We try ‘signal virtue’
to ingratiate
like when those in church who
self-felicitate
As we in presumption
lay claim to be ‘woke’
then with purloined gumption
in pretense we cloak
Of course it takes temerity
to fully fake sincerity
Binged until unhinged but by blame untinged
Lacking all constraint
humans fervidly binged
pillaged in war paint
until all got unhinged
Soon now there ain’t much left
besides suffering
Our children left bereft
lacking buffering
Still not our fault they weren’t born earlier
did not grow up faster and burlier!
Lounging in inanity or daring redeem humanity?
Your demands way gratuitous
so won’t change our behavior!
So ain’t it just fortuitous
Hi-Tech shall be our Savior!
Our likes are inviolable
so let change happen ‘out there’!
Our habits not abdicable
thus change cannot happen ‘here’!
We don’t care if action may redeem humanity
distracted we’ve lost traction mired in inanity
Life’s precious china cracked
We grin while from all sides beset
gleaming gadgets stock-piling
slogging in usurious debt
but offers so beguiling!
When jokes rarely hilarious
what remains entertaining?
In crowds we fake gregarious
Clarity of thought waning
Jaded discouragement reigning
fizzled our aspirations
Interest, engagement feigning
parched by drought our flirtations
Energy too quickly drained
Events uninspiring
Faculties eerily strained
Even sleep turned tiring
Taste blandly the same most meals
Phone & computer hacked
Distracted by doltish deals
Life’s precious china cracked
So, would it not be overdue
to leave Life’s ‘silly season’
where way too much has gone askew
and instead pursue reason?
No shelter from Life’s welter
Life, o so bright and carefree
when nibbling sweets dainty
at mannered afternoon tea
sipped with persons fainty
But when living shallowly
our yearnings end up quenched
leaving us stuck callowly
From Life’s game we’ll be benched
There is simply no shelter
from Life’s worries & welter
Meaning mangled in phrases fluttering star-spangled
Words coolly glitter
dashingly dance
observe them flitter
in pompous prance
Though off the wall
bouncingly banal
displaying gall
amongst their cabal
Disturbing distraction
when smoothly spouted
in make-belief traction
sense, meaning flouted
Haphazard words careen
noisily trenchant
in mangled phrases preen
as is their penchant
Phrases splashed
‘in’ words flashed
Grammar trashed
unabashed
All the while grasp gashed
facts, logic lashed
mushy meanings mashed
’same old’ rehashed
Words flow in overabundance
in hyperbolic redundance
Cavil cavalierly sprung
Why do conversations unravel
and veer off in periphery?
After that someone springs a ‘cavil’
it’s downhill, and not gingerly
Scattered in off-subject traveling
swimmingly darts the ‘red herring’
In all directions unraveling
of logic, reason despairing
The cavalierly cavil
far from the Holy Grail
rather ‘diversion devil’
seldom been seen to fail
Leaves us to watch the verbiage chase
once again a ‘facts jumps the tracks’ case
Grazing on screens in eerie greening sheen
‘Smartphonies’ engage at a flicker
on their ubiquitous gadgets
spouting latest cool banter quicker
regressed in abysmal habits
Hail, Time Gobbling Vulture
of the texting kind!
In virtual culture
why exert one’s mind?
Mindless grazing, gazing
in screens’ greenish sheen
inviting, debasing
shackled to routine
‘Smartphonies’ slavishly lock eyes
with Siren Screens seductive
enticing, devious device:
Crisp, collusive, corruptive
Their attention scatters feathery
while enfeebling human memory
+)
‘smartphonies’ = those who traded their pacifier (a gateway ‘drug’) for a smart phone
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
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