the obscenity of the banal

gores into our being

 

becoming so vulgar and common-place

rendering us blinded and unseeing

 

the obscenity of a 14 year old girl

sold for her virginal flesh and smooth skin

 

the obscenity of a 76 year old man

beaten down and trampled by his own kin

 

the obscenity of the banal

renders us mute and impotent and to blame

for all the obscenities we turn our heads away from

render us all culpable in the ledgers of humanity’s shame

 

the obscenity of the banal

is pock-marked with our complicity

 

the obscenities we accept each day betrays our own duplicity

 

the obscenity of the 35 year old woman slaving like a hog

cursed at and spat on and thrashed by the filthy rich man’s excess

 

the obscenity of the 9 year old boy who is the man of the shack

bound and gagged by a society too blinded by its own image of its success

 

the obscenity of the 47 year old single mother of three

trying against impossible odds to feed and clothe and shelter them all

 

the obscenity of the 17 year old teenage boy who must drop out of school

in order to assist his ailing mother as she works from dawn till dusk pushing her fruit stall

 

the obscenity of the banal

makes me sick in my stomach each and every time I see

my own face in the mirror for i am as complicit as you or she or he

 

the obscenity of one-thousand dollar shoes for elegant feet

the obscenity of a malnourished baby suckling at his mother’s dry teat

 

the obscenity of the glitz and the glamour and the sweet-smelling suave-talking chap with the perfect tan

the obscenity of the dead-eyed 14 year old whose innocence is plundered by that same charming moneyed man

 

the obscenity of the banal

is there for us to see day in and day out

the obscenities around us that we choose not to care a hoot about

 

the obscenity of the powerful as they wreak havoc sans morals, sans shame

the obscenity of the religious ones who hack and kill in their blind god’s name

 

the obscenity of the banal

is a shameful truth that we all must know and we all must see

but we have been blinded by our greed as we fuck and party and work-hard and play-harder and buy and sell and raise a hue and a cry for ‘our’ people to be free

 

the obscenity we witness in your town and mine

in your village and his

in her street and yours

in that alley and in this hotel and in that and in this without end

is a scar on our so-called morality which we passionately defend

 

the obscenity of the banal

rips open the veneer of our silence and exposes our wretched disgrace

revealing a rotting carcass of ugly truths that we will choose never to face

 

the obscenity of the banal

continues as we work and fuck and play and dance and meditate and pray

while the daggers of our complicit silence rips even more as we feast and slay

 

the obscenity of the banal

will never ever come to an end in this day or the next or in some far-off morrow

for we have become so self-absorbed that we cannot even acknowledge the others’ sorrow

 

for who are they, these ones of which we speak?

the humanimals who beg and steal and who of cheap and stale urine reek

 

and thus the obscenity of the banal will forever stay with us

until we clean out our minds that have become so filled with apathetic pus