21st Century

"I can see all obstacles in my way"
(With thanks to Johnny Nash)

I wish I had a light-box with which to see the world more clearly;
I wish it was possible to see right down to people’s souls.

I wish we could understand people by the colours of their thoughts instead of the colour of their skin;
to know them by the music of their minds instead of the disharmony of their words.

I wish we could read people like a book with pleasant plot twists and happy surprise endings.

Instead the syntax is garbled, the words misspelled, the stories unimaginative, the characters self-indulgent.

I wish the good guys glowed with smiles and light, and the bad’ns carried warning signs;
that people were judged by good deeds rather than good looks and a bank account.

I wish people would listen to what is said instead of hearing what they expect.

I wish that good would triumph over evil, and truth over prevarication with more frequency.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©21 February 2017

If we don't Listen how will we Hear?

"Do You Hear Me Now?" (song)

(With thanks to Bert Jansch)

If I avert my gaze from the ills of the world;
If I cover my ears to the wails and cries

Who will hear me when I call?

Who will listen when I speak?

If I silence my thoughts,
put a finger to my lips;
refuse to speak out when the world is in flames;
who will heed me when I warn of lightening, smoke and ash?

If not me who, if not now when?

If I do not call things by their true name,

If I do not see things as they really are,
if I only look the other way;
who will know my heart, who will hark to my voice?

If the only words we hear are our own, the only vision ours,
then for whom do we speak, for whom do we write, for whom do we draw?

If we are only an echo of ourselves
then who will answer in the canyon's expanse?

If not now when, if not us then who?

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 18 February 2017

Humanity

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

(With thanks to Sir Terry Pratchett)

Art is ephemeral
It is in the mind of the beholder;

It is balance, it is asymmetry.

Art is finely crafted,
it is roughly hewn.

Art is fleeting, art is permanent;
it is brightly coloured or darkling greys.

Art is bold crescendos.

It is minor chords,
it is minstrel’s lute.

It is Rhapsody in Blue.

Art is soaring spires,
it is a cottage in a glen.

Art is couplets, it is pirouettes,

It is soliloquies

It is rap.

Art is neatly worded on an ink stained page.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 11 February 2017