there is evidence
that others exist
outside of ourselves

or

at

least

outside of myself

but

maybe

this dream never ends

we have seen

that the beasts of Babylon
were not the demons we took them for
but products of a blacker ink
than previous pens were wont to drip;

they were the monsters
we needed them to be,
living in a hotter hell of our creation
to cool the flames that lick our skins

now we see nothing,
for we have carved out our eyes,
now we hear nothing,
for we have dug out our ears

it makes it easier,
only our dreams to deal with now,
but we’ll take care of those
sooner or later…

this glass was transparent
once

this glass was almost not there;
so clean you couldn’t even see it,
and the light that came through –
it was pure
like gold trapped in air

now the surface is grey streaked
from lack of attention
and what streams in now
is a deeper blood copper
casting sunset shadows
across a foot worn floor

The media is the fourth estate, the other three being the medieval clergy, nobility and the people. The Fourth Estate was first used to refer to the media by Edmond Burke in England in 1787 at the allowing of the press to cover the House of Commons.

According to the Canadian Association of Journalists “journalists draw their own conclusions about the necessity and direction of a story — and of the underlying veracity of facts. Such conclusions are drawn in a disinterested way – that is, independently of consideration of the effect, for good or ill , of the coverage provided. The economic or other benefits to companies, organizations or movements do not drive journalists’ choices.”

Last year The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper with more than 160 years of history was accused of what I would consider one of the greatest breach of ethics a journalist of institution of journalism can be accused of – making news coverage dependent upon and/or influenced by the profit/revenue decisions of the organization. The linking of journalism with business.

This has been something that has been weighing on me for a while now. Not because I have a vested interest in the Telegraph but rather because I have invested a good deal of my life in journalism and journalism has invested in me – it is something I take very seriously and hold to high regard.

The state of journalism and journalistic ethics has seemed to erode over the years. Either journalists are being pushed to extreme political perspectives invading what should be unbiased articles and stories with obvious bias or they are being asked to compromise news coverage based on decisions of revenue and organizational stature.

The issue of the Telegraph is encapsulated in the following quote from an article in The Guardian, another British newspaper:

“This week the paper’s integrity suffered something of a body blow when its highly respected former chief political commentator, Peter Oborne, published a devastating attack on the newspaper’s ethical standards. Mr Oborne detailed a pattern of behaviour in which, he said, stories had been suppressed, removed, downplayed, boosted or discouraged in order not to offend – or, alternately to please – advertisers and/or financial institutions.”

I can say unequivocally that any organization that seeks to affect or otherwise manipulate its news and its journalists is unworthy of the role and a place in the fourth estate. We must resist with every fibre of our integrity the push to compromise our ethics as journalists.

There are not many places left people can trust when it comes to news and this must be guarded even to the point of leaving our places of employment if necessary.

This is what we were taught. We need to remember it.

 

like frost reaching across the rooftops,
or ice sliding along the window’s glass,
winter is creeping slowly forth
as a crystal-encasing death
to wrap us in her marble-cold,
beautiful white, bloodless arms
as she leans in and whispers –

“give me your heat, 
                            become one with me”

is it truth as i see it,
truth as it is

or TRUTH
all caps and boss
that is captured
when i look into the world
and put those images to word?

i don’t know if i would know truth
if it bit me in the ass…

a wise man once said –

“what is truth?”

as if he wouldn’t know it
if it were bleeding before him
and staring him in the face

so we put it to death daily
and it comes back stubbornly with the dawn,
knowing it is oxygen to our starved hearts
and light to our blind, white eyes;
it comes back
like some masochist that needs our fists
which we happily plow into its face –
no safe word agreed to
and,
if truth be told,
no safe word wanted.

is it truth i see
when i look outside of myself?

 

if it’s dark all the time
and the sky has been too black
its only because this planet’s so big
and we started at dusk on the dark side

don’t worry…

sunrise is right around the corner,
just over the horizon

where ya’ gonna go
when every beat’s a step,
a step in a great circle
goin’ round and round and round?

an’ i memoriz’d every last tree
an’ i felt every last breeze
til’ they come rollin’ around again
drown’n out an’ burying
the on-comin’ scream
like a sock stuff’d in my mouth
’til the bad goes away,
restrained by the should’s an’ the gotta be’s

 

Apparently there used to be a time when one’s inmost thoughts, prejudices and extremes were kept hidden deep inside oneself to fester like so much toxic waste. Sometimes, if you were surrounded by your closest confidantes you might dig a little up and vent a bit around coffee or a beer but that was generally it.

These days however social media shows you every damn ugly shit-stained piece of ideological garbage that it can get its hands on…and the worst thing is the filth comes from your friends and, to our shame, it comes from ourselves.

Once upon a time we kept our racist, xenophobic and hostile thoughts to ourselves assuming we were relatively alone in the world – no more – now in a world of more than 7 billion people if you find 10 others on Facebook who share your black views that’s a community by God and we are emboldened to ooze our puss everywhere and on everyone.

This is why I will never run for political office. I don’t have the stomach for it.  Everyone hates everyone and they ain’t afraid to tell you and every other person in existence.

We should not complain too loudly about our leaders – after-all we made them – these are the heroes we deserve (to quote Batman).

Would we be better off not knowing so much about each other’s garbage? I don’t know. Maybe. Our increasingly small world is spinning faster and faster and like contents trapped in a centrifuge we are being thrown to the extremes. Balance seems to have been lost (if it was ever there in the first place).

What place do words like grace, forgiveness, compassion, love, peace, patience, kindness, joy, goodness, gentleness and self-control have in this world? They are seen as weak and useless or twisted so much as to become unrecognizable and love means hate.

If it is dark it is because we are turning the lights off one by one.