Temporal Displacement Syndrome
by Carey Lenehan
Was I born at the wrong time,
unwanted, ill-fitting and out of place as I am,
in a world that doesn’t get me and which
I simply don’t understand,
Where death and cruelty stalk unchecked and I,
emotionally bludgened by endless injustice,
scream soundlessly,
surrounded by a herd
with such different ideas,
consistently flocking the other way
whilst I stay,
perplexed, on the open plain,
watching them go and wondering
why they want to?
Was I born too early,
meant instead for some distant era in the far future,
to a world grown well beyond the age of true enlightenment,
when peace is actuality
and common sense of the logical kind
is at last harnessed to a shining morality
of second nature to all, no matter
what colour their skin or shape their bible,
when respect for ALL life is a given,
and malice once and for ever banished from our
Oh so human hearts?
Because to me, anything but this belongs only
to a barbarous species
of which I want no part.
Was I born too late,
meant instead for a time of chivalry and valour
when the Gods and half Gods drew their places in history
on the edge of a sword blade,
eye to eye,
face to face,
not covertly through a long distance sight,
killing reduced to recoil
by dispassionless cowards incapable
of honest courage,
merely drone killers for a soulless elite
delivering death from the shadows
no longer heroes lining up
for an honest battlefield?
I dream of a time of real equality
with no differentiation between X and Y,
no rules seperating rich from poor that do not give
equal penalties and rewards to all.
Where starving children are a historical horror,
when profiteering and abject greed are no longer
our primary goal
When champions do not aspire
to base desires of material enrichment
but work towards the common good, unfailingly.
When we all do.
This is the world I was meant for.
Was I born at the wrong time?
Were you?
The Cost of Going Green
The Cost of Going Green by Carey Lenehan
Who bears the cost of the world ‘going Green’?
When saving the future might inconvene
Our freedom to travel, to consume to extreme,
to create and discard plastic waste by the yard?
Or slavishly poison our life-giving seas?
Who pays to be Green? You, ‘them’ or Me?,
If the cost is in jobs and our prosperity?
When politics sells its integrity
To corporate, capitalist, inherent greed?
So we increase our wealth at the price of our health?
and trade the clean air that we need.
Who pays for the cost of a million lives lost,
or cities of starving, who shoulders that cost?
Does OPEC accept that it owes us a debt
For the millions and millions and millions and millions, and millions and millions….
Of dollars its made for itself. At what cost?
Why seek to reduce all this energy use
When for fifty years now, we’ve all had it so good
When we might have to pay a bit more for our food
Go by foot or by bike when we’re not in the mood?
With lives counted cheaper than Shares on the Ether,
Is it too much to ask if we would?
Who gives up on gain to save dry Spanish plains
from a future of droughts or earth-stripping rains?
Who’ll rescue the Arctic, all melted away
Or the snows of Mont Blanc, now renamed ‘Mont Grey’?
Just be rich and well fed, when the planet is dead
All of our debts will remain
As long as we count our wealth in amounts,
Sell our souls for flash cars and fat credit accounts
Keep our heating turned up and don’t voice our doubts
Ignoring the warnings and cyclonic stormings
We can go on believing this wealth we are stealing
Will save us from Globally warming.
So here’s to those a-holes with prosperous goals
Pump out your tarpits and dig up your coal
Make yourselves fortunes and trade-in your souls
For flat-screens TV’s, for cars with AC,
For a life built on excess, on envy and greed
Just live, do not think, bring the world to the brink
And the balance of life to its knees.
Handrearing
© Carey Lenehan 2008
For five minutes,
there is stolen, momentary, empty space
in a day filled by need
calling me from
luxurious reverie,
fracturing inner silence
with headbutting intrusion
Crawling bundled life on
unsteady legs, open mouthed and ready,
for the next feed
Liquid eyed dependence, always hungry
driven by Id, unaware of the cost
of its own survival
Chasing tails, pursuing the clock
I run,
trying not to fall behind
Two hourly feed
merry go rounds.
