Panic on the Streets of London (with apologies to The Smiths)

"But there's Panic on the streets of Carlisle,
Dublin, Dundee, Humberside.
I wonder to myself.

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE"


(Lyrics quoted from the song, "Panic", by The Smiths, Copyright 1986)


Recently, the news has been full of images and reports about the rioting in the UK, supposedly triggered by the shooting of a black man by police.


David Cameron, the English PM, and other assorted authority figures are quick to address the press and denounce the rioters as common criminals, but something rings hollow about their pronouncements.


I have been amongst a riot in the past, the famous "Queens Street riot" of 1984, so I'm not naive about these situations. They often start from some genuine point of grievance, but are later joined and fuelled by opportunists and "chancers" whose motives are less pure.


Certainly, a criminal element has surfaced in the UK riots as witnessed by the looting and violence. But Cameron lays the blame squarely at the feet of idle, unemployed, lower class youth. That is like painting over rotting floorboards. You can pretend they are fine because they look nice, but underneath they are still rotting.


Why are these youth idle and unemployed, frustrated, bored and full of anger looking for an outlet through which to be vented?


This is not a rant about political and economic systems, a comparison or even a vaunting of one system over another. All human social systems are flawed.


But in the social unrest spreading through the Middle East, Europe and South America, are we seeing (not to be overly dramatic) the death throes of Capitalism?


In South America, youth are protesting about their education, claiming the government denies the poorer students the quality of education it provides for richer students. In Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria, people are chafing under repressive regimes that have been able to remain in power because of Western support because the West needs their allegiance and their oil. In many European countries, people are marching to protest against austerity measures forced on them by governments who acquired massive debts and for whom the chickens have come home to roost since the sub-prime mortgage debacle in the USA triggered a global financial crisis. Ordinary, working people are struggling to survive and they see all the Wall Street criminals rewarded for their reckless greed and it makes them MIGHTY ANGRY!


It is a time when that old saying, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer", has never seemed more pertinent. Wealth is increasingly concentrating into fewer and fewer hands and the vast bulk of the economic underclass that capitalism requires to generate that wealth have had enough.


Where is that famous "Third Way" that Tony Blair trumpeted about when he first got into power with "New Labour"? England soon found that "New Labour" were really just Old Tories with trendier clothes and hipper friends.


When the Soviet Union imploded, Reagan et al hailed that as the triumph of Capitalism. But it was really that they were both tired, but Capitalism was the only one left standing. Communism was ideal in theory. After all, it was probably Jesus' idea before Engels and Marx expanded on it. But we are not all as noble and selfless as Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Abraham, Bahá’u’lláh and all their prophet mates. Communism was corrupted by flawed human nature, its descent from noble cause into brutal totalitarianism brilliantly captured by George Orwell in his book, Animal Farm.


So, some of us had a go at Communism with not great success. The rest of us have been "doing" Capitalism for longer than we can remember. And then we get China trying to be some weird hybrid of Free Market and Totalitarian Regime. How's it workin' out for you, boys and girls?


So can there be a real and genuine alternative, a true Third Way? I don't honestly know, but, at present, Capitalism is not working too well for a whole lot of folks and they want to see change. They want a world where the air is clean, the water is drinkable, the animals aren't disappearing at an alarming rate and their children can have a decent, healthy, humane future. Is that so much to ask? I don't think so, do you?

Tuesday Poem: "A Far Greater Nourishment"

Walking home alone on Saturday night,

social sounds spilling around me then

fading in my slipstream,

I round the corner of my street and

an image of your face rises

to combat the cold that searches for

the marrow of my bones.

Hope flutters like a wounded bird into

the pale sky of a vision desperate

with longing.

Forgive my physical hunger.

You were right to deny it

because by morning

you had given me

a far greater nourishment.

Tuesday Poem: "Ruby's Magic"

"You can live too long," my grandmother says

and, hovering in the wings of her hundredth year,

few know it better than she.

Her body is a framework of sparrow bones

encaging the heart of a lion,

a heart that stirs with savage music in mutiny to her wishes.

A life lived in service is loath to become a burden.

My mother, steeped in a mantle of Irish Catholicism, says

it rattles her faith to see Grandmother

visited by torments she does not deserve.

My father who loves her like his own mother

remembers her as a woman who lived without complaint

now that physical pain and mental anguish

drive her beyond her character.

My aunts are two sides of a triangle weakened by the third,

playing down the struggle that ages them too soon

and plying her with love to ease the bitter passage

to the banks of the Styx.

And I, her grandson, with a throat full of lumps

and a head full of happier times,

look at my grandmother not as a rheumy-eyed woman

with thin hair and threadbare skin,

but the grandma I shared a room with,

standing true as the kauri of her house

before her mirror at bedtime.

Her fingers not gnarled but deft as they unleashed

a cascade of thick, white tresses

and the sparkle in her eye as she told me stories

to the rhythm of her brushstrokes.

As a child, my grandmother had magic and mana to me,

and no matter how fate and time erode her,

nothing can strip the magic from our hearts.

The poet wishes to acknowledge The National Poetry Foundation (UK) in whose anthology this poem first appeared.

Stranded in the capital

Apologies to my fellow Tuesday poets and readers of Tuesday Poem, but I've missed two Tuesday postings because we came to Wellington for a school holiday visit and have been stranded by bleak weather from returning home.

I'm sorry I didn't know about the Helen Lowe get together in Wellington last night.

On a more positive note, I've just finished reading our own dear Mary McCallum's debut novel, The Blue, and I highly recommend it to one and all. A wonderful, engrossing, engaging read! Well done, Mary!

Tuesday Poem: "Naked and Blameless"

Stepping through a threshold

into a harsher light

illuminating pain                                     held onto tight

inside hands

made old with nurture and youthful

from grasping change                            held onto until

the palms bleed crimson with love,

love betrayed, love altered,

love bought, love sold

and love

flung green and hopeful on stony barren ground.

She goes forward,

a satyr dancing along the wild goat ruts

to the sparkle of the Aegean's music,

she goes forward,

joy singing its susurrating ocean

in her ears, deep in her heart

a whispering liberation snared by ghosts

until she feels her wings pinned

by the stones of her loins, jewels

weighed heavy with love and hope.

She goes forward,

cloaked in the wonder

of the person she has discovered within

her heartache

but where her bared feet press fresh and precious

against the stones

the hard green thorns outstretch

to snag a strand

of her hard-won mantle,

she goes forward,

little realising that her garment

is unravelling

until she stands on a promontory

gazing into the future where

the wind

whispers of her nakedness.

I wrote this poem some years ago for a friend who did not envision finding herself in her late thirties divorced, poorer and the principal caregiver of her two children who were still at primary school. But I suppose no-one would ever enter into marriage or any kind of committed relationship if they could foresee that it would end badly. To her credit, she picked herself up from the wreckage and began to refashion a new and different future for herself and her children.

The poet wishes to acknowledge Valley Micropress in whose pages this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "Playing with Thomas in Hagley Park"

We are immigrants in our own country,

lifestyle refugees

frolicking in this crisp, alpine weather.

Although you’re dressed like a miniature Inuit,

no amount of padding

can hide your delight

at play in the fields of the CCC.

Thomas, you connect me to the moment,

to the real,

with your joy so palpable

that it surrounds us like an aura.

Through your eyes I discover the world anew:

how the oak bark feels with its pattern

of vertical runnels, God’s reticulation;

how leaf mounds half-dried by a pale sun

unglue and fly

when prompted by tiny basketball shoes;

how daffodils spring like magic

from the thawed turf

to be sniffed in mimicry of the kitten

in your boardbook.

As twilight approaches,

I scoop you up in mid-adventure.

You protest loudly as I wheel you slowly away from

this place of life and breath and freedom

to merge into the slipstream of choking commuters.

When you live in a city that has been bent and broken and battered and bruised by a series of earthquakes, I guess it is inevitable that nostalgia creeps in and we remember wistfully how our city was in a kinder, gentler time. My wife and I moved down to Christchurch from Wellington in July 2000 when our oldest son, Thomas, was 15 months old. We were able to fulfill two dreams we could not afford in Wellington: to buy an affordable house with some land and to live near the sea. As it says in the poem, I considered us "lifestyle refugees", but that seemed a positive thing. Now, sadly, many people are fleeing Christchurch and that doesn't seem so positive. I truly hope that Christchurch can arise as a stronger, more cohesive, more socially equitable and, if possible, more beautiful city.

Tuesday Poem: "Don't Turn Around"

(for Nelson Mandela and my wife, Christine)

“Don’t turn around,”

they said,

“or you’ll miss it.”

And now I go,

always facing forward,

thanks to you.

Sometimes heaven opens a portal

when you’re rolling low

towards darkness

and you were its angel,

bearing glad tidings.

And now

I’m home

when my children wake me up;

I’m home

to collect my two sons from their

different educational institutions of excellence;

I’m home

to prepare the evening meal

for my wife

and no stone-age sniggers

can make me feel

emasculated,

since they have no concept

of emancipation.