Battling for Relevance

Whispers aplenty
Every corner, all around
Attractions to every distraction
All products embellished
Names, logos, labels, colours
And those nerve-racking noises:
Attention please!

Buy, bye, buy
Pay we all
Children and adults
An idea or a product
Sold by a special whisper
Or entertainment
Unique in its sameness

Or worse!
A losing ticket
Failing hooves, paws and trotters
Legalised robbery
False hopes
Cards and Dice
Replacing food on a table

We are ensnared
Working to feed our distractions
Toiling to satisfy every whisperer
Avaricious to everything material
And immaterial Shares and debts,
Speculation and hedging
And futures lost

We are consumed by consumption:
Alarms the crisis all to fear!
Jobs and incomes lost
Affluence never visited us here.
Always, the debt delusion
We took what was not there
Mirages indulged us into disasters

We worshipped everything new
Only to throw it away tomorrow
Yesterday’s partner
Last week’s computer
Last month’s clothes
Last year’s cars
Even our parents and our children
We throw to the strangers’ nursing and care

We were never satiated
Our span of attentiveness -
Avaricious for ever-changing stimulation
Convulsing always betwixt joy and misery
And states of ecstasy and depression
Like today’s economy:
Collapsing!

Our celebrated freedom
Lacked responsibility and boundaries
We shunned God’s wisdom
Always living for the moment
We lost all sense of time
Even as it sought to manage lives -
Down to micro and milliseconds!

Wait: Demands the call for reflection!
Rescue was always at hand
If breast opens to Heaven’s inspiration:
From above
The clear direction
That drowns the whispers
And exposes all products

This is the new beginning
Inspiration eliminating desperation
To be saved from our own folly
To be rescued from our susceptibility
To no longer be fooled by suggestions
Or the sellers’ whisperings
To permit no label to cloud our vision

We can be truly free
Our souls can triumph
They only ask for a balance
But the flesh can be very weak
Seeking dominance through consumption
Lesson taken
Forget to look up, no more.

Let today be the day of the spirit
Succoured by God
Only Heaven’s liberating voice
Can shut out the whispers
Dissipating darkness with pure light
Rescuing us, from us -
And from those who whisper harmful distractions

Keysar Trad (c) 2009

Grieving for Victoria

Flames intense
Charred remains
There, where once stood a forest
A symphonic microcosm:
Trees, flora, fauna
Thousands of our brothers
Our sisters and our children
Thousands of homes
Playful children
Happy families
Native fauna
Away we are turned
All of us,
Nature forcing change
Heat, wind and fire’s consuming rage
Innocent lives taken to another world
Smiles swept with tears
And questions, questions
Left unanswered
Death, pain and destruction
Our hearts lie in pieces
Time to dig deep
To give for them
For us
Our money and blood
Shared by us all
Our hearts cannot heal
Unless we do it together
A nation united in grief
Accepting the love of the human family
All over the world
We pray for them
Those no longer with us
And strive for those who are
To rebuild their lives
To bring them smiles
To heal our hearts
Their happiness can pull us together
Their pain is our pain
The grief is with us all
As we turn to God
To bring healing and love