With Irony I Look Back On July The Fourth

With irony I look back on July the fourth,

Commemorating separation from the British Crown.

Decrying aristocrats and their gorging worth

And the treatment of their subjects trampling down.

 

Open your eyes and look at us now,

Governed and judged by aristocrats galore.

Expected to beg, grovel and bow

Just as we did to King George before.

 

Over two hundred years we’ve learned nothing it’s clear

As again we submit to the court and its king.

Giving away what we should have held dear

For the promise of a golden ring.

 

This golden ring offered in hopes to divide

The right from the left I am sure

Confusing the masses with promises to provide

Answers to our problems through their cure.

 

But the cure is poisoned by their quest for greater wealth,

On the backs of those who can least afford.

Tricking them to believe by their dishonest stealth,

That there’s nothing but truth in their word.

 

Illusion and trickery is the game of the day,

Substance something long ago past.

Diverting ones blame is the partisan way,

Spewing venom as long as it lasts.

 

If truth does not sell then they coat it in lies,

Said long enough they’re bound to believe.

People are gullible say their political spies,

They’ll swallow whatever we conceive.

 

Free press is now gone in lieu of partisan hacks,

Towing their hate-filled party lines.

Convincing the audience that they’re watching their backs,

While raking in millions all the time.

 

With sadness I watch our republic disappear

Under the weight of corruption and greed.

Leaving the powerless amongst us I fear

To scratch and claw for all that they need.

 

Convinced they’re a burden and a waste of our time

Pretending that they don’t exist.

From their pit of despair alone they’re left to climb,

Should they fail it’s unlikely they’ll be missed.

 

America has lost the humanity it once had,

Trading it for profit and conceit.

Where helping one another was more than a fad,

It was a facet of what made us complete.

 

Deception is all part of the elites master plan

Pitting each man against his brother.

Feeding the masses as much fear as they can,

Blaming the cause on another.

 

Unless we take a stand, the ninety-nine percent,

Against the one percent we’ve allowed to rule us.

Expect nothing more than this we consent,

But to allow the bourgeois to fool us.

 

This my dear friends is my greatest fret,

With each and every fourth of July.

That under their thumbs, ever more we do get,

Until America shrivels up and dies.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

What Is Left Of This Experiment

What is left of this experiment

Could it be that we failed intention

Selling it to the highest bidder?

Look at us!

Brother fighting against brother,

Ideals defined by television news,

By partisan writing,

By ignorance and lack of humanity.

Not relegated to one party or another

This is but a symptom of the disease.

A plague we allowed to ferment;

Feeding venomous pustules by blindness,

Blindness to surroundings,

Blindness to the lies we’ve been fed.

Beginning many years ago,

Blamed on the latest–current ruler,

Yet it is ever so misplaced.

Each is just the latest in a long line of failures

Given to us by their parties,

Held up as a choice to the people.

Choice…ha, this is but a facade,

Leaving the people to believe that they staked claim.

This is but a belief of fools,

Those that fail to realize they are pawns,

Misled and offered the promised land,

Finding that there is nothing but hollowness.

What does it take to awaken the populous?

Will it take total collapse?

Will it take blood?

Might it take revolution?

This is our right…our obligation;

When our system fails we are called to fight,

Called to change what is broken,

Beckoned to change what is fruitless.

Perhaps we have run our course,

Made a great attempt at political perfection,

Failing over a long period of time.

Every society has suffered;

Drowning in its own pomposity,

Leaving it vulnerable to suffer its own consequences.

What will it take;

Absolute and total collapse I propose.

Imploding on our own girth,

Collapsing under our own weight,

Then being consumed by our foes.

When will will realize our fate…?

Not until we are reduced

To nothing but skin and bones.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

What Have We Become

What have we become?

Both sides are fatally flawed.

We–the laughingstocks!

Politics are the cancer

Eating our nation alive.

Are we to perish,

Fading into history

Like Rome’s empire;

Remembered for its grandeur

Through its crumbling ruins?

Perhaps it’s too late,

Our experiment–a dream

May evaporate

Becoming just a footnote

In the annals of mankind.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

I Look Upon Such Great Divide

I look upon such great divide

Families fighting through verbal battle

No middle ground, forced to choose sides

Opinions grasped like so much chattel

~

Scarcely since Our Civil War

Have differences raised so much ire

Tell me–what is all the anger for

Fueling tinder to spark the fire

~

Inundated torrent of adapted news

All with clearly chosen leanings

Partisan sides, a burning fuse

Caring not for truth or meaning

~

We drink like cattle at the trough

Hearing what we choose to hear

Everyone else’s minds gone soft

Perpetuating mood of hate and fear

~

One and all looking for someone to blame

Misplaced trust keeps fanning the fire

As rhetoric strives to focus their aim

Their lust for blood on a funeral pyre

~

Once an asset was a public informed

Now we are led astray like sheep

Our minds and senses propaganda stormed

To the point we dream it in our sleep

~

Questions arise, what liar to believe

None of them are worthy of trust

Making their quest to cheat and deceive

We pray their riches turn to rust

~

When oh when will we ever learn

Its up to us to force a change

Instead, watching while we crash and burn

Isn’t our complacency rather strange

.

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Second Hand Ticks (Tanka)

The second hand ticks

Counting down life in fractions

Like a clock’s movement

A nation oblivious

Never sees its unwinding

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Drawn To A Mirage

Drawn to a waterless mirage,

Sustenance proffered from behind a smiling facade,

We long for what was, the honesty, the promise given at inception.

This nation…this world, is not what they envisioned!

Never-the-less, weak-minded and self-absorbed we self-inflict

Over and over and over again.

I too have inflicted myself on more than one occasion,

Placing faith in the faithless, trust in the untrustworthy

Only to have hopes dashed to oblivion.

You also, in honest appraisal, must have done so as well.

When will we wake up to the traitorous criminality of those entrusted with the sacred,

The injustice, the deceit, the blatant prejudice toward the people?

We the people comprises every citizen,

Race nor creed nor color nor sexual orientation has bearing,

Not just for those deemed as righteous or worthy in another’s eyes.

They are us…beholden to us, answerable to us if we demand it,

But instead we cower with an air of disinterest, taking our medicine

Like good subservient children.

Who is to blame for this debacle?

They are,

We are,

We are the true culprits,

Complicit in their scheme!

Complicit through tolerance or blindness, neither an excuse.

When will we awake from our slumber to hold these servants of the public accountable

We have an obligation to the experiment, yet we have faltered.

Laziness and ignorance are our legacy,

The legacy we have created in our own image.

How sad to see our path toward the annals of history,

Strewn with the sacrifices of the fallen.

If not for ourselves, for them we should correct course,

Return to the greatness that was us,

If we still know the way.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Fall of the Titans – A Haiku

Image Credit: 123rf.com

Image Credit: 123rf.com

The titans will fall

When the populous wakes up

Breaking the deadlock

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

The Land of Disillusionment

By D. R. DiFrancesco

~~

Faces of color,

Eyed through blinders of suspicion,

Had we not buried this decades back,

People minimized for political gain.

~~

Grasping for a solution,

The problem steeped in your imagination,

You’ve convinced yourself this is righteous,

Yet racism and bigotry fester in you.

~~

This is not sacrosanct,

Taking hold of the weakness of the innocent,

Illegitimizing their right to be represented,

All for an ideal that isn’t your own.

~~

The media claims to be fair and balanced,

While corrupting your mind,

Brainwashing you with their hatred and mistrust,

As you mindlessly tow their party line.

~~

You despise him as an archvillain,

Is it his race, what you perceive his religion to be,

Is it his name, his father, his mother,

All targets of your aggression.

~~

Your side spouts lies,

Making claims they know to be blatantly false,

Saying whatever you want to hear,

Sycophants following like lambs to slaughter.

~~

This is what they want from you,

Belief in a past that can’t be resuscitated,

The future won’t settle for the lesser,

Still you continue to drink from the tainted well.

~~

They view half of us as leeches,

Feeding off of the system for our own personal gain,

Who are they, the elderly, children, disabled,

Do not judge them unless you have walked in their shoes.

~~

A sad state of affairs,

Pitting brother against brother and sister against sister,

The weapon of words no less brutal,

Leaving victims on both sides bloody and disillusioned.

Image credit: theatlantic.com