Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Those hectoring, obscure scenes:
don’t know a single nut or bolt
behind those crisp shiny screens
against which hopeless to revolt
Without an apology
the techno-fix is in
by latest frivolity
we cannot fix a thing
Large corporations with such ease
(we’re hapless at their mercy)
charges us hefty service fees
We’re left to smile & curtsy
Ours is not to understand how
but (whilst being scammed) acclaim ‘wow!’
The Elite’s claims spout spurious
its logic & facts futile
Outcomes to us injurious
their domination brutal
By their jingoistic ways stirred
we ignore injustice rife
while succumbing in lives absurd
filled with suffering & strife
So why do we listen to their speeches
even cheering them on from the bleachers?!
Nodding ‘Yes!’ Prettily smiling
signaling how we assuage
Leaning in closely, beguiling
lying in wait to engage
Then! Rushing the podium
forcing forward tilting
engendering odium
with rendition lilting!
Boorishly we’re ‘reporting’
while other voices thwarting
By faked exchange we’re elbowing
to corral own audience
In-vogue phrases we’re echoing
promoting our prominence
Out from what frozen frustration
flows such puerile predation?
+)
‘reporting’ = here: often unsolicited, to boorishly drone on with pointless & self-centered accounts of the minute & mundane
What’s our pleasant ‘small talk’
but schlock while lolling?
Keeps humming, spiked by squawk
boorish & galling!
Seldom turns elevating
those leisurely oozings
of whiny ventilating
self-victimized musings
Mostly regurgitating
that not much worth saying
How tiresome, aggravating
much like brainless braying!
Small talk like cloying pies
whose flavor fading hasty
Expectations belies
beyond sugar, flour pasty
Inside hooey crumbly crust
gooey, gluey filling
for which lips & taste buds lust
rarely found fulfilling
Is not small talk a pie
over which we should cry ?
From those vapid repartees
please do deliver me!
None of them Life’s apogees
just annoying whoopee
So let’s not suffer such banter:
The ruckus & raves of the ranter
The meddling of the supplanter
trying out-cantillate the cantor
Those jarring voices just lessen & lambast
when I’d rather see quietude be amassed
Aren’t facts just too complicated, taking too much time & effort to uncover & verify? Do I need anyone to tell me what MY facts should be? Surely, fairer & easier for each of us just to make them up as we need them:
Read about them in the tabloids
plied by ‘anything goes’ hacks
Elsewhere commonly called factoids
dressed up as we need them ‘facts’
The Net thrills in profligacy
of excitement refulgent
Be it doubtful efficacy
enabling those indulgent
Who’s got guts to be resolute
sort out all that’s annoying
in these our sweet times dissolute
brimmed with the innate, cloying?
Hence we spill what pops into mind
as insight of reflected kind!
These days rarely get together
talking (while coffees gets cold)
with erstwhile friends of fair weather
to go over ‘the same old’
But ain’t their fallibility
that owns the culpability:
Palpably tired of listening
to my pontificating psyche
those middlings in discourse piddling
interspersed with vague harangues spiky
So having heard myself for seven decades:
enough already of such tiresome charades!
Does our watching those celebs
so wealthy & carefree
clear our drudgery’s cobwebs
thin out boredom’s debris?
Seen how, say, grocery clerks
carry on like show hosts
setting off verbal fireworks
with check-out line ripostes?
Do talk shows model us folks?
Or do talk shows inform
manipulate, joke & coax
us in how to perform?
… keeping up the banter in ubiquity
in a tiresome culture of obliquity
Their ignorance seems foregone
unwittingly adverse
Declaring them a moron
might just make it all worse
Though they aren’t sipping the chalice
of willful and cruel malice
Who thinks those who howl at moons
truly deserve contempt?
Why berate screen-glued maroons
who of insight exempt
but were one of them to feel concern
sufficient then to cause a heartburn?
+)
maroon: a person ‘marooned’ i.e. stranded or isolated withe little hope of rescue
Turning what’s clear into murky
they digress, they obfuscate
hawk what’s boring as if perky
pounce, batter & inundate
Dogged out-of-breath marketing
intrusive, titillating
in pitches self-aggrandizing
which some find mesmerizing:
Pitching to our cupidity
aided by our torpidity