It’s Not My Problem

IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM

Looking at the world through television
Seeing the images of gloss and glitter
Complacent in my cocoon of civilization
Somalia still starves

Listening to the radio gurus
Debating our run-down economy
Blaming bosses and workers and pollies
Bosnians still die

Reading the words in todays newspaper
Telling me what to buy and also
About scandals and sport and powerful men
The Kurds have no home.

Leafing through the newest glossy weekly
Chronicling all the latest escapades
Of people who say they are important
Khmer fields are still mined

Yelling at the football – carn the Eagles
It’s a pity the umpires are so biased
My team will win and I’m a winner too
But Hani lies dead

My jobs gone with no chance of another
I’ll get the dole so my family can eat
While I sit and complain and have a beer
East Timor’s not free

Going to the movies, a good night out
Boy gets girl or the other way round
For we must be politically sound
Nazi’s are marching again

A television documentary
A silly waste of time, about a war
or starving or suffering foreigners
Its not my problem

J.E.McL. Early in the nineties