Both Sides of the Coin

 

Both sides of a coin

Agony and ecstasy

Which one will it be


~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

What Have We Become

What have we become?

Our government plays on our fears

To defend spying on its citizens.

NSA, CIA, FBI all have our dossiers,

How many other acronyms are prying

Weeding through our emails,

Monitoring our bank accounts,

Recording our telephone calls,

Scanning our mail?

A whistle-blower leaks your dirty little secrets

And you back peddle like lying politicians.

He’s committed treason you cry,

Turning the blame from yourselves as you always do.

Obviously our right to privacy means nothing,

You have no probable cause for surveilling us,

So you use the Patriot Act, loosely as disguise.

It hurts when you have been caught doesn’t it,

Like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

Author’s Note: This piece was prompted by reading the following short article http://goo.gl/wpkRZx.  The information contained within it is not new, but it reignited my concerns about our federal government and our lack of privacy.

 

Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights movement

Alive and well in our young

Picking up the torch

We hoped these days passed

Only to smoulder again

Into raging fire

.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Black Smoke Wafts Skyward

Black smoke wafts skyward

Baltimore the latest nail

To be pounded home

How many more before the

Coffin is sealed and buried

Repeated killing

Just a different city

Will we never learn

These–our brothers and sisters

Share the same constitution

But not the same rights

They are treated as lesser

By their skin color

Disgusting as it may be

This is our America

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~


Government in Bed

Government in bed

With corporate America

Fascism reborn

Mussolini may be dead

But his beliefs are alive

.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Trickling Waters

Embed from Getty Images

 

Trickling waters

Meander down polished rock

Peace of Zen Garden

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Dignity

Do what you will to me

I am immune.

Grab at me, gnaw on my bones,

Nick my veins and let me bleed out

I will not submit.

This body is not me, I am eternal

You have not the strength to reduce me

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

Truce of Rival Gangs

Truce of rival gangs

Working together for peace

Tell me…why can’t we

.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Dawn of a New Day

Dawn of a new day

A blank slate awaits us all

Let us not waste it

.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Faded Asphalt Riddled with Glass and Stone

Embed from Getty Images

 

Faded asphalt riddled with glass and stone

Scorched deep black by disenfranchised frustration.

Called thugs and lawless, anger bubbles over,

But still nothing has changed.

The sixties are alive in well in the twenty-first century.

Civil rights are still just a dream for many

Though we’d like to believe otherwise.

So what! Segregation has been legally abolished,

The back of the bus is no longer reserved,

But what the law cannot abolish is racism.

It cannot regulate the prejudice minds of man,

It cannot extract it from our senses,

Perhaps blindness is the answer,

Plucking of the eyes from the skull.

What else can save this species,

It has been on this spiral for eternity?

Look at our history!

Enslavement, segregation, discrimination,

Poverty, lynchings, so little progress.

Yes, some of these have faded,

Replaced by polite prejudice,

But still nothing has changed.

Perhaps one day,

The ignorant will close their eyes,

Open their hearts

And realize that color is only

…Skin deep.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~