POEM: PROSAIC POEM WEEK AND A RANT ABOUT OVER-CONNECTEDNESS

Dark Places

The dark places we go

are framed with bright metal.

Their shadows are brushed on

with broad strokes of grey and black.

Dull swords of lines and shapes

are drawn to ward against them,

while brave knights

absurdly slay radiant dragons.

Their blades arc through

great swaths of nothing.

 

“Fire!”

Fire on the island!

As cockatoos might shout.

Fire on the island!

And the jury’s still out.

 

Fire on the hilltop!

All the lemmings could bleep.

Fire in the forest!

While the animals weep.

 

Fire in the valley!

The lion surely roars.

Fire across the land.

They watch the red flames soar.

 

“There’s fire in the town!”

The mayor, he loudly screams.

There’s fire in our streets,

A child, in nightmare, dreams.

 

There’s fire in the world!

The world’s on fire now.

There’s fire in our world!

An end too hot, somehow.

 

Hourglass

Do the girls still flip their long, polished hair?

Do their heads turn, slightly, while on the stair?

Will they ponder questions and not ask why?

Will they wake to suns of a morning sky?

 

Does spring follow winter as seasons change?

Do songbirds still sing in city and grange?

Will our hours all come and ever flow,

Like rivers are fed by the mountain snow?

 

Will chides turn chaste with the cry of a gull?

Will your love flow back in the storm’s next lull?

Are moments gathered or are they discovered?

Is the past all endless or recovered?

 

Duct Tape, Rope, Pliers,

Screwdriver, Knife,

Chainsaw, Drop Sheet,

Garbage Bags

“Hey, you’re not so creepy.”

“It’s because you’re sleepy.

I really am creepy.

But please don’t get weepy;

I’ve tied you up neatly.”

 

Downtown Bus Depot

May 2017 #1

Under a shelter, the misted wind 

whirls wisps of hair about her face.

In the courtyard, pin-prick raindrops

detail the surfaces 

of mirror smooth puddles.

Beneath canopies 

of brick-tamed trees 

the rain drips patiently. 

And from an eave along

the steel and glass entryway

water spills noisily onto stones,

disappearing caverns deep.

 

First-Place Medal

Award Speech

“There’s not much difference

between doing something

and doing nothing at all.

No matter how much

of that thing you do.

Something is not a whole lot better

than nothing. Never was.”

 

“It’s Never Too Late

To Miss the Bus.”

You need to finish your last rhyme

and drink your tea to be on time.

Next, gather on your outward clothes

And step to where the wild world blows.

 

Out where the past comes round to fore,

Where Never shakes a bolted door,

Where Judgment's doom reveals each crime,

when Grace has turned to cellar slime.

 

You’ll check that schedule and compare.

You’ll climb on board and pay your fare.

You’ll choose a route, just one you know.

It’s out to where the bleached bones show.

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD #15

It’s called “The News”, all that’s fit up to print.

Including that fine stuff that makes you squint!

We need our views, our virtual columns.

(Each one's made by a virtual golem.)

 

I know it’s been said—but those Royals will wed!

What we want to know: how are they in bed?

Are they like ice? Are they compatible?

More like rabbits out of a hatible?

…..

Things seem to slip now like tectonic shifts.

Not all at once, but like Mother’s face-lifts

they creep up on you, until your creeped-out.

But by then it’s too late to scream and shout.

 

Have you seen, lately, Miami’s neat shores?

The sea comes nearly up to their front doors!

It’s very pretty, waves lapping your feet.

(Where do you dry them when shorelines retreat?)

….. 

Now, Humpty Dumpty, he had a great fault—

he wouldn’t sit pretty inside a vault.

But that won’t stop us making our defence.

We’ve gotten quite good sitting on a fence.

 

RED RIDING HOOD FOUND BLOODY, TORN TO SHREDS!

Hey! That’s not the one where Big Bad gets dead!

Does it seem now more children are screaming?

(Time for a nap and some power-dreaming!)

 

BABIES WITH HEADS OFF! How did they lose them?

When will they grow up! How did we choose them?

Toddlers with D-cups? It must be the schools!

Dotards in makeup! (We must have new rules.)

.....

I’m back to those nukes in bunkers so deep.

They’re like fairy tales, or those dreams in sleep

where Hansel and Gretel go up in smoke.

Is nuclear winter really a joke?

 

Reports had come in from Thisthatistan

or for that matter from Trump’s nearest can,

where he sat and tweeted, all the day long.

With pants round his ankles, what could go wrong?

 

“The game of war-craft is a game of rules.”

That one was tossed out when all the old fools

were hung by their necks, twisting and jerky.

Each one carved up like a big, old turkey!

 

XTRA! WILTING FLOWERS DIE IN THE PARK!

More Thirsty Families to Drown in the Dark.

What message is sent by bottles that break?

And where is the garden without its snake?

 

Most needy people don’t riot in streets.

It’s hard to throw bombs with nothing to eat.

Most seedy people won’t plant any crops,

save for ‘another—they’ll pull out the stops.

 

Those jungle drums sound waay near to our shore!

I know it sounds crazy; they’re wanting more.

We give and we give ‘til all that we’ve got

is all that is precious. Such is our lot.

 

Raping the ladies, children and babies;

they’re not all crazy, foaming with rabies.

They have their job, though they must get tired.

Viagra^© helps them not to get fired.

…..

The index of loneliness, hereby found,

these columns of tears, where such-like abounds,

all march in lockstep, a penguin’s parade!

(Here’s hoping next time their ink will just fade.)

…..

When children left on those hillsides to die

no longer whimper but stand up and cry,

then fires will burn across this sad age,

making crisp bacon of sad-sack and sage.

…..

So again, I will say, look to the day,

the kind that brings tears before you can say:

“The song of the lark, the kiss of the wind,

the washing of waves, forgive us our sin.”

 

Grounding

A burst of birds

from the overhead wires—

electric motes in the sky!

 

I’VE BEEN LOOKING RECENTLY INTO PURCHASING a smart phone and finally cutting the cord of my landline phone, going full bore digital. Mainly, it’s so I have some recourse when driving in bad weather or snowstorms to be able to phone for a tow truck if I get blown off the road by a passing tow truck. When you get older, you’re less inclined to just walk home. So, there’s that. And also I was hoping to be around for the Next Big Thing when there will be a retrograde movement back to using landline telephones again. Then I'd be a trendsetter and ahead of the curve (or circle.) But that might not be possible; I think the Digital Age will be with us for a while yet, and it'll probably extend past the sell-by date for yours truly. But, it seems they’re predicting we’ll have a “smart” everything up the wazoo in the coming years and be interconnected with everyone and everything by zettabytes of data streams flowing across the globe*.

Our 5G technological nirvana will become in short order  “transhuman” bliss! The Singularity awaits! We should all be looking forward to our future of digital rainbows and unicorns. Why shouldn’t we? After all, we’re the intelligent species on this planet.

NOT EVERYONE AGREES. The Grayzone published an article the other day that should give readers pause and make them consider where we’re all heading—digitally speaking. In the wake of the pandemic, many countries are introducing vaccine “passports”. Some are locally or regionally mandated. Here in Ontario, for example, we have a rudimentary “pass” system in the form of a digital code uploaded to our smart phones (for those who have them!)  or paper certificates showing proof of being "double-vaxed”. I take my Ontario Ministry of Health vaccine certificate to my local YMCA where, with my membership card ID, I am allowed entrance (masked, of course). Such proof is required now to gain admission to many businesses, bars, restaurants, and public venues in Ontario. Other provinces and locales are enacting similar measures. Federally, the Trudeau Liberals are working on a digital version to allow Canadians to travel to other countries where proof of vaccination is required. (Canada requires similar vaccine authentication for international travellers to enter the country.)

It’s getting complicated. And a little concerning.

 

JEREMY LEFFREDO AND MAX BLUMENTHAL write in their Grayzone article, “Public Health or Private Wealth? How Digital Passports Pave Way for Unprecedented Surveillance Capitalism”, that these pandemic-initiated passports may be the start of a much broader system of digital surveillance that will become endemic in our societies, going forward. They caution:

 

“For those yearning for an end to pandemic-related restrictions, credential programs certifying their vaccination against Covid-19 have been marketed as the key to reopening the economy and restoring their personal freedom. But the implementation of immunity passports is also accelerating the establishment of a global digital identity infrastructure.” (“Public Health”)

 

Similar concerns are echoed by Ann Cavoukian, former Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, now a Distinguished Expert in Residence at Ryerson University’s Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence. She says, in a September 29/21 panel discussion entitled, "Are Vaccine Passports Dividing Us?", aired on TVO’s The Agenda, and following a recent “anti-vaxxer” protest in Toronto:

 

“Vaccines and vaccine passports are, indeed, very divisive. There’s no question. The issue is not whether the vaccine works…the question is: at what cost? I want the sun to shine on both sides. And, you know, let the photons disinfect the discussion¹… [W]e haven’t even talked about the enormous impact on privacy from vaccine passports. They are creating a new, inescapable web of surveillance, with geo-location data being tracked everywhere. We have a global digital infrastructure that is growing literally all around the world.”

Ann gives the example of Alberta’s Port-A-Pass vaccine registration system that has been found to collect “personal information that was never intended to be collected”, information shared with “unauthorized third parties”. She suggests that without public debate and careful legislation such data-harvesting may become widespread with dire consequences for individual privacy, not to mention personal autonomy. What both the writers of the Grayzone and former Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian share in common is a concern that we are on a slippery slope, and the rushed measures to deal with the pandemic, which include vaccines without long-term testing, measures albeit taken with the best intentions, may be ones that will have detrimental, long-term consequences, creating massive and intrusive surveillance systems, as well as two-tiered societies where part of the population can’t or won’t use the passport systems, and are thus denied access to services and various public venues, including employment opportunities.

 

IN THEIR ARTICLE, Jeremy and Max expand Ann’s concerns further to detail vaccine passport initiatives being introduced in other parts of the world, as well as examining what could come in the wake of such systems that have been created ostensibly to deal exclusively with the Covid crisis. They begin their article (one very much worth reading) with the example of India’s “biometric digital ID system called Aadhaar” introduced in 2017, which acts as a digital registration and portal system for almost one billion Indians to access government services and conduct business transactions. “It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India.” (“Public Health”) Jeremy and Max provide examples of how this new digital system can negatively impact people’s lives by revealing how several impoverished Indians in one province, who relied on a government subsidy of monthly rice rations, starved to death because they couldn't access the digital portal or were registered incorrectly because of a bureaucratic error. Shocking, of course, and tragic—criminal, actually—and perhaps more than a little concerning is the fact that, as I understand it, the Indian government is using this same system for its vaccine passport program.  

I’ll end here by highlighting Jeremy and Max’s use of the term “social credit system” to describe the emerging digital network India is developing. In China, there is a similar system that also is used to access government services and conduct business transactions. It may go further than most by collating personal information like bank records, credit scores, purchasing histories, social media and  twitter posts, even traffic tickets, fines, incarceration records, as well as travel destinations, geo-location details, bio-metric and medical records, fingerprints, even facial-recognition files! Eventually, China may initiate a country-wide digital currency, which in theory would give authorities and financial elites the ability to monitor an individual citizen's entire economic life. Big Brother is watching over our shoulders!

But it’s not only China that is contemplating or activating such a comprehensive, data-harvesting  system. As I mentioned in an earlier post, London, England is one of the most surveilled cities in the world with over 600,000 CCTV cameras installed throughout the city. Monitoring of public spaces is one very important way to digitally acquire vast amounts of information about a population. Today, global elites and governments are actively developing AI, bio-metric techniques and digital technologies and using them to create comprehensive systems of command and control that will increasing affect virtually every aspect of our everyday lives, as well as how we interact with each other and how, and whether, our rights and privileges as citizens are maintained.

So, two questions remain: What comes after the pandemic; will “vaccine passports” or their digital offspring still be required.² And secondly, what if those in charge of designing and implementing such systems are acting in bad faith?

 

More on this later,

Cheers, Jake.      

 

 ______________________________________

* I give it twenty years max, but that’s just me.

 

¹ The word she actually said here was “bull shit” but an over-vigilant TVO editor recorded the more sanitized word, “discussion”, for the show’s printed transcript. LOL!

 

² Canadians are far too complacent about this. IIRC, over 77% of us welcome vaccine passports. I think I’ll rename the country: Complacenda!  

 

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