The Search for Meaning

Some would say - ah -
confessional poetry -
whingeing women droning on -
what could be valid?

But only the individual's
unique experience
of the passage of days
can ever have authenticity.

Authors write, each one,
a celebration of their own endeavour
to overcome the daily challenge -

no longer to forage for food and shelter,
but to find reason, sense, purpose,
for the effort to exist.

Released from ploughing fields,
now we are cast adrift in factories
producing sheepskin rugs for Abu Dhabi,
losing jobs to third world countries
and researching sales trends for energy drinks.

How to tolerate such banal existence?
Where is the dream egg, the idea egg,
to hatch and lend relevance to toil?

To 'think too much'
is to gurgle in a swill of alcohol,
or drift on a malaise of depression.
Self-medicate away the plague of inconsistencies.
The meaningless harp of jingles, catch phrases -
buy this button, hear this band, wear this logo,
these sunglasses, shoes, T.V. Playstation: I, II, III,
extra sensory surround sound, ultra sonic,
mega millennium, uba future,
buy tomorrow today,
have the best first -

the more you buy the more real you will become.
I have stuff, therefore I am.

And when you die, your stuff
will be converted back to cash
and distributed among friends and relatives,
or bull-dozed into landfill.

The memory of your life will dissipate
in empty rooms where psychics
claim to read your image,
lost and vacant, in some future day.

Only your confessions,
spilled out on some internet blog,
a rubbish-dumped hard drive,
or occasional unread poetry journal,
might survive -

ramblings of a madwoman
in a sleepless night.