COURAGE

if there is one thing i would like my daughter to learn
it is to be independent
resourceful
self-reliant
self-motivating
self-starting
iconoclastic
courageous
to stand on her own two feet
to be sceptical
critical
to question
to answer back
to test
to upset the applecart when it needs upsetting
which will be often
to respect herself
to choose the difficult path
to reconnect
to be in other words
everything i wasn't as a young person
or even as an adult
a state of being i am only just beginning to discover
as i shake off my mental straitjacket...
i find it incredible now
how i could spend thirty-three years learning how to conform
how i could learn the lesson so well
how i could reach a biblical age
and really think i knew the lie of the land...
so what made the plates begin to shift?
i left the familiar shores of albion
i arrived as a stranger in a strange land
i struggled
i observed
i became uneasy
i didn't know it then
but i was feeling my way into a new process
i was unlearning
slowly realising how i was shackled
lame
hobbled
ineffectual
but unlearning is not easy, my seeds
it is a form of ego death
and so still i clung to the old familiar ways
to the distractions and delusions
to the brightly-coloured trivia
i consented to the mundane
i denied my true nature
i rejected wisdom
i fooled myself into thinking
that i was making some kind of necessary sacrifice for loved ones
when i protested my words fell silently on deaf ears
i had no sounding board
i was alone in a crowd
i channelled my frustrations into my songs
i took to the stage
i screamed into a microphone and thrashed my guitar
i set up a blog and posted poetry and journal entries
but all the time i was living a double life
settling for second best
avoiding confronting the stark reality full in the face
i fled from my conscience
i kept running until there was nowhere left to run
and now what?
it is time to face up to the reality
that i have spent thirty-nine years as a dull obedient pawn
now is the time for the worm to turn...
oh is it so hard to see through it all?
to acknowledge the totalitarian state in which we live?
where no alternative to 'business as usual'
can be tolerated or given credence?
is it not obvious that our way of life can only be maintained
by a vicious apparatus
that not only condones but encourages
merciless violence and exploitation
of people
of beasts
of nature
a relentless machine
that is accelerating irreversible damage to the biosphere
oh we like to think that the shameless behaviour of us europeans
is all in the past
that the horrors of colonialism and the slave trade
are a distant dream
but in the sweatshops of south asia and latin america
the slaves have been reincarnated
eighteen hours a day they toil for a pittance
so that we can mindlessly consume the fruits of their labours
consume and discard without a thought
then consume and discard again
with a dull passivity
engendered by the tv commercials
the beauty magazines
the billboards
the relentless advertising machine
spewing out its poisonous propaganda
jostling for the attention of our five senses...
do we accept the statu quo as inevitable?
do we remain obedient cogs in this well-oiled death machine?
or do we stretch every sinew to reject it?
do we turn a blind eye or do we rise against it?
i hope that my daughter will be a fighter
and i will do my utmost to teach her
what no-one ever taught me