Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Letting ourselves be distracted
blind to fallout, while all hellbent on
lame entertainment protracted
Real threats scorned, barely acted upon
Kicking the can down the road
in our anomie habitat
Thus reaping what we are owed
slow motion fascist coup d’etat?
Tell, when was cataclysm ever averted
by hiding out in consumerism perverted?
Our emotion-based ‘reasoning’
works only fleetingly well
while redolent as seasoning
may sound a nation’s death knell
While distracted by our own schlock
absorbed in state affective
we won’t hear Reality knock
thus losing all perspective
We can’t be bothered to dissect
what is cause & what is effect
Lunatic lies unending
narrative paths twisted
both facts & logic bending
evasions enlisted
Do we prefer lies outrageous
to mere reality obstruction?
In these troubled times contagious
which do offer foremost distraction?
Hard to see a happy ending
to such abomination
Society’s fabric rending
soon falls ‘civilization’!
Meantime more ‘fun’ a neo-fascist autocrat
than some smart, informed, honest, social democrat
Posting on Internet’s boulder
our stale jokes from hapless heart
while little we care to shoulder
is neither kind, brave or smart
All wrapped around our own
with the ego puffed up tall
nonsense filling our phone
outrageous our naive gall
Oblivious & headstrong
quite heedless of our affliction
merely keeps muddling headlong
largely by lack of conviction
By all means, if we must, act the wag
but please, spare us being such a drag!
People already hapless
buy phones ever smarter
which turns them ever sapless
What a mindless barter!
Never learnt to navigate
so by voice command dialing
let GPS cogitate
On-screen found oh-so beguiling!
Never mind that crisp phones resplendent
make humans ever more dependent …
While spared Life’s worst bludgeons
our decrepit curmudgeon
one of many gudgeons
drowning himself in dudgeon
Claims others kick & trick him
he’s ends up the poor victim!
If at times duplicitous
he would loudly lament
Seldom seen solicitous
or rarely heard repent
Little thought to others given
been unable to discern
how self-occupied and driven
for others lacking concern
Oblivious in his own smugness
blames others for his lack of snugness
This verse was first written in 2018 for my son Matt, who was then living through droughts & wildfires in Topanga, amidst the marked decline of the United States. In 2020 Matt moved to Sweden, where his father is from.
Trust in your guts & brains
take your leave from Topanga
find a ‘sane’ place with rains
but don’t retrace to Tonga
as The Islands getting hotter
long since Garden of Eden
not long until under water
While you’re welcome in Sweden
Faint prescience is all it takes
plus aptitude for a new language
So why wait to pull up the stakes
why wallow in anomie anguish?
+)
-Tonga = a South Pacific island nation, to where Matt’s great grandparents emigrated (from Sweden before WW1 and where his grandfather spent his childhood
-Topanga, CA = just outside Los Angeles
While the rich get wealthier
with tax breaks, bailed outright even
they get so being stealthier
entitlement they believe in
While the permanent underclass
has throughout history been struggling
this poor willfully ignored mass
needs for its daily needs be juggling
Still: Beyond roof over heads & food on their tables
rich & poor alike indulge sports & celeb fables
To think before talking
would be way too burdensome
could cause awkward balking
stymie instant words from some
Freedom must not be infringed
let’s keep up incessant spurting!
Whatever notions unhinged
must not be found disconcerting!
Scant by now any wish to acquaint
ourselves with what smells of self-restraint
Global warming
A bike dealer who mentions global warming may indeed be guilty of the same self serving cheap promotion as the car dealership, which flies an over sized American flag or the politician who presumes to speak for ‘all hardworking folks’.
Be this as it may, the earth is “on the verge of disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control, causing mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.”
James Hansen, the chief climate scientist at NASA, returned to Capitol Hill in June, on the twentieth anniversary of his 1988 testimony, to indeed warn that the earth is on the verge of “disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control,” causing “mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.”
Obviously no amount of bicycling shall reverse or by itself significantly slow the spiraling.
Nothing shall. Short of perhaps radical life style changes right now, which clearly ain’t happening.
But for all its horror I’d personally rather know than living in denial of my own betrayal of future generations. Being only one of some 7 billions humans cannot lessen my complicity. I have sadly done nothing beyond mildly inconveniencing myself regarding arguably the greatest calamity that can possibly face life on planet Earth.