Given Covid and an extensive Sydney lockdown, perhaps this is a good time to post this.
I also have a friend in Durban who had a very frightening experience this week with the riots.
This was written a decade ago in 2011.
Finally going through a large cache of poems for possible future books.
I like this one but not enough for a book. Worth sharing though, so here it is.
The Wider World as it is Known
March 25th 2011 (Cairns)
Dredged up and
dripping
Into the mouth of
Nightmares
Days bleak and
nights too bright
With the blinding
tunnel
Store of Childhood
fears
That were never
really
Left Behind.
Struggle Bleary
Eyed back into the
Program
Because the Rules
Must be adhered to
And the Masters
are Demanding
The alternatives
Promise Nothing
Because it doesn’t
pay to question
Or Mildly Ponder
In case the Truth
isn’t
What it was understood
to Be.
The Years Tumble
Down
Precious, Fragile
And less
Remarkable than the Last
And the Wondering settled
in a long time ago
When would the
Results begin to show?
All the Boxes were
ticked
Fought against and
then conformed to
According to the
Protocol
All is as it
Should
The Coffers are
Filling
But it doesn’t
feel good
And all subsequent
self-deception
Has the Shakes.
When it comes
It’s during a
Period of Tenacity and Success
When doubts had
finally succumbed
The House crumbles
The Cards Scatter
And the Entire
Life Plan that was
Germinating before
Birth
Has Evaporated
Leaving but a
Hollow Residue
With all imagined
trepidations
Come to Actuality
Despite all Death
and Disaster and Gloom
The World has
never seemed so user friendly.
Will the realisation
Come to pass?
Coupled with the deliciously
bitter
Irony
That the only way
out of the chaos
Is with no plan at
all.
