I don’t read the newspapers anymore.
I deliberately choose to avoid the ‘news’.
I have abandoned Radio 4, the news at 9 and 10
and every other bulletin-ridden hour -
in fact the whole plethora of extensive and varied
technology-driven information.

I don’t read the newspapers anymore.
I don’t need to see the never-ending supply
of blood-spattered images that feed our morbid lust,
the vainglorious politicians trotting out their well-worn stuff,
and I am sick of being told we need
to be informed to change things.
‘Knowledge’, ‘education’, ‘communication’
have never been so widespread
yet hatred and destruction grow, unchecked.
Our ‘development’ has only enabled us
to kill and destroy on a larger, more impressive scale.

I don’t read the newspapers anymore,
because I don’t need to be reminded
that we have never learnt from history.
I don’t need to have my faced rubbed in the fact
that the testament to our ‘advancement’,
as the ‘intelligent’ life form on this planet,
was the murdering, in the last century alone
of over one hundred million fellow human beings.
We are so clever.

I will read the newspapers again
when I can raise my head and be proud to say
that I am a member of the human race.