The news in poetry

Oct 10, 2021 Letters

By Haimnauth Cecil Ramkirath

I look at the faded, yellow-stained newspapers of last year.
The people, places, and seasons have changed.
We have new socks, new toothbrushes, new bills to pay.
But it’s the same, same, same news I read and hear today.
This damned dreaded virus will just not go away.
The school shootings seem all here to stay.
And when the ratings of the news channels are down,
providence sends a serial killer around,
leaks of insider trading, pandora papers, politicians caught napping.

The news is a long-twisted sensational wire
that wraps around our heads with blood and fire.
We are drained; our hairs turned grey in an hour.
Our dinners are desecrated by the breaking news.
We teared into the meat.
We teared into the neck of another monster on screen.

A scandal or a murder, it will be on the news hour.
A disgraced politician, our boots are on the rascal’s head.
The forests are all burning, tsunamis are coming.
How can we live with all this global warming?
But don’t worry, nirvana comes with a new pill from Big Pharma.
The news brings in the comic relief of a hushed court.
We examine and cross-examine witnesses.
We become experts in evidence and criminology.
With bated breath we wait and wait and wait for the verdict.
We dance in the streets; we break windows with bare fists.

The news hurts, but those recurring commercial breaks put us to the blade.
Waves of desires rise and never subside, when a sweet slim girl
invites us to that elegant new car.
If they are repeated, then the lies must be true.
Our feelings, our longing for life woefully twisted
by commercials that promise us too much,
that make us feel that we never lived.
And in those breaks, I take my mini walks,
lest I feel this robot-like atrophy of the heart.

And I sit and wait for the news that will make
me feel it’s still a beautiful world out there.

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