Scribes

Arrayed in long, showy robes,

(first century Armani,

bespoke, suits cut to impress);

commanding attention.

We know that they are important,

social and religious heavyweights;

demanding to be taken seriously.

They are among the nation's leaders,

and clearly know better than the rest of us;

soaring high above the crowd,

magnificent, learned, erudite.

Highly respected,

these Scribes lack nothing;

except compassion.

© Ken Rookes 2015

Vineyard violence

He told many stories.

One centred on a vineyard

where opportunistic tenants flout the law;

employing violence

to intimidate their way to wealth.

Nothing new, here.

That tradition goes back to Ahab,

and far beyond; the ruthless grabs

for property and power.

They continue, gathering pace.

In our time the violence

may be more subtle; it is no less real

or cruel. It springs from corporations,

boardrooms, banks, and speculators;

as commodities, goods and services                                                                                                                

are traded and sold,

along with the poor.

Land is snatched,

forests are stripped and burned,

and people are moved on,

along with other inconvenient life-forms.

The earth is gouged and torn,

while mines and factories pour their despoliation

into clouds, rivers and oceans.

The storyteller told his tale

as an allegory of the fruits of generosity and love

expected from those who find themselves

in the divine kingdom.

Its catalogue of ascendingly violent acts

was, of course, made up;

a literary device designed to engender outrage

among his hearers.

The violence that attends our planet

and its peoples, however,

is bleedingly real.

There are, at story’s end,

two assurances: that the cruel and brutal

will receive justice,

and that those who are otherwise unworthy

will be graciously included.

We can only hope

that these promises might be true.

© Ken Rookes 2014

Building bigger barns

Building bigger barns

Dwelling in the frantic phoniness
that fills the weeks
between the calling of the election
and the voting,
we are confronted by the various parties’ priorities
for building bigger barns.
We shall gather to ourselves
and lock away for the fearful future
those things that make us rich,
that we value above all else.
We shall erect a barn for the borders
that must be desperately protected
from people who voyage in boats;
poor, fearful, and as wretched as the vessels
to which they have entrusted their lives and their hopes.
Wealth shall be gathered into silos
and defended against the ravages of responsibility
that might see it paying for the big clean-up
that everybody knows will have to come. One day.
There shall be a separate, sheltered barn
for leaders afraid of making decisions
that might prove to be unpopular,
lest they no longer enjoy the favour of the people.
This is democracy, and it has its own barn,
galvanized and gleaming in the sun.
There is also a barn, full and overbursting
with responsible economic policies,
that all of our leaders are required to visit regularly,
to establish their correct credentials,
or else we will not place a number low enough
 in the boxes beside their names.
They say that there is a barn, somewhere,
that holds the nation’s store of compassion, truth and justice.
It is apparently a small barn
and there are no proposals to build a larger one;
besides, its GPS coordinates are believed to have been mislaid.

© Ken Rookes

So also the tongue

So also the tongue

James 3:5-10

The heart is hungry,

the tongue is its servant.

“More, more,” it cries,

even though it has never missed a meal

and knows that the storehouses overflow.

The heart is greedy;

the tongue insists,

“I know what is best

for your well-being.

Trust me, make me your king;

these others are fools.”

The mines thrust deeper

to ravage red earth,

forests are levelled,

while quarries gobble their way

to the horizon and beyond.

The heart is never satisfied.

“More, more!” the tongue shouts

at gargantuan dozers and digging machines;

“Less, less!” the tongue protests against

the people and their taxes.

They are an inconvenience, undeserving;

annoying obstacles to the heart’s

never-ending lusts.

The heart will never have enough,

even as multiple tongues bring

their restless evil workings

to the task.

© Ken Rookes 2012

The land trembles


The land still trembles
under terrible and insatiable burdens:
desperate urges to acquire and to accumulate
the wealth that we worship
and in which we have placed our trust.
The poor are still bought for a few pieces of silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
Today it happens in an overseas factory
or sweatshop for designer jeans or sports shoes;
whilst we anxiously flock to the purveyors
of all things shiny and new, lest we miss out.
Nothing ever changes
as the words of Amos the prophet
are either sanitized or avoided.
For the sake of economic and political expediency
we close our eyes and stop our ears.
We pretend that all is well with God’s world,
as we gather to ourselves
leaders with words that caress and reassure,
declaring that, in his/her benevolence,
God wants for God’s pious and faithful flock
the benefits and security of comfortable wealth,
along with all its trappings.
So it is that we self-righteously demand
cuts to our taxation, limits to our welfare
and strength to our borders;
lest the wretched, the unworthy
and the undeserving should receive anything
to which they are patently not entitled.

Ken Rookes