The killing and the watching
There are many kinds of cancer, not all of them physical. Take the pantomime in progress in Montreux right now. Seemingly intellegent men, recaltricant at the so-called Syrian peace talks busily insulting each other whilst adding even more concrete to their own, already entrenched positions. And while they talk to the media and do not talk to each other their countrymen, women, children and babies starve, living in misery, and die whether by force of arms or force of (baffled) nature.
This is a cancer of the human mind, a cancer fed and watered by our unlovely media. Left unchecked it infects and will in time kill us all.
Who supplies such merciless combatants the world over with the weaponry to make more efficient the killing and maiming process? (Call it 'war', call it 'terror', call it what you will, it is that awful word: cancer.) For sure these often backward, often indolent people do not make the guns themselves. When was the last time you can think of anything Syria or Egypt or The Peoples Democratic Republic Of Central Africa invented anything, never mind manufactured it? For that they rely almost entirely on the equally malign greed of the so-called businessmen of Europe, Russia, America.That means us, people, us! Aided and encouraged of course by 'democratic' governments hungry for more dollars, more growth on the back of their industrries' cancerous exports..
I composed this in a Dharan hotel bedroom after TV viewing the news from the Congo. The world's most advanced fighter planes flashed by my window, planes sold to Saudi Arabia by gigantic western corporations up to their ears in blind-eyed bribery and corruption.
Brazzaville 1997
How happy the boy soldier seemsDowntown in good old BrazzavilleIn television’s nightmare dreamAs he searches for more to killBlack face split white in one wide beamWhilst from the rubble bodies spill:
There is this frightful innocenceAnd you can smell the pestilence.
They must have told him that they’d wonWho gave themselves that Cobra name,And flies that fatten in the bloody sunOf Africa know more of shameThan we for such as this destruction -Each of us knows he’s not to blame:
But cobras have their grace and know Their place and in what space to grow.
Attend the screen’s sick imagesSee this Swiss reporter boy; he's made The chance to make the moment his; Red Cross or something who have paid So much so uselessly - just show bizFor us the prying cameras stayed:
Behind him there the kiddie standsWide crazy eyed, gun in his hands.
The media’s the message, true?This would not be thisbut for it.There’s really nothing we can doBut watch them sport in their own shit?Now in my mind these questions queueWhat thrills me when the fuse is lit?
Do answers lie in schaddenfreud? Is this our true selves, unalloyed?
Bryan IslipDharan 20 October 97
Why the devil worry about it? I think I'll take a walk along the shore of Loch Ewe; a walk I used to do with Dee, escaped now to a better place than this. No doubt I'll pick up a particularly pretty little stone and marvel, for this was here billions of our years before first foot of something resembling you and me, and will be here long, long after we have done our worst and duly gone away.
This is a cancer of the human mind, a cancer fed and watered by our unlovely media. Left unchecked it infects and will in time kill us all.
Who supplies such merciless combatants the world over with the weaponry to make more efficient the killing and maiming process? (Call it 'war', call it 'terror', call it what you will, it is that awful word: cancer.) For sure these often backward, often indolent people do not make the guns themselves. When was the last time you can think of anything Syria or Egypt or The Peoples Democratic Republic Of Central Africa invented anything, never mind manufactured it? For that they rely almost entirely on the equally malign greed of the so-called businessmen of Europe, Russia, America.That means us, people, us! Aided and encouraged of course by 'democratic' governments hungry for more dollars, more growth on the back of their industrries' cancerous exports..
I composed this in a Dharan hotel bedroom after TV viewing the news from the Congo. The world's most advanced fighter planes flashed by my window, planes sold to Saudi Arabia by gigantic western corporations up to their ears in blind-eyed bribery and corruption.
Brazzaville 1997
How happy the boy soldier seemsDowntown in good old BrazzavilleIn television’s nightmare dreamAs he searches for more to killBlack face split white in one wide beamWhilst from the rubble bodies spill:
There is this frightful innocenceAnd you can smell the pestilence.
They must have told him that they’d wonWho gave themselves that Cobra name,And flies that fatten in the bloody sunOf Africa know more of shameThan we for such as this destruction -Each of us knows he’s not to blame:
But cobras have their grace and know Their place and in what space to grow.
Attend the screen’s sick imagesSee this Swiss reporter boy; he's made The chance to make the moment his; Red Cross or something who have paid So much so uselessly - just show bizFor us the prying cameras stayed:
Behind him there the kiddie standsWide crazy eyed, gun in his hands.
The media’s the message, true?This would not be thisbut for it.There’s really nothing we can doBut watch them sport in their own shit?Now in my mind these questions queueWhat thrills me when the fuse is lit?
Do answers lie in schaddenfreud? Is this our true selves, unalloyed?
Bryan IslipDharan 20 October 97
Why the devil worry about it? I think I'll take a walk along the shore of Loch Ewe; a walk I used to do with Dee, escaped now to a better place than this. No doubt I'll pick up a particularly pretty little stone and marvel, for this was here billions of our years before first foot of something resembling you and me, and will be here long, long after we have done our worst and duly gone away.
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message 1:
by
Michelle
(new)
Jan 29, 2014 06:49AM
Amen
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