of technology twisted and cursed

By our freethinking depravity

And our frequently fed degeneracy.

Yet, we have all done wrong.

So every murder mars us all

And we all share in the blame.

The sentences, the convictions,

Imprison us all forever.

Long ago, we all turned away.

We all listened to the songs of sirens

And we were all seduced by their promises.

Our leaders did not lead –

They offered us petty bribes

And played on our sordid fears.

Weak, we were happy to be misled.

We ignored our voices of conscience

And forgot the wisdom of ages,

Though it was there for us all to read

In the death toll of our violent history.

Even our reactions bring us shame.

Everywhere there is vengeance,

As an angry mob prepares a knot

And another one loads a gun.

Why do we never admit our common guilt

And seek the consolation of forgiveness?

Only then can floods of mercy

Wash away our shared shame

And quench the heat of hate.

Only then can we build bridges

That we all can cross into life,

Instead of erecting gallows

On which we all can only die.

But, for now, only tears are streaming.

BLEEDING

It was, by any means,

Far from the deepest of dreams.

There were no complexities,

No patterns, no layers.

It was quite threadbare -

Not at all a nightmare of sorts.

It did not leave me

Thinking sickening thoughts,

But I was bleeding

And no-one helped me.

There was a recurrent motif -

A familiar hoax from a false past

That could never ever exist:

Inadequate weeks before exams

And I was unprepared,

With so many school texts

Requiring reading.

But there was a new twist:

I was bleeding

And no-one helped me.

The rest of the class

Seemed happy,

Chatting in another language

That I barely understood.

For them, it was all good.

They could see me,

But my ailment’s birth

Was of neither interest nor worth;

Yet I was bleeding

And no-one helped me.

I woke to dark solitude’s night,

Which spelled no fear for me.

It is the bleary eyes of daylight,

In these eerie times,

That frighten me most of all.

Then I wondered in rhymes:

What had induced my delusion?

Perhaps, in some way, somehow,

I was bleeding

And no-one helped me.

CLUMSY LAMENT

I wish I could spin a silky sonnet

That might mitigate the wrath of a murderous multitude

Intent on stoning the stained-glass windows

That grant sorry souls dappled soft light in their solitude.

At its rock-hard heart there are no fissures of forgiveness

In idolatry masking all memories of immateriality.

Its disciples paint by numbers enthroned as currency,

And live by the barbarian benchmarks of bestiality.

Leaders claim to see so much in the nil of nothing

That they can discuss its implications all day long;

And yet they’re blind even to the most obvious truth,

So even the idiotic inept are never ever wrong.