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Automatons happy, unconcerned!

The globalized economy rumbling
crushing many a society
while humanity’s habitat crumbling
in existential anxiety

Inequality as polity
conspired by the power elite
In gated, yachted frivolity:
the ever ‘rent seeking’ Wall Street

Thus condemned to poverty hollow
why do people just meekly follow?

Is it the elite’s confident stare
fashionable dress, wealth & gall
their scripted chatter, freshly blown hair
that subjugates us in their thrall?

Or rather this: What could more endear
than those lies we so eagerly hear?

Thus the teller of the truth is doomed
as we cannot handle getting informed
We are the automatons well groomed
to just pretending ‘happy unconcerned!’

+)
-‘rent seeking’ = (economics) activities which do not create societal worth, just redistribute existing resources

 

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Restraint chimeric

Have words become just something we say

subject to rash off-key abuse?
Just dumped in to the impatient fray
like ever-so-smooth TV news?

Trying express ourselves clearly
seems taxing work, so we balk
rings socially too austerely
Try listen? We’d rather talk!

What if blabber became the umbrage
while restraint conversation’s glue
in enjoyment of graceful language
shared beyond a literate few?

But as for that prospect chimeric
we’re subjected to ‘reporting’
which the blabbermouths find mesmeric
too often outright transporting

+)
‘reporting’ = unsolicited droning on about one’s own mundane doings

 

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Slicing to quintessence

When to consume feels choking
by gorging & swilling
somewhat akin to croaking
from stuffing & filling

Then slicing to quintessence
chaos turns clarity
sails out in luminescence
opens to charity

Be it just fleetingly of course
as much of that what I write
keeps turning out manure by horse
or at best of boorish sleight

Still rather write in faux creativity
than reading in lethargic passivity

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Channeling my inner changeling

When young I truly had no inkling
that I was but incipient
My alarm bell was never tinkling
while acted out my idiot

Traits that might disenchant
were so far constrained
My inner sycophant
kept grinning harebrained

Pathetic but hadn’t been in a rush
to question much my attitude
Middle age laid bare with horrid blush
my erstwhile lack of rectitude

Seems still that part of my essence
might consist of channeling
in blabbering omnipresence
my hapless inner changeling

It ain’t what I would like to see
or not who I prefer to be
although afraid it’s somehow me
from whom I’m unable to flee

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LAidback no longer

Expect a sunburnt smile
with white teeth gleaming
in any market isle
in trendy streaming

Spouting catchy metaphors
in tilting lilting idiom
Driving cool wheeled dinosaurs
in bumper to bumper ‘freedom’

Headed for the erstwhile Golden West
on to land abundantly blessed
in irresistibly upbeat quest
Too late, turned crowded, worn out, stressed

In unrelenting motion
have been pumping most of its oil
polluting air & ocean
depleted the bountiful soil

Time to wake up from faded dreams:
It’s getting ever hotter
fires blaze on hills & in ravines
rivers, lakes drained of water

We’re culprits of reckless squander
stared down by unblinking drought
Wake up from fantasy’s wonder:
Face it. No way, none but out

Days gone when LAid back seemed easy
brimming with optimism breezy

+)
LAid back = laid back as in LA

edited 10/14/23 1345

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Morning routine

Radiating heater glowing
nearly grilling Joyce’s butt
Internet fun & jolts flowing
lifts her out of morning rut

She’s cozying up in her ‘cave’
Reads emails of rants & raves
Her clients’ situations grave
and she be the one who saves

But not for long in tether
so to stay strong & trim
she’s braving ‘Arctic’ weather
heading soon for the gym

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Jolting those numb nerve endings

Beguiled the restive mill malltitudes
unbeknownst fumbling for meaning
chasing acquisitive magnitudes
harshly gleaning, overweening

Fleetingly on cloud nine
their eyes glowering
mining for gold online
those crisp screens scouring

Soon enough fizzles their proclivity
into poor paralyzed passivity

+)
malltitudes = (by license) the thronging multitudes at malls

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Awe for the mundane returned

Sent to my son Matt on his emergence after a 10 day silent retreat in California’s High Desert:

 

Deep dark rueful shadows
lit in hued moon light
edge silvery meadows
of metallic bright

Shine unperturbed bright stars
beyond Earth’s cold skies
Way beyond Moon and Mars
hide unanswered ‘whys’

In morning’s early light
shadows turn shallow, skies warmed
Forthwith, wake up, hold tight!
Awe for the Earthly returned:

Fades away night’s perfect stillness
elbowed by day’s messy shrillness

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‘Game’ over

Watching from box suite
humanity’s last game:
In utter defeat
strangely absent all shame

Watch how during the Sixth Mass Extinction
we wreak disaster without distinction!

Whether granted one more decade
or just one more faint heartbeat
as long as own demise is stayed
we’ll sit on cushy box seat

Til fade our horrid shrieking jeers
drowned in dying oceans of tears