Burning Paper Phone Chargers
An exploration of capitalism - from the other side.
Note: According to Sunset Survivors by Lindsay Varty, the most requested burnt offering for ancestors is no longer a mobile device, but a mobile device recharger.
Back when devices still were known as phones
We’d mostly find red money taking shape.
It started out as fire and then it formed
As paper, in the altars we would make
As soon as we arrived. The funds were loaned,
And when the money came we paid them back;
Though interest was oppressive, we assumed
With world and time enough we’d work to crack
The system, build on what was being sent;
And when our loved ones met with us again,
They’d home to rich, successful immigrants.
For life and death are really quite the same.
But then they sent us beds, cars, favourite foods,
Umbrellas, cigarettes and alcohol,
Then check-books, credit cards we couldn’t use
And then they sent us mobile phones with all
The problems that created! Batteries
Became worth more than petrol. (Think it through!)
What’s hard to make and burn in effigy
Has greater worth, and petrol’s hard to do.
But then they got creative back on Earth,
(Though clouds were still clogged-up with rusting cars),
Communication, much like as in Life,
Depends on a device that can recharge
Efficiently! And those of us so blessed
With wise descendants, those who worked this out,
Became the power-brokers. We possessed
The means to soon monopolise the spout
Of gifts made to the Ancestors. Now we
Control, collect and warehouse, distribute
Whatever might arrive, and we decree
The tithes the ghostly poor must contribute
To us for regulation. Without us
So much that’s passed this way would go to waste,
And who would pay for temples we construct
To pray for what we find beyond this place?
That next life, that comes after afterlife
We enter through our wealth-shown proof of worth.
Andrew Barker has lived in Hong Kong since 1996. He is a literature professor at HKU and Lingnan Universities and the operator of the poetry lectures website andrew.barker@mycroft-online-lectures.com where readings of his poetry can be found. He has published the collections Snowblind from my Protective Colouring, Joyce is Not Here: 101 Modern Shakespearean Sonnets and Orange Peel: Modern Shakespearean Sonnets Book 2. Sonnets 102-203 which are available on Amazon, and is currently completing Social Room: Modern Shakespearean Sonnets Book 3. Sonnets 204-305.
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