Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
F White Jun 2016
In a  slow, desperate burn, we are falling. Failing.
Too little too late. Too much in the wrong place. Outrage not action.
From the trees, from the sky, we are calling and questioning, bemoaning, condemning.
Our hearts are corroding, our feet slipping, from containing the pain of the
World.
Bridges are snapping, ribs are breaking, eyes are closing.
The pictures we glorified on screen, the peanuts we paid to watch fictional strangers die-
They have stepped out, escaped and run rampant.
We lived the illusions out.
No zombies. No fire. No meteor.
Hate. In tidal waves. Ignorance in brimstone.
Apocalypse is now. We are how.
Copyright fhw, 2016
Liz Humphrey May 2016
Be serpent shrewd and dove docile,*
my Teacher tells me and sends me,
His sheep among wolves with nothing
packed except a walking staff,
but no gold is worth this good news
my Master unmatched by silver,
so I’m empty-handed but full-Spirited
for His might in me somehow inside
I feel Him living, as I travel places
to preach a Kingdom coming to my people
who wait with open doors to listen,
my work a different kind of fishing,
casting out with healing words
reeling others in to follow Him.
Part Four in my Lenten journey with Peter
Brent Kincaid May 2016
Kinda lost, as a matter of fact
No kind of tricks I can use
To help me to recover from
The Watching The News Blues.
There is no way I seem to
Be able to pay enough dues
To help me avoid getting
The Watching The News Blues.

Politicians stuffing ballot boxes
Some senator ****** little boys
Big Pharma raising their prices
The Pentagon buying broken toys.
We fracked another state up
We are invading another country
We’re outlawing people’s rights
The KKK is gains popularity.

I’ve got that kind of blues
From my hairdo to my shoes.
No over-the-counter drugs
That are any good to use.
It does no good to complain.
Everyone just ignores the clues.
They prefer to let us all suffer
The Watching The News Blues.

Big Oil bought out Washington
And then made solar illegal
If you pay enough money, you
Get to shoot an American Eagle.
DC is selling our forests off
And sells arms to both sides
And the average American
Can’t afford a place to reside.

Kinda lost, as a matter of fact
No kind of tricks I can use
To help me to recover from
The Watching The News Blues.
There is no way I seem to
Be able to pay enough dues
To help me avoid getting
The Watching The News Blues.
The air rushes out of my lungs,
Making an involuntary exodus;
Or rather, this bad news purges the air from my body.

Purges?

It tackles my breath and-
It grabs the oxygen and forces it-
It shoves the wind right out-

This calamity leaves me unable to say how I feel.
E Townsend Feb 2016
All I want, though, is to be a part of a disaccharide, and never dissolve. Someone I can grow old with, share a bench under the Space Needle, take photographs of me when I'm not looking. I don't want to be old news to them. I want to be the newspaper they pick up every day, read my stories, and know tomorrow will still happen, there will still be more stories to read. I would very much like to be in someone's life the way I wish for someone to be in mine.
I don't want to spend my whole life searching, chasing, waiting for you.
Mixed lyrics from Lorelai by Fleet Foxes and Song 6 by George Ezra
Addison Perry Feb 2016
Here's the good news:
Today was normal
And the sun rose.
There was a remarkable
Lack of storms
And there was mail
with kind words
In each envelope.
The cashier at the store
Gave you a smile
And the traffic was not
Jammed for an accident.
Planes landed without incident
And their jet streams
Spelled out nothing more
Than perpendicular lines.
Today your stomach was full
And your heart was light.
There were fresh apples
And you counted three dogs
On your way to work.
Everyone you love
Kept living.
You showered off
The mundane day
In silence, using the same
Shampoo that youve
Bought for years.
And you crawled into bed
Knowing that the schools
Were safe,
Animals were rescued,
And diseases were cured.
As you closed your eyes
You thought
Here's the good news:
Today was normal.
Nico Reznick Feb 2016
When did news parody
stop being funny?
Was it somewhere between
Alan Jackson’s 9/11 cash-in
and Donald Trump’s hair?
Was it BoJo stranded on a zipline over London,
or Cameron’s alleged porcine relations
(bizarrely black-mirroring fiction)?
When did the news
start doing Chris Morris’ job for him?
When did they start
pre-satirising the headlines?
“No evidence mermaids exist,” says US Government.
Swimming pool evacuated after prosthetic leg is mistaken for *******.
Robots follow Marco Rubio to South Carolina.
I swear, I didn’t
make any of those up.
The actors on Saturday Night Live
are more statesmanlike
than the Presidential Primary Candidates they’re lampooning.
How the hell do they breed these
creatures?  These gurning,
overgrown foetuses with their
conveniently dead ****** sisters to get
all wet-eyed and tumescent over,
their boomingly hollow controversy and
their total, catastrophic
crashes of personality.  
These loathsome
organic constructs who would seem
more relatable and trustworthy if
their image consultants made them wear
Nixon masks for every
public appearance.  

When did it all become
this strange, sick spoof
of itself?

Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?
Man dressed as penguin receives more votes than the Liberal Democrats.
Piers Morgan given jail time for illegally hacking ‘phones and gloating about it.

Okay.  
I made the last one up.
If anyone hasn't seen "Brass Eye" or "The Day Today", you really ought to.
Trevor Blevins Feb 2016
From the nature of what we ignorantly hail as comparative commerce,
To the stacks of dollars you keep in upscale apartment buildings,
Will you get past your own facade of money and public persona
In looking inward, at calloused soul,
Seeking judgment of what bears true value...

When Shkreli is dead,
There will still set puppet senators,
Spewing the filth which is evil and sponsored—
Regurgitating paid claims from which he too cut his teeth.

When along the life cycle does one lose their soul,
And if that's where you draw the conclusion that you're a man,
I'll conscientiously object from your vision of mankind.

The sun sets of empires, and you do not have one.
I don't have your wealth,
But both of us are sure to die,
Both slaves to fate,
Nothing left to buy out.

On the genesis of your ashes, your sins will not die with you.

In memoriam, only a kid who liked to play devil,
Just not as good at it as he thought.
Peter Roads Feb 2016
I read five different newspapers online this morning
I still don't know where the vox populi has gone
nor do I know what is going on out there
in the world of which I am something
what I have learned is that more questions come
When did celebrity procure the mantle of moral representation?
Why are actors and musicians harder to buy than (un)elected officials? When will school teachers be remunerated at the level they deserve?
Can all this be turned into palatable verse?
One that avoids the indignity of chewing out my own tongue
Thank you dear Internet for ruining my morning
Thorns in the hearts of millions and fear in the minds of billions.

Heard across the whispers of machines, spoken to the minds of onlookers.

Entrances carved into the souls of children by myriad opinions.

Young ones engraved with a memory, reared to despise terror as one would hookers.

Advance the agenda. Propaganda distributed; phones, theaters, televisions alight.

Losing our souls to the terror, we huddle in our whining and dining rooms.

Lips loose and battering what we don't understand, they're the terrors! Don't you understand?

Destitute is reason in the fanatics worlds away, yet in our very homes.

Encouraged to make poor our own empathy, as we seek them out.

Solace lost on our tongues we devour them, mercy removed from our bones.

Everyone knows we have to get them first, right? Right. There's no other route.

Right is confused with fear. They've made us just like them. Just like them.

Vie for change! Do it all you want, but you can't change them, not with sinful might...

Entrance them with modernity, educate them, sequester them, it's a farce, a problem.

Aren't we the beasts? Shooting missiles from a, "Wicked City," televisions alight.

Grand mess we've made, hypocrisy ten miles high, sin ten miles deep.

Right. Where were we? Who shot last? Compare past to past, continue the fight.

Already we're planning, where to strike next? Whack the hive, make 'em weep.

Vanishing like shadows in all-encompassing light the terrors disappear.

"'Enraging us again,' coming soon!" the sequel should be good next year.
I wrote this after the "Paris Attacks" last year.

You might get the sense that I'm downplaying the situation, but, if you pay attention, what I'm actually doing is shedding some light on the role that the media plays on the world stage and exposing the power of ignorance, and its effect upon society.

Ignorance is the downfall of nations mighty and meek alike.
Next page