Alice bin Wonderland
POETRY FORMAT, 6 Mar 2017
Evelyn Voigt – TRANSCEND Media Service
Or, The Mad Hatters Boston Tea Party with Special Guests
From Boston tea gladness, and McCarthy time madness
to Osama bin badness, and Bush era sadness,
we try to make sense of the mess that we’re in.
Seeking reprieve, we try to retrieve
the hat from the mirror, the rabbit within,
to see if indeed we’ve learned anything.
And there, all the while, near Trade Center towers
near bombs in the desert like fire work showers,
the mother still comforts her child: “Hush little baby, don’t you cry,
mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby”.
For my part, I just want to know where Alice hid the card.
You know, the card with the clue, to what we could do
in this topsy bin turvy, bin saviour,
bin scurvy, bin world, me and you;
Must the cups all be empty and breaking and, gee!
Must their shards tear our flesh?
All we want is some tea!
That bothers me!
Tell me, where will it all end,
in this Osama bin Ladened,
bin Bushed and bin hardened,
bin holding my breath,
bin domino theoried and brainwashed to death
world that we’re in.
Oh! Where will it end, when there’s clearly enough —
in fact one could say, an excess of stuff –
for all of our needs
in this topsy bin turvy, bin saviour bin scurvy,
bin world that we’re in;
Will it end in the breaking of bread
regardless of creed?
And maybe, just maybe… according to need?
And there, all the while, near Trade Center towers
near bombs in the desert like fire work showers
the mother still comforts her child:
“Hush little baby, don’t you cry,
mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby”.
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EvelynVoigt was born a German prisoner of war in what is now Zimbabwe. As a child in Africa, she alternated between running free on an isolated tea and coffee farm and submitting to Dickensian, British-style boarding schools also in Africa. Penning for peace is her passion and she received the Order of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002. She has performed in Canada and abroad and has authored Flying Snakes and Green Turtles, Tanzania Up Close and Letters from Helga. She currently volunteers toward the profession-wide accreditation of peace professionals through the Civilian Peace Service Canada www.civilianpeaceservice.ca and helps to raise funds for the Fox NGO through www.mufindiorphans.ca.
© Evelyn Voigt 2003
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 Mar 2017.
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Thank you, Evelyn Voigt–Splendid poem! It’s witty and word-playful, but about subjects that are dire: a time of “madness” and “sadness,” and even “badness,” when all the power-brokers and power-elite are truly guilty (whether they’re bin Laden or Bush or–let the reader beware!).
So, we may feel like Alice, lost in Wonderland, looking for “the card with the clue”–i.e., how do we get out of this mess…and back to sanity and a humane world?
All done cleverly, the way Jonathan Swift might have done it, the way Lewis Carol did it.