Tuesday 25 April 2017

Fear

A poem on the way fear is used to oppress the masses;

Fear

There's nothing like a little fear
to keep the proles in check.
Just keep them feeling frightened
so that you can skew the deck.

Dictators and governments,
ancient kings and queens
all have used the ‘bogeyman’
to help achieve their dreams.

To catch or kill a terrorist,
or keep the fuel tank full,
they'll let you steal their liberties
and not think rational.

They’ll let you tap their telephone
and track their every move,
they'll even pay the media
to keep them in the groove.

A constant stream of atrocities
fills their every screen.
Yet they're much more likely
to die without a scream.

The world is more peaceful
then it's ever been before,
a violent death’s unlikely,
as is pestilence, disease and war.

Yes: there's nothing like a little fear
to keep the proles in check.
Just keep them feeling frightened;
… My turn to skew the deck

If you're a tiger, a snow leopard,
butterfly or polar bear,
You've every right to be frightened
for man's greed outstrips all fear.

John Carré Buchanan
23 April 2017

Saturday 8 April 2017

Too Much Chocolate


Our next open mic happens just after Easter and the theme will be ‘Too Much Chocolate’.

Chocolate contains cocoa, sugar, palm oil and milk (cattle), four ingredients that are responsible for huge tracts of primary rain-forest being destroyed across the globe. I thought this poem should represent the voices of forests and their inhabitants. I make no apologies for the last line.

Too Much Chocolate

Last week we heard a distant roar
that drifted on the air,
it crept ever closer
and bought with it despair.

The pillars are still falling
and all around us now
the constant whine of chainsaw
lays our forest bare.

You'll turn it into pasture
or cover it in palm.
Drag away the timber
to turn into a barn.

In places you'll plant cocoa,
where it shouldn't really grow
and it will leach the soil
and the insects they will go.

Then the birds that feed upon them
and the plants they pollinate
will vanish in a moment
from the hell that you'll create.

This Easter as you celebrate
the life that was reborn,
remember us, I beg,
for you decimate our forest
for a f***ing chocolate egg.

John Carré Buchanan
08 April 2017