A Modicum of Truth
You call for pizza, remembering the jingle,
"748-48-48; Send-For-It-For-It-For-It,"
Exchanging words for numbers-
Clever.
You switch on the television.
Budget talks on Channel 5,
Men exchanging numbers and words-
Too clever.
The state promises to deliver,
Delivering promises.
The doorbell rings.
Nowadays, they deliver anything for a price.
Money,
Is on everybody's mind.
Is this why I'm struggling to get an 'A'?
I cannot learn this way.
I need to rise above all that-
Greed, lust and lies.
But these are everywhere.
On magazine covers, newspaper headlines,
On the lips of taxi drivers, celebrities,
The politicians on TV.
The television cables entwine
The truth.
The swiftness of information
The currency of what they call knowledge
Is nothing but a tide of confusion.
Eroding mountains whereon true genius lies,
Perverting the peaks to depths unthinkable.
Modern wisdom serves one purpose,
To buy, acquire, purchase,
How can I express it simply?
Greedy genius-I mock the use, I mock the times.
They make me blame myself for laziness.
I say, "Cruel indolence besets the wearied mind."
Now my wandering wisdom with waning steps,
Struggles to scale, to search for higher ground.
Can anyone scale but in modest motions
The mountain of wisdom; the nearest to the sky.
There are no mountains where I live
Only towers of modernity, the scrapers of the sky,
With satellite dishes which shrink the world
And show us all
But we do not see
The marching army of madmen-who exist
For pursuit of wealth, pride, pleasure-
In no particular order.
No order.
But here I mount the massive mountain of the mind
Against the tide of modernity; the slime of red or green or lime
(That depends on the colour of your credit card)
Cannot ever douse this climbing desire.
I yearn to claim the mountain of modest truth,
The only truth that counts in time.
For the mind cannot fall asleep
Though spirit denied the time to keep
Searching for the answer.
Because today there exists but a modicum of truth,
Through the perilous path of modern survival,
And those who do not know this
Continue to ask, "What's the frequency for that channel?"
