Guyanese Online

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME? – By Norman Datt

What have we become?

We call ourselves civilized

Maybe to some

We’ve left the mechanized

Become so dumb

Become so computerized

But our minds numbed

Still cluttered with evil

With sparks

To lend an ear to the devil

How so-called civilized are we when

From bottom to top

We’re ready to criticize our fellow men

At a hat’s drop

Before we can count from one to ten

We can’t stop

So illogical

To pass judgment before a trial

So quickly

Reinforcing it with every denial

Look at us

We see ourselves as sophisticated

More than plus

But our brains are still mechanized

Full of pus

And old biases still to be eradicated

In space

We’re proud of our every achievement

On earth

And we’ve destroyed our environment

Some of us are advanced and powerful

Yet they moan

Use their position and become hateful

Like a bad bone

It’s scary when power becomes spiteful

On their own

Bringing the downtrodden

Down to their humble bent knees

Becoming blind

Seeing the forest and not the trees

We wrap ourselves in our own compartment

In invisible cages

We have come far yet lack good judgement

Behaving like sages

Achieving less in the thinking department

And other stages

As we idle

Drooling and end up doodling

Paying no heed

Whom do we think we are fooling?

Even the young and innocent

Becoming real asses

We are always sheer hell bent

Making obscene passes

For our own selfish fulfillment

Trampling the masses

Abusing our women

Coloureds and natives

Abusing children

Using many superlatives

We’re trying to find out what’s up there

With A1 technology

They say it’s the survival of our welfare

Yet no one can see

Our numerous earthly problems here

Like the economy

Like the rich

And the haves and the have-nots

Like politicians

Using words, promises and buts

We try hard to make contact

With the unknown

But down here we fail to act

With our very own

We can’t communicate is a fact

We can’t set the tone

We’ve come a long way looking fine

But look behind

At the bread-line and the soup-line

Trying to find

Whilst the above thinking only of mine

Turning an eye

Scorning the homeless in city shelter

And the handicapped

As the sick and lame run helter skelter

Some have hearts as black as tar

Inept gov’ts. neglecting their population

And spent most money on war

Let their country-men die of dehydration

And aid has to come from afar

From others to prevent mass starvation

What have we become

Are these men or weevils

To turn their backs

On their wretched peoples

When the Hippocratic Oath is discarded

By our medical doctors

Behaving as if they are mentally retarded

Becoming abusers

Abusing women who once regarded

These professionals as healers

It’s more than a medical shame

When in this field we lose respect for those

Whom we can unequivocally blame

For our medical and all emotional throes

Do we only feel when we are hurting

When the ones involved

Are our own kith and kin that are dying

Do we feel absolved

When we help ’cause it’s embarrassing

Or let it be resolved

By the living

When folks of our own native land

Are dying

And we can’t give a helping hand

What have we done to our history

When the truth we do twist

To give heroic pictures to our story

Clouded by an irreligious mist

As we colour our patriots with glory

Ridiculing the others on the list

Making the Battle of the Little Big Horn a curse

As the General Custer made his last stand between

Defiant Sitting Bull and the cagey Crazy Horse

Wiping out 261 soldiers, Majors Reno and Benteen

What have we become when we change

Documents to please our command

When we still can’t find the range

The big damage a little bullet did and

How after over 55 years, so strange

Experts are still trying to understand

What happened that fatal day

When in Dallas they shot Kennedy

Even the experts would not say

It was a disgraceful conspiracy

The Neo-Nazis are forming their bases

Preachers of the non-existence of the Holocaust

Making a come-back in some places

These apologies are repeating the painful past

And many are turning away their faces

At the awesome Auschwitz memories which will last

The same kind of belief which gassed 6 million Jews

Are camouflaged today as ethnic cleansing

The poor folks of Sarajevo and Bosnia can’t choose

And evil prosper when good men do nothing

Can we teach our kids about decency

When our leaders die by assassination

Because of their civil rights policy

When we do not like their pigmentation

Trying to turn back the hand of history

Just because some have might

To stifle his dreams

The Rev. Martin Luther was murdered

When he told the truth

Then Malcolm X’s belief was destroyed

What have we become when we clamour

With no shame

For Gold from rich Brazil without amour

To you it’s the same

But to others who never tasted the glamour

It’s more than a game

That gold was mined with chemicals

That gold on your neck and your fingers

Has already taken million lives

By poisoned mercury in the Amazon waters

Look what is the result

When we worship the devil and the dead

A real ungodly insult

When we moved away from the Godhead

To a no-name brand cult

When to witchcraft our souls we shed

Making it the order of the day

Is this the end of the world?

When lesbians, homos have more say

As their LGBT flag they unfurl?

Man the killer

Who destroys everything

Man the eater

Who eats anything

Who leaves nothing

Who destroys the fauna

Kills the whales and dolphins

Man the taker

Who destroys the flora

Will have to pay for his sins

What’ve we become we’ve changed

So very little

Is it because we are racially deranged?

Becoming brittle

When Negro-lynching was not so strange

As we whittle

At disadvantages

Now it is encouraged surreptously

As we whoop, holler and shout

As heads are turned as churches burn

As disadvantages are carried out

How careless can man become

To have eyes and not see

When the gov’t look after only some

Only worrying about the invisible enemy

As the same rhetoric they hum

Promising 4 more years to prosperity

Yet will now have to spend billions in aid

More costly than some flood defences

More costly than the priceless Free Trade

What have we become when

Wives are addicted to soap operas

Where men run around with other women

As watchers try to imitate the actors

And when the kids reach the age of ten

They too try to be young imitators

Whereas time spent watching soaps

Can be used to mould the young

Making them good decent citizens

Disciplined with a civil tongue

When blind-faith is in question

When we lose faith in the military

With botched investigation

Like in the Iowa in the US navy

With a blundering explosion

When young servicemen were killed

Mothers can’t get the answers

How can you have a trial for the evils

By those who think they are above God

With leaders as obnoxious as weevils

How dumb or heartless can we be

When we sacrifice our own for politics

Sell our mother in the name of ideology

As in the case of the SS Lusitania

Or using the SS Greer

To lure Americans in World War II

Or to defy the above

Calling the Titanic unsinkable

Trying to play God

Such acts are unpardonable

I grew up in another land as a lad

I had looked forward for the time

When I can be glad and not sad

To the future which looks sublime

Many like me felt we’ve been had

By leaders who are slippery slime

By merchants not from Venice but every city

Who judge everything by the dollar sign

Have forgotten the basics of life in this society

Who never think of ours but only of mine.