WHEN I SPEAK FREELY…

When I speak my mind I generally find my reception is far from kind.

Even from those people who profess to be the most open to ‘light’,

Are those also with whom I most often fight.

They recoil from my words and what they represent,

My freedom of speech they then try—for the future—to prevent,

In case, I suppose, their pride will dent.

I’ve been harassed by hypocrites,

Ostracised by ostriches,

Upbraided by upstarts,

Castigated by cretins,

Banned by bigots,

Goaded by the gormless,

Ignored by the ignorant.

These hypocrites, these self-proclaimed seekers of truth,

Ignoring their own advice when faced by truth that isn’t nice,

Scurry away from their discomfort, resembling disturbed lice.

They hide behind clichés that they’re too blind to see,

They’re hiding from everything—including me!

The narrowly open-minded, self-delusional and blinded,

Individuals who form groups in which they cower in troops,

Pay lip service to values they don’t truly value,

They treat recycled creeds like scoops unconsciously—like dupes.

Terrified of leaving their comfort zones,

Their middle-class moans are about politically correct distractions,

From their materialist existences and their obsession with what each other owns.

While frantically worrying about repaying their loans,

They pathetically ponder over Buddhist koans,

The received wisdom appealing to the cowardly crowd,

Exposes their every double standard.

Their amplified fears are disguised yet loud,

Echoed and mirrored by the company they use as a shroud.

Company being an ephemeral denial of loneliness,

That ultimately engulfs everyone nevertheless.

Who does a gang of fools impress?

Can they not see how much they depress?

Their collective ignorance is blatant and grim,

I struggle to believe they can be so dim.

Preaching the ideals they’ve inherited and learned,

Then repetitively paraphrased and then returned,

To its source—the hollow communities that have earned,

My incredulity, my contempt, how I’ve burned…

With my indignation at their risible posturing.

'WACKO JACKO' WON'T BE BACKO!

The untimely demise of Michael Jackson has precipitated a media-fuelled process that is becoming strangely familiar. A process involving mass grieving in public, hysterical overreaction and the phenomenal enrichment of florists; a process that first occurred, and most visibly, with the death of Diana. A process involving repetitive cycles of news bulletins with clichéd sound bites from celebrity friends, linked with footage of fans gathering in places connected with the deceased. A process that has no clear rationale behind the prioritisation of its coverage; causing Diana’s death to overshadow that of Mother Teresa and MJ’s to outrank Farrah Fawcett’s.
On TV, admirers relate their feelings of devastation with apparent sincerity, incongruous with their status as, often, complete strangers to their late icons. As superlatives are added to sentences of increasingly exaggerated praise, disproportionate to the achievements of any human life, marketing forces capitalise on relevant merchandise with the unselfconscious abandon of a swarm of locusts. Media mantras mesmerise members of the public into reactions of a Pavlovian nature. Discussions between people include the half-dozen or so catchiest headlines and quotes, becoming confused with their own thoughts.
There is much hypocrisy with this process of virtual deification—in Jackson’s case people seem afflicted with especially short memories. Forgotten are their previous impressions of the performer as a complete weirdo. ‘Wacko Jacko’ was the phrase most typically used to describe the eccentric star in life. In death, the same tabloid that coined this derogatory phrase published a 32-page commemorative souvenir in a vulgar display of obvious double standards. Although Jackson was cleared of child abuse charges, there was a widespread and general feeling among the public that there is ‘no smoke without fire.’ While Jackson’s reputation was tarnished by these suggestions—they would have irrevocably destroyed that of anyone else, famous or not—he appeared to bounce back. To survive suspicions and accusations of the type of behaviour that is universally condemned and considered so heinous it is irredeemable makes MJ unique. A fact as notable, perhaps, as the one that he produced the best-selling album of all time, ‘Thriller.’
Naturally, his death is sad—as sad as the loss of any life. How many millions of other people died around the same time is a hard to guess figure. Equally hard to figure is how public figures have come to figure so largely in the daily lives of significant numbers of people, leading pedestrian lives out of the limelight. Is there any shared sense (among anyone ‘out there’) of urgency behind the desire to understand this?