some nights
I dream of worlds
that must have come from childhood fairy tales

people work happily in various trades
politicians are actually fighting for their citizens
    to make life easier and more rewarding

skin color does not matter
    nor does religious orientation
a person’s character creates distinction

women don’t live in fear of getting *****
nobody is sold into slave labor or prostitution
education is of high quality and free
    from grade school to college
financed by affluent corporations
whose shareholders just get a bit less

when I wake up
I recognize
the dream was just a dream

our reality is different

the pictures from the ISS
make it very clear
to everybody with a TV screen
    or a computer

our earth is a globe
    and blue
        and finite
            and in a delicate balance

determined by more factors than even
our most sophisticated computer simulations
can so far figure out

it makes you wonder
why
of all people
those who surely own more than one TV screen
    and a couple of notebooks & cetera
are the ones who deny
that they are
   destroying our rain forests
   polluting our rivers and seas
   poisoning our environment
   ruining our lives
   deadening our minds

maybe
    if they dare to set forth
    even a step or two
    from their isolated gated  habitats
    and walk in the real world
    they have created
they are able to begin
to understand

apparently
we live in times
in which disasters chase each other
around the globe in never-ending sequence

    or is it just the real-time news media hype
    that gives us this impression?

yet even if I generously discard
the ****** massacres and crises
far away

there are enough rough dreadful things
that even if they don’t affect me ******
do touch my heart and make me grieve
with the afflicted

methinks we’re coming near the point
when the majority of normal people on our globe
will rise an tell fanatics of all creeds
to shove it  
     take a shower  
          just go home
and let us live our lives in peace !

it’s simply awesome
how much energy
is spent to document
the newness of the news
    no matter how repetitive
    may be the words of the reporters

the hype needs to be built
no matter whether right or stilted
driven by fear the topic might be wilted
a minute later

and half an hour later
you hear the same with minor variations
adorned with various speculations
so that the viewers may get the illusion
it’s NEW – though it is old,
    and just repetitive

an endless loop of hyped-up trivialities
     of who did what and when and why
     maybe with whom   or not
makes you aware that even new banalities
rarely include what really matters
to the majority of people on this globe

they are different
    just look at them
their skin color  their clothing  their speech
their customs   the way they move their bodies

we like them as tourists
they leave money in our country
and then go home again

if they buy the house next to us
THAT’s different

it takes a conscious effort
to see them not as aliens
    but as our neighbors

lest we become aware
that all of us are aliens
in most countries of our globe

the shapes that keep appearing on my electronic page
struggle to become signs communicating meaning
     that reaches people at their core
so they can simply not resist responding to a message
the sense of which only evolves when they allow
to let themselves get lost in the uncertainty
of these strange writings on the virtual wall

congratulations on this special day

remembering the gain of freedom
from unjust monarchy
after hard struggles for democracy
and universal human rights

we also need to be aware
of new dependencies and tyrannies
that have since come among us quietly
and with deceptive lures of easy lives and riches
of glamor  reputation  millions of virtual followers
& other such amenities
try to persuade us that these are the only goals of our lives

the most decisive loss of independence
is when we do no longer feel its absence
and happily embrace the bars of our golden cage