NEVER AGAIN
an age of meaningless labels
HISTORY DENIED
It is not only that people are willing
to turn their backs on history,
it is that they are not nurtured by history.
It is that they have not been taught
that they too are a result of history.
Coupled with the successful,
well calculated lure of consumerism,
people are enchanted to dance into the moonlight
away from the dimly lit signs on the guardrails
above the abyss of history
that demand ‘never forget’ and ‘never again’
and to add to that, ‘never look away’.
Yet
here we are
watching the greatest military power in history
being led by racist fascists
and hate filled psychopaths
who clearly love the smell of napalm in the morning.
REVENGE
I pity the poor folk who by necessity
had to vote for these maligned,
intellectually narrow wealth grasping narcissists.
He, with the orange face,
he who is only interested in his own future
will spawn civil violence,
a worsening climate crisis,
an on-going vendetta against anyone who is not white or Christian,
anyone who has spoken/written/organised against him,
but he will embrace his totalitarian buddies around the earth.
HORROR
Other races will suffer.
Women will suffer
as will their men witnessing their wives and infants
unnecessarily dying in agony
because there will be no legally available help
for complications in pregnancy.
Moslems and probably Jews will suffer as usual.
When Orange grants his billionaire buddies and bullies
huddled around his cabinet table
that they may do as they wish:
to disemploy at will,
to reduce worker’s safety,
to allow the CEO’s to shut their factories
to be re-opened in countries which will repress unions.
DISREGARDED SUFFERING
Poor white unemployed and poorly employed will suffer
shoulder to shoulder with the ill, the homeless, the retirees
as pharmaceutical corporations embrace unrestricted pricing
and as current medical support is reduced.
So much for the welfare state caring for the less fortunate,
so much for democracy seeking social justice.
Take the gloves off boys,
show the weak, the poor, the elderly your macho brass knuckles.
WHAT OF EUROPE?
Ukrainians and many other Europeans will suffer.
The world will become even more unfair.
The skies will choke
and either burn or cry unstoppable tears.
All the children will suffer poorer health,
ultra processed diets
and even more restricting education.
All brave resistors will suffer.
Putin will smile from Botoxed cheek to Botoxed cheek.
IS THIS MELODRAMA?
Poets will be in prison.
Musicians will be silenced.
Journalists will be ‘mistakenly’ shot,
while some of us will go back to reading about the rise of the Nazi Party,
or the corrupting of Marx’s dream for a better future for working people.
While human rights lawyers,
investigative journalists
and brave doctors
will be laughed at by the publishers of the press,
by the TV news network owners
and the clutch of investors will giggle
on their way to their bank vaults.
This is what will Make America Great Again?
MEANINGLESS POLITICAL LABELS
Neither ‘left’ nor ‘right’ make sense anymore.
Neither ‘conservative’ nor ‘radical’ make sense anymore.
We have humanists and others who only want freedom to be,
freedom to choose a good life, a moral life, a safe life.
And we have the psychopathic greedy power hungry
vengeance filled narcissists.
SLAVERY and WAR
Think of any struggle.
They are always about some group of thugs
wanting what others possesses.
Within capitalism the violence, butchery and the mayhem
is ultimately about owners wanting cheap docile labour,
preferably enslaved.
It really isn’t much more complicated than that.
The World War II veteran and American civil rights activist
Medgar Evers , said,
"You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea."
He was killed by a Klansman,
but the Civil Rights Movement endured.
TURN TURN TURN (composed and sung by Pete Seeger)
Remember ECCLESIASTES 3*
To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn.
Last week Paul Robeson, this week Pete Seeger. A spoonful of honey to keep hope alive...
Thanks Robert!