What has it got to do with us?

The ‘shutting down’ of America; ...go bust!

As far as any Enlishman might mourn

The Turkish and the Kurds arming for conflict

Might they withhold did we serve them an edict?

And what are we to do with such rare knowledge?

If it be knowledge worthy of the pillage?

So that we have a handle on a world’s happenings?

So that we intervene in Catalonia?

Or damp the forest fires of California?

Personally

So let us tut-tut-tut - that beast, Myanmar!

So we feel vindicated?

And not exasperated

At levels of distress, great avalanche of war and suffering

Exposed to us without being safe from buffering

No, all we do is sorb, consume, we masticate

The hovering gloom

It’s another overproduced consumerist commodity

A bother, wasted effort in the newsrooms

A catalogue of woes promoted for a doleful quality

What handle might we have, as say, control?

A handle opens, gives access, or closes,

Yet we are surely seated in Read Only mode

No editing permissions, wholly indisposed,

No clout, no shout, nor say,

In what goes on in other lands, afar and now, today

And so a lickerish burn of fire replaces

Concern, a certain prurient itch, a frisson

A hint inquisitive, a trace amount salacious,

So that perhaps we might hold forth, as seer loquacious

Be spaciously expansive spouting out accounts

Some hours in depth; a show in which we show

Intricacy, involvement, being in the know

And do a bow, show off; remark and learn, O, hero

How high your mauve faur impresses others

Oppressive stamp your ready grip on things

You who abet, and hold no useful purpose

Events run slippery as water through our hands

Changing from day to day acordingly as fans

New strands are chasing, whither for to cast

Construe the issues.

Remotes choose us our views, form our forecasts

Some game; some blast.

Grandly, we joust to have to have control, our hands on zero,

Yet often not a player even in our own back yards

A Putin might as well be heard as hear of Nero

So far as anything we do or say pertains, imparts,

Or bears upon the facts:

A sort of guessing game for curious people

To think so much of, think it consequence

Not least to keep abreast attests self-estimation

Projecting luche importance onto foreign tales

Told out of school by tutors about truant pupils

Form-masters of high lessons make patrol, confuse

Truth faith with pledged support to closed world views

As rulers recommend them

News servers would suppose their places to be masters

Themselves wearing plain clothes, drab robes that hang

As dreary fare like governmental figures’ deathly hues

Of staid insufferable greying mock-authority

As wearing gloves to hide ones hands, their human frailties

That twitch working the slot machines, react, respond

Professing homiletic drools of compentence

Manhandling manufactures of mind-maddening news

They handle it like a fence

Receives a lot of holy stolen goods too hot to handle

The whole shebang and rigmarole not worth a candle

A parliament of fools, chancers disguised, all fervour-crazed

Who like to look the part

Whom by their facile art

Another damn fine mess they’ve got us into.