I have no voice

My time has passed

And like all fading ones before me

The world seems turned crazy

Maybe I’ve slowed down and

The pace of fictions phase me?

The fast shots with the colours

The music jigging passing over me

And I feel so weary and bewildered

The world feels more thrusting than I knew it

In frantic competition people want to make a mark

I’ve never really felt I’ve wanted to impress

So much is offered lightly and inconsequential

And making a big thing of sentiment for comfort

And why does the cancer charity that advertises on TV

Make me so angry?

It’s like a mostly false society to my mind

It’s trying too hard and people really aren’t that generous

And looking out for others, sensitive and kind

But advertisers and the media tell them that they are

How many people sit in silence with a broken heart

The pain of it excluding them from this society

Where everybody’s acting when they’re in the limelight

Saying they’re much concerned in a lightweight sort of way

And don’t do justice to the hurt from living

Because their lives are cool and comfortable

Or are they jolly, active; smiling through the tears?

It seems to me that buoyancy is aimed to be maintained

That with our public faces, media; we ignore it

The hard roughness of things will not be noticed

By audiences clinging agonisingly on every word

Asking themselves: “Why can’t I be like that?”

I guess some people from their very getting up

Switch on the mediathon to last the whole day through

And use the long continuum to block the blues out

Or have it carry one off into a magic interlude?

And some I guess believe, repress the mess reality

Divorce themselves from pain and all the claims of pain

They owe to those in trouble; take the safer way

An island of themselves set in a media sea

Or am I not just old, and out of touch

Another era and another life

The nation not top-heavy with its fussed contenders

Not full of strangers wanting to intrude

With business models that insist on pressing home

In people’s heads and living rooms, when one’s in bed

As though they had a right, and know what’s good for you

Telling you that you need them; they’re your friend

I sometimes feel contented that I’m coming to my end

My kids have to deal with it, I can’t fend

For them; I don’t think things can carry on this way

A people drifting ever further from reality

Either a reformation or a catastrophe

Either new understanding and a grounded sympathy

Or probably some collapse of a lost society

The heat engines of being cannot run on empty