The Sultan Whispers

 

A piece challenging complacency:

Asking if we’re aware of suffering, corruption, and the looming threat of annihilation, or if we’ve retreated into our “safe plays.”

Title.

The Sultan Whispers

(A lone voice whispers)

Do you really ever see past all your carefully crafted reality tunnels, past your front door?

Past the everyday routines, you’ve carefully written, to be your safe plays?

As your own Geiger counter ticks, left to right.

Slowly swaying.

Do you hear it counting down your own dog-eared days?

Do you truly see, or feel,

the struggles of life’s many broken runners, those in dire trouble?

At home, or even those poor souls scattered like wedding confetti, worldwide?

Do you see the real villains in political disguises?

The spiritually unqualified.

With their hidden, bruised knuckles, preaching on television, or in real time?

Standing at mahogany podiums.

In some home, back garden, or any other jungle they can find?

While the political world just watches.

Engaging in endless

bellicose posturing, all the time.

Will you only take note,

when one of the world’s elected great hunters, presses that bright RED nuclear button?

And all the world begins to choke, on that radioactive white smoke?

So I, the Sultan,

summon the power of the Four Elemental Gods:

Earth. Air. Fire. Water.

To wake you up.

Before that Old Fallen Power buried deep beneath us.

Cast from Heaven, so long ago, grows too strong.

Until hope no longer matters.

Shattered, like a black bullet hitting a white mirror.

Stopping us all climbing up Jacob’s ladder.

The silver bridge one should always seek from birth.

Beyond wealth, fame, or materialism.

Between Heaven and Earth.

So be it.

(C)

Copyright John Duffy 

Examples of bellicose posturing:

A government making aggressive public statements about its military strength and a willingness to use force. 

Conducting large-scale military exercises near a disputed border to show force. 

Using threatening language or making ultimatums that suggest a potential for military action. 

 In short Sabre rattling.

Image shared under fair usage policy.