Happy yet?

So here we are. Humans in all our entirety. We have surged and mounted to such an incomprehensible level of achievement. Connected to our inferior caveman pasts only by the strands of DNA each stage possesses. We have discovered science and wisdom by delving deeply into the library of existence, grasping knowledge about the world and even beyond. We string our findings together and connect the workings of the world together. Like fishermen’s wives we link together discoveries until we form the net that explains all. We have developed technology that even a decade before us dreamt up for sci-fi films due to their perceived impossibility. From electricity to ipods and robots we have expanded and tested the boundaries of out potential human capability. Flying cars are now well within our grasp.
Technology is said to make daily tasks easier and quicker, creating efficient durations that let us focus on better things. We no longer have to dice our onions or cry about it, we can put them in an electrical chopper and so forth, using the time we have saved for leisure. It cannot be denied that medical advances have greatly improved the lives of many. But as we launce into new moderns, could we be leaving behind the greatest and irreplaceable forms of happiness possible?
We used to enjoy life itself. Nature in all its simplistic complexities and our connections to everything about the Earth. We ran, we tasted, we explored and we worshipped the sights of our world. We savoured each breath and appreciated the purity of the air it came from. Hapiness came from appreciation and our effort to enjoy. Mountains, waterfalls, buttercups and raindrops. We saw life. We played in the trees and sailed on rafts. We listened to the rain and felt the warmth of the sun like it was a blessing, for it let things grow. Light photosynthesising into life that we lived from. Such a miraculous world led to us believing in a divine creator, far omnipotent than a person could ever be to create the masterpiece of a living, rhythmic world. A human was another creature, in harmony with the natural cycles and connections that were right. Our eden.
We had balance and belonged to the world. Now we believe the world belongs to us. Now we create, and yet destroy far more.
Green forests and yellow fields turn to desolate black tarmac. We rip out trees our former indigenous people lived with. We endanger the beings we used to interact with and we choke nature with a grey and poisonous smog. Balance is abolished like our previous selves as combustion commences. People turn to broadband and watch sky whilst devouring GM burgers and desserts formed by additives. Obesity and bland personalities thrive from human success. From flat screens, iphones and digital cameras, we reminisce the natural world and view what’s left. Where is the beauty in a steel machine? What purpose do our lives have when we spend them playing videogames? What has become of our personal aspirations and appreciation of the world? We have turned the gift of life away. Our lives become battles. We selfishly war over oil, we discriminate against our own race, we use inventions to kill and we create misery.
New games, TV shows and technological trends are mass produced and improved by the second to entertain us and give us pleasure. Fishing with your Dad is deemed socially unacceptable, hiking is associated with nudism and anyone who watches the sunrise is an abnormal outsider. We drink, detaching ourselves from the reality we have made to escape it. The human goal has metamorphosed into searching for fulfilment and pursuing happiness, craving more instead of valuing what we have. The more we quest it by our manmade conventions, the more we distance ourselves from the true joys we already had. In our quests, we exploit more of the world’s resources, loosing even more of the original world itself.
A man holds gold in his hand. He snatches for glass thinking it a diamond, and drops the gold, not noticing it has slipped from his fingers.
Humans have evolved to gain such great intellect. With brains that also allow them to naively destroy their surrounding nirvana by trying to find it, or a concept of something greater that can never exist. When is the sunlight, the rocks, the rushes by the river and the birds in the sky ever seen in a sci-fi movie? We predicted an easier, chrome world of grey. With our capabilities, this “advance” is obtainable.

Chronological fading

People often say your life is like a timeline; the significant events in your life you can look back on.

The same as a high school history lesson, only this time it's a reflection on yourself and everything youve done.

This timeline grows everyday.

But you can get a shock when you look back along the line

and realise yours is starting to take a path away from those you love, or loved most.

Those special people that enjoyed the journey with you, to get you where you are today.

Yet with every tomorro, the become a bigger part of your history than your present and future

...something you may never expected.

static doubt

Static
fragment of doubt form
and buzz
a persistant blue-bottle of the mind.

The screen flickers
from black
to white.
A weaving confusion;
maggot dance.
And questions to ask why.

Whit noise seeps in
oh, please dont change the picture.

you grasp the remote,
the outcome
a button press away.

The news is on at ten.

worded she

she’s a yellow oxymoron,

your newest iambic pentameter

a rhythm always seeking new paces

and words you don’t understand.

She’s the opening stanza

That cant make sense

until the rest have been read

And the deeper meaning discovered

In a moment of revelation.

Enjambment-

on every line.

this undescribable, underlined upturned

alitteration.

The confusing concept

that is she.

She’s the adjective that describes the everyday verbs

That would sit there plain and undefined.

And as loud as an onomatopoeia.

She’s the ink on the pages

That ran out from your fountain pen

And blotted
As you worded thought.

She’s between pages closed

A Fading Metaphore

Unread

Undiscovered.

To walk

Poisoned, bound, dutied and tied,
held centred in this neighbourhood.

And all the grey these eyes can see,

Echoes in circles around this hard-cemented society.

Hum-drum and seen.

I pack a prepared misguidance

Stepping off this orange lit tarmac.

Refreshed.

And a chill,

As I watch my breath collide

with an open sky.

Sometimes its hard

to find your feet
When you still don’t know

Where they should be.

Push on glass.

Have I arrived

When I have no destination?

I brought these white shoes yesterday.

In the empty night

Roads become as endless as the dark.

I know the next town,

But the wonder still remains.

To disappear and not return

To where I always wanted to be.

Somewhere.

Itchy feet.

Fresh ground.

Fresh air and new sights

become my home, they give me faith;

Beauty can be seen,

And caught in a dew drop.

Hope.

In a world

of injustice and mutiny

Travel endlessly.

Or run,

Until the wind dies to a still.

That invisible force

Like time

We only fear because we cannot see or ever know.

Maybe I can learn to greet myself

Searching

For my reflection to break out

Open.

To rise and toast the feast.

sooner or later,

they’re going to ask

"where’s Molly?"

but ill be running along with the click clack of a train.

the peice

He looks

i’m drowning in this cardio-vascular moment

Fuzzy turquoise grey with puce swirls

He says it in chalked colours

a world of powder and bright dust

Displayed on a pavement

Tarmac for all to see

the colours spill

And run in the rain

Paint spots and inkblots merge and smudge

To create New colours

lines that slowly curve to the sky

And a confusion of brushes

As we paint like new professionals

Without a pallet

This accidental artwork that is ours

A one off original

That cannot be brought

So we stand and become the piece

Get to know its every motion

Beyond the surface texture

And belong

34 Miles to go. "What hope?"

Facing “National embarrassment”, the French authorities have closed the squalid camp outside Calais known as “the jungle”. Seven years beforehand the Red cross centre in Sangatte was also closed in foolish hope it resulted in the numbers of migrants arriving in Calais would just dwindle away. The “pushback” has begun, clearing camps and sending home migrants or placing them in dessert prisons to endure torture and packaging the problem into prison cells far away from the public eye. We are sending out the message that “the route is closed” for visitors but those entitles to asylum may also be shut out too.

The “Jungle” became a self made sanctuary; a refuge for those that had nowhere to go. The filthy campsite was made up of pathetic makeshift tents and feeble mosques to pray for deliverance in. Living in this “flea infested squalor”, the migrants were still better off then when they were in their original countries. Have we overseen the reasons they decided to live in such transient conditions? It is not proof that these people are so desperate for salvation and a better, safer life that that would endure any risky journey if it gave them the slightest chance of belonging to a country even minutely better than theirs?

Charity Salaam volunteer Helene appears to understand both sides of the situation better than the French authorities. She asks “You can close ‘the jungle’, but look at these people, do you think they can just disappear?”. I am reminded of a quite from Al Gore (an inconvenient truth) “There are good people, who are in politics, in both major parties, who hold this at arms' length, because if they acknowledge it, if they recognize it, then the moral imperative to do big changes would be inescapable”. In July nearly 800 people were living at the camp, fearing “what happens to us when they take this away?” They plea “please” as the bulldozers come regardless. A question still echoes from the lips of every migrant, it lingers on the newly uninhabited soil “What hope, what hope for us?”

Nearby, “Africa house”, an Eritrean refugee squat holds 50 more asylum seekers. An abandoned wreckage with no water, electricity or refuge collection homes despairing people in stinking, filthy rooms. Do you think they want to live here? The house is more like a no-man’s land; in the middle of searching and belonging to a country. A purgatory between the lives they once had, and the ones they aspire towards.

The white cliffs of Dover are sometimes visible from France, an aim and vision of hope. Brittan is just 34km away and yet so unobtainable. “The UK is often whispers about in reverential tones as a crime-free, multi-cultural nirvana”, it appears to migrants as a tolerant and peaceful country which can provide them with safety, help and improved life. These people have dreams of becoming doctors, engineers and teachers. The deserve the opportunity to live.

Yet we do not display our compassion towards the asylum seekers that have manages acceptance into the UK. We shout racist remarks at them and demand they “go back to their own country” as they are “stealing” our benefits, jobs and healthcare. Haven’t they suffered enough? Do they not deserve the same treatment as us, the same help and opportunities? Is it any wonder they need healthcare after the physical and mental trauma they have experienced? We forget that two thirds of their £30 weekly allowance is in vouchers only and that returning home would be a death sentence for many. Their motive is not the UK’s benefit system, but hope. Whatever happened to equality? Perhaps we should help the countries these unfortunate people originated from. Until these places are amended, these “immigration problems” will continue”.

In 2000 the UK received the largest amount of asylum applications of any EU country and were called a “soft touch”, yet the number of asylum seekers who were recognised as genuine more than doubled to 72.5% between 1998 and 1999, which undermines the suggestions that most applications are “bogus“. Instead of rejecting migrants and denying them the life we take for granted we need to understand their situation and reasons for asylum. We’ve seen the news stories, read the facts and are somewhat aware of the problems their countries face. However, we can never comprehend or truly understand their sufferings as we have not experienced nor witnessed such horror, simply because we are lucky enough not to have to. As a result, we disconnect ourselves from reality and focus on ourselves, complaining about their presence; “they only cause a nuisance”.

We forget about the ordeals they had to face just to reach their present destination. Risking their lives to arrive at Calais because the lives they had beforehand were not worth living. African bodies are often found washed up on Mediterranean tourist beaches as a result of inflatable boats bursting which are used to smuggle people across the sea. Nick Griffin, chairman of the BMP, states “ frankly they need to sink several of these boats. They can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya” The migrants pleas go unheard, ignored; “we don’t need to go back to our own country”. They have become aliens, trespasses and permanent travellers. People that don’t belong, with nowhere to go.

102,870 cases are still pending asylum. What happens to those that are not recognised as genuine? Where do people go whilst their applications are still pending? By the end of the last decade, there were still 200,000 asylum applications still pending in EU countries, over half were in the UK. Hope comes to a standstill whilst the backlogging and application process commences.

A question is asked in unity; “what hope, what hope for us?”

And what help?