Take The Reins Poem by Nadeem Ishaque

(I)
Data brains,
Computing gains,
No constraints.
Electronic eyes,
Digital highs,
Media lies.
Silicon hearts,
Shopping carts,
Bomb blasts.
Bullet holes,
Fractured souls,
Blood splattered,
Bodies scattered.

Rampant poverty
Lost dignity
Fading hope
Men grope
Virulent power
Empty bower.

Metastatic money
(Hoard it honey)
Toxic emission
Endless invasion
Unlimited growth
(Not to loathe)
That in organic nature
One would call cancer.

Avarice with impunity
Beyond Nature's quota
Pact with the devil
At an absolute level
Deserves in multiples
Marlowe's eventuality
Not the one in Goethe.

(II)
Here my love is a dried tuber
And my spirit tied to a tether.
Here, under the brazen sky,
Desire no longer fills the eye.
The words of my poem have died
And the ink in my pen has dried.

(III)
Will the spring rain,
Beget a majestic renewal?
A mythic rebirth,
Some miraculous revival?
Will morning breeze,
Bear fragrance of her arrival?
Below the rising sun,
In a colorful tulip festival?
Will life ever flourish,
Beyond mundane survival?

(IV)
The hesitant morning procrastinates
At the approach of the hour, the uneasy hour;
And as the first ray of the sun struggles to break,
The conscience of a new day slowly awakes

(V)
All together
Hand in hand
Take the reins
In every corner
In every terrain
Storm the Bastille
Break the chains
Bring back feeling
Reality reclaim
Let feeling return
Let reason reign
Restore purpose
Lifeworld rearrange.

And, she proclaims:
This time
Let the festive dawn
Not be red;
Let her mellow eyes
Greet the land.
This time
Let there be no Gulag,
No guillotine,
No Robespierre.
This time
Let the eternal feminine
Lead us afloat
In the final gesture
Of Gretchen's inverted refrain.

Or else, Hades be our fate
As the world comes to an end -
Becomes simulacrum or a data domain
For us, the Hollow Men -
As in Eliot and Shakespeare,
Not with a bang but a whimper