On Intellectual Expedience

We turn our faces away, time and again,

at media images of death, hate, and pain.

Overwhelmed, problem resolution beyond our reach,

our logical core screams an existential screech.

Wahhabism, ISIS, the KKK,

the faces of evil we encounter each day:

corrupt politicians, and their corporate masters,

serial killers, ecological disasters.

Too many people breeding so fast,

an unsustainable planet that just won’t last.

So many realities calling me, me, and me,

so many eyes that refuse to see.

Every tribe seeking to advance their view,

with ethics and religions that exclude me and you:

in a feedback loop of stupidity so profound,

that altruism, acceptance and love cannot abound.

We bury our heads, like the ostrich adage,

in the sand of confusion, and ignore the carnage.

Intellectual expendience, driven by fear

of a truth, a reality we don’t want to hear.

Well, here’s a thought that you might not have heard:

pretend the Enlightenment never occurred!

Let’s implement the vision that we all can see,

of a new inclusive world, unafraid and free!

The Demise of the Golden Rule

It is not the concept of tolerance,
for it is a most worthy quality,
but the use and distribution thereof
that disturbs me.

How is it, then, that screams of “intolerance”
emanate most stridently
from those who preach uniformity
of beliefs?

Population grows, and jobs relocate;
economic migration, refugees and the dispossessed,
seek to better their lives
and we complain.

We are threatened by our insecurities,
incensed by the politics of fear,
and embarrassed by empathy,
which is hovering near extinction.

We have all become the “me” generation,
and seek only our betterment,
while refusing to see that can only be
a societal endeavour, to benefit all.

A drone collective, we moan in concert,
each movement controlled, orchestrated
by choirmasters who have no skill,
nor interest in the tune, or the chorus.

It is not the concept of tolerance,
for it is a most worthy quality,
but the increasing rarity of it
that saddens me, for us all.

Living in Almost

Helpless, overwhelmed,
you watch the tsunami build
on a horizon dark and chaotic.
The sky is obscured by storm clouds,
pregnant with violence.

Light leaks from a landscape
drained of colour and life:
sound echoes ominously,
dull, threatening, metallic:
engulfed by the cacophony of your mind.

The vortex is here:
you have circled long around the edge,
but now the blackness calls
and you feel yourself slipping,
without strength, without hope.

Your mind races, tired, confused,
as you search for the key,
the lifeboat that will ride the tempest,
and sustain you until a brightening dawn:
you can almost reach its safety...almost.

Deconstructing Perspective

Pristine,
sharp and heady,
the air from his
mountaintop,
reset his parameters
by removing them.

His vista
was complete,
and stretched
to forever.
Everything he could see
melded together
into a cohesive
living unity,
the sense of commonality
electrifying the thin mountain air.

Memories sang
and screamed,
bludgeoned and caressed,
whimpered and rejoiced:
phantoms,
chimeras,
all denizens of these lower
darker levels.

Failing light,
dampness, noise,
and an overwhelming sense of
alone:
abject exhaustion:
the dark call
of sleep.

Pristine,
sharp and heady,
the air from his
mountaintop,
reset his parameters
by removing them.