The ‘Happiness Report’
from the pagan haven
of a gated resort
Machine tooled
from a block of concrete
Then deposited upon
a mangrove swamp
along a once pristine coast
Now a checkpoint
and a guard tower
The lungs of nature
dying …
of tourist cancer
The Armada Piranha
is docking
The beggars are begging
Poverty’s children
smiling and waving
at the old slave port
Guns in the sun glistening
The muscle bulging
of an armed escort
for the affluent
swimming in effluent
With their sparkling hoard
and their devouring brood
all on board
the shuttle bus El Gringo
A seafood of greed
that cult of stolen cargo
From diamonds of blood
to a eulogy
of white ivory
A black market fiasco
Nothing cocaines
the profit margins
like a prohibitive embargo
The primate destructive
at a carnival sideshow
In the bliss of ignorance
evil hides and thrives
at “The Festival of Happiness”
with the Mother of all Sorrow
Suntan lotion
Carbolic acid
Dead coral broken
Crafts of pleasure
Fossil fuel
upon living water
Dredged . . .
the oceans deep
Felled . . .
a forest lost
Mother Nature
now a shadow
being put to sleep
All for a culture
of the broken shallow
Like sheep
bred, fed, and led
on a group tour
to the slaughter
Kiss goodbye
yellow fin tuna
The blue fin
soon to follow
Perish the thought
with no thought
for tomorrow
In pursuit of strange danger
A plastic curse
upon your water sports
flowing from an open bar
at Hotel El Burro
Pobreza espiritual
Los niños la pobreza
A state of police
and broken rites
Lese Majesté
“The Festival
of Returning Happiness”
declaring an end
to civil unrest
with the flying of big kites
When wealth
and privilege whispers
a military junta dictates
It’s corporate sponsor
and big time donor
with fear for ears
always listening
No leaders of protest
left amongst the living
Their children dispossessed
by the sons of private beaches
in a land bled dry
The wild colonial boys
of an industrial revolution
on a summer holiday high
like sea turtles returning
from oceans blue
to golden shores
for a buffet breakfast
after much drunken
and anonymous spawning
Safe now for honoured guests
of the high maintenance west
to resume their vacationing
Come walk upon hibiscus petals
like comic strip deities
with super powers
Come harvest our lotus flowers
Gasoline
in whisky bottles
Two wheel scooting
Street dealers chasing
“Viaga, Señor … or
perhaps something harder?”
Like a dose
of refugee living
A golden temple
of demolition rubble
The dragon flying
over an open sewer
of tropical trouble
The destruction pure
following bad advice
Ruins of paradise
a global choice
of invested western vice
Always there’s trouble
down near the border
The powder keg
forcing a spark
Nurses shot dead
on their way to work
And dare not educate
your shrouded daughter
Innocence taken captive
and kept helpless
in the dark
A religion of disorder
where a woman
is just a possession
to the patriarch possessive
and tribal aggressive
No honour in the killing
casting the first stone
Nor in the submission
to divisive division
Hollow pride
how many have died
saving face?
Lost children
of gods fallen
and forgotten grace
out of time
and out of place
Acid rain in the brain
and a soul down the drain
All the truths
Of this world
adding up
to one big lie
A stratosphere of bullshit
between you
and a clear blue sky
Tourista Fashionista
doing just fine
The question
you need to ask yourself
Is your tourist dollar
funding . . .
a state of crime?
Pobreza espiritual
Los niños la pobreza
The ‘Report of Happiness’
from a free range anthropologist
upon a Quest Majesté;
God will restore the whole earth
and give it to his messy
carbon based children
… as an inheritance.
~ david redpath © 2018
Photography:
david redpath © 2018
For more of David’s work, please visit: Highway Bloggery
This hit me like a punch in the stomach…such terrible, hopeless truth; so incredibly well written… “the affluent swimming in effluent” indeed…
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Thank you Patti.
I guess you had to be there.
Not as a tourist, off course,
of course.
As a free roaming
anthropologist.
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Actually, you took us ALL there quite well…🙁🙁🙁
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Wow, exceptional work. Almost too much reality to stomach in one sitting.
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Thanks for the
intestinal fortitude
to be reading.
I was convulsing
in the writing.
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David,
Beautiful piece! So many true and telling lines. I love this:
“The lungs of nature dying of tourist cancer”
What an expose we have here!!
Oh, the tourist fishbowl that is the resort!
An absurd and foolish representation of a country seen through the myopic sunglasses of happy, sunburned, stuffed and drunk travellers….what a scam! You can buy just about any lie of happiness with the right amount of money. Just don’t ask to be taken to the real city!
I’ll give you cash in exchange for a hallucinogenic hit of paradise where poverty, misery and desperation are wiped clean.
Heck, I’ll even throw in a tip if you promise to protect me (with your armed guards) from real life 😉 you know, that life which exists just beyond these gates of make believe…
Amazing piece, David..really made me think about the ways in which we exchange money, barter and play ostrich.
-Wilde
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Mia,
I am truly humbled.
For the broken hearted,
the crushed in spirit, by
the strife of life crumpled,
there is always hope
… for those seek it.
I hope my words
not too bleak.
I try only to write
what I truly see.
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Thank you very much Wilde
4 your profound reflections.
I believe we are all World
Citizens, issued at birth with a passport of freedom. Yet the crime
of Crapital Imperialism,
it seems is there to be seen everwhere my feet go.
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Every one has already said it and ripped my favourite quotes from this towering commentary of humanity, or lack their of. How you’re able to maintain your flow at such length is beyond me. Slap a Harmonica on you and you’ll definitely be Bob Dylan’s spiritual doppelganger.
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As a certified Dylanite,
you cannot bestow a higher
honour than to be mentioned
in the same sentence as
the noble Nobel laureate
of literature. In who’s shadow
I stand illiterate.
Thanks A.G.
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You’re very welcome, Sir. It was quite powerful.
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Reblogged this on David Redpath.
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The kind of poetry I love. Hits you straight in the gut. Makes you either speechless or wanting to scream. My baby’s asleep so I’m screaming inside me.
Bravo, bravo, bravo. Hats off, D.
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Thank you, Bojana.
I’ve been simmering on this one for awhile,
so it may have have come out like a burst
of steam. But by all means, be my guest,
and I’ll join you in a silent scream.
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I love such stream of consciousness the most. Keep up the good work.
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You’ve summed up the human race, both the winners and the losers, plus the death of species effect too many of ‘us’ by choice or sheer weight of ever increasing numbers are causing/have caused the planet and exterminating or threatening the same of all living things formerly enjoying themselves, on it. I’m with you all the way on this.
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The primate destructive, and
the adversary of biodiversity.
Thanks Zoolon, for reading
and commenting.
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