right in the face of all the everyday reports
about disasters near and far

why do we not remember
the beauty of our world
the people whom we know
who are quite wonderful  and do great things
    day in day out without much clanging
    of media cymbals or rewards

the teenager who saves a drowning man
    thinks s/he just did the natural thing

the union woman in the protest march for better wages
    believes it’s simply natural to march

the officer leading a child that lost its way
    home to the parents

the neighbor noticing that her best friend next door
    has not picked up her morning paper

et cetera    et cetera

they are the unremembered heroes
of our daily lives

methinks our media are too obsessed
    with all the bad news in the world
and over that simply forget
    that it’s the good things which allow them to report
also the less enticing aspects of mankind

(Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886)


I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –  
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –  
To an admiring Bog!

when daily news
over weeks and months
reports events that  far exceed
most people’s homespun nightmares

can we react as poets
and not be seen as cashing in on the sensation
like all the media have come to do without regret?

It may be wise not to give in
to the temptation to create ******* of violence
but try to just suggest the essence of catastrophe

a lonely high-heeled sandal on the roadside
one flip-flop much too small to fit adults
a tough man crying without shame

there are events for which we don’t have proper words

this does not mean we should keep silent

learning once more
of innocent people killed in the name of whatever
    some psychopath’s personal  crisis
    a violent protest against other cultures
    or an abuse of some religious creed

the motivations may be different
yet the results are all the same

the wanton killing of women  men  and children
who do not know that they are ‘enemies’
of someone whom they also do not know

the murderers may have been led to think
that they are heroes for some glorious cause or god

fact is that they are simply murderers

and I believe
they will not even receive
their 72 raisins when they face their gods

because to ****
in the name of any god
is always wrong

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 !