Listen to poem:
Polemic
This town, this Silk Road had no toll to pay
yet from the east caravans again fill its
pharaonic marble and glass temples. Monolith
malls rise its clefts, eco-wilderness morph
into multiplex cinemas; into mini golf
and carparks - the 20th century gold fields.
A new rush of debit credit borrow sorrow
where the mortgage belt go to covet,
to con themselves - live beyond their means.
Here the sweatshops of Asia are legitimised
and cruel exploitation of trafficked slave,
child, immigrant, and asylum seeker for sale -
here the long suffering of others is repackaged,
bulk sold, discounted - an expedient lie
perpetrated on human aspiration! Seven billion
sins for a spoil and a ransom in higher income
streams of consciousness while our mills,
our plants, our factories are rusting graveyards.
Showrooms fill with pizza ovens; microwaves;
big screen TVs; IKEA; nouveau riche kitsch…
supermarkets of genetically modified superfoods
nuked in cryogel flavour enhancers; sweeteners;
emulsifiers; acids; stabilisers; MSG; palm oil
and sodium nitrate for the hooked toxin addicts
of convenience - a fill that knows no limits.
And saints of haute couture bow down
before the anorexic altar of the Fatted Calf…
to the guilt offerings of culture spin. Already
the subliminal wave is a raging tsunami,
and we a ship of fools on the rising tide blown
on a contrary wind. I fear my quiet desperation -
the cold ironies of fate; spiritual paralysis;
I fear for the blitzkrieg’s raw collateral damage…
the billboards; vandals of corporate graffiti;
drive-thrus of Americana; that uglified
futuristic aesthetic of mirrored urban jungles;
high towers of critical mass; naked ideology.
I fear for the luddite in a world of cyborgs;
of usury where the end justifies the means;
alas the black dawn into planned obsolescence
where ravenous jackals and wolves feed
on the cannibalised carcass of idle idealism!
And whores of dystopia; pimps; moneylenders;
oracles of the grand evangelical sell who
divide and conquer! Lepers walking its streets;
necromancers and fools; mad Scientologists
at my gate; the cults and hubris of men
in their fiefdoms; dividing God from Godless.
What now of my chimera? What of my anti-hero
anachronisms? Sadly one day I must leave
but today I write my rant. This town, this privation,
this pastoral lay has become to my ear an echo
dumb of sound - to my tangential thoughts
a place and past of no return…a time that was!
Written: September 1994
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