The newswires light up again
With more tales from the Dark Continent again
Another tale of yet another ship
Falling down in flames from the skies
Bringing down some peasants crops
And hope of harvest
Bringing more stories of denied life chances
Right on cue
The newswires mutate into
live feeds
Spewing out their own take on
technology’s latest dastardly deeds
Right on cue
The high chiefs and viziers
declare their anger
Their heartache and unspeakable loss
And call down curses
on the heads of the evil doers
The feeds and wires bear tales of
Confusion and conflagration
Deception and corruption
Terror and heartache
Painting vivid pictures of
The broken and mangled remains
Old, young, infant remains
Scattered over the size of a football field
Or a hundred cricket pitches or central parks
Or a country estate depending on the audience
All of whom are catered for
From Lord Humphries
To trailer trash housewives on speed
To Johnny Knoxville’s homies
Blue and hazel eyes roll in their sockets
Yet again they tut and sigh and pat heads
Yet again but not sincere or heartfelt anymore
Some of the eyes ask bluntly,
“Haven’t we just been here before?”
2.
The king decrees that the land mourns
He commands that the pitch of the unending
chorus of wails and shrieks
be raised even higher
and that voices hoarse from crying
strain even more
The ritual cycle already routine
and becoming a repetitive bore
The king and chiefs have their sympathisers
Well rehearsed and needing no prompting
The refrain is the same
From enough years,
or is it weeks?
of practice
God knows why, God is in charge
By His grace this will be the last time
God knows why,
so don’t play the blame game
All questions go to him,
I am just a messenger
I only work
or is it steal?
here
No I am not the evil doer
Outside the palaces
there is the gnashing of teeth
Like the grinding of twisting metal
Yet more dead are buried again
With the same bare hands that pulled them out
Wailing women fall with a dull thud
Like that of the ship when it hit the ground
Hearts are broken and seared with fire
Like those that no one had any water to put out.
The wailing and chaos is followed
By a ghostly silence
Because the mourners know it will never end
Because there are more ships left to burn
And there is no shortage of sailors
risking their lives for gold coins
Because the wires can’t stay hot forever
The audience needs other disasters
Because we will forget
as we’ve been here and done it before
Enough times not to be worth remembering anymore.
Dedicated to victims of Nigerian air accidents in the last 12 months
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