Rage seething under the surface
Eating away at our collective souls
Vitriol has been lodged against us
Only further stoking our resolve
Lost is our trust in the institutions
Undoing the work of the founders
Til only one response seems clear
Insurrection
Outright revolt against the tyrants
Neutering the petulant bunch
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
What is it they want;
To live under a bubble
Of pure shiny white?
Existing void of color
A Leave it to Beaver world.
Stirring up hatred,
This group or that is to blame,
Banish them for good.
Spy your own family tree
And you just might be amazed.
What are they after
When they’re stomping on the poor,
Calling them lazy,
Treating each as a moocher
Unworthy of compassion.
Perpetuating
Disgraceful stereotypes.
Shameless in their rant
African Americans,
Mexicans and the Chinese.
Supremacists rise
Rallying around their bile,
But they take no blame,
They’re taken out of context
They would like you to believe.
War, war, war, war, war
Look at their warmongering,
Death brings them such joy.
It’s not theirs that fight and die
They are ours, they’re yours and mine!
Privatize they cry,
Programs for the public good,
Vouchers for us all.
Business doesn’t work for us
It’s all about the profit.
FDR was right,
To enact social reforms
A cure for our ills.
Keeping the wealthy in check
For the benefit of all.
Watch as fortunes fall,
Not those of robber barons
But instead yours–mine.
The oligarchs won’t feel it
This is by their own design.
Sadly we’ve stepped back
Trusting our fates to the rich.
How foolish we are!
Painful lessons are ne’er learned
Thus are destined to repeat.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Do you see the sloth in slumber
Ever exhausted in his laziness?
The world passes by;
His life and circumstances change
Right before his eyes, but he cares not.
His food becomes tainted by poison and profit,
His means of survival gets cut down from under him,
Yet these do not prod him to action.
Those charged with his care seek to destroy him.
They smile and whisper in their deceitful hushed tones
Then with a fury they beat him down from his limb.
O’ poor lowly sloth, if only you were the mighty tiger;
Perhaps then you would sink your fangs into these vultures,
Perhaps then you would arise and assume your role in this jungle,
But nay, you prefer to wile the hours away in blindness and lethargy.
Be not surprised upon awakening one day soon that your blissful paradise…
Has become a barren wasteland.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
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.
Government in bed
With corporate America
Fascism reborn
Mussolini may be dead
But his beliefs are alive
.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Problem…solution
Our history makes it clear
The Boston Tea Party
The same kind of oppression
A few hundred years later
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Gone are those days
You know…the ones where our children are better off than we are.
What is better for them,
Saddled with debt for an education that guarantees them nothing,
Grown children living with their parents,
Prospects for their futures clouded,
Shadowed by unceasing war?
For many taking up arms for their country the only way to survive
Taking injury and death as necessary risks.
Is this what we wanted for our children,
Is this what our parents had hoped for us?
Where do they go from here in this country divided?
Everything is in turmoil!
The government is polarized,
The people brainwashed by extremist media.
Bankers, the greatest threat as described by our founders
Have slithered their way into our capital’s marble halls.
So much promise has been squandered.
This once great nation is sacrificing its young
And for what, pieces of gold,
A return to a past that has long since died,
Survival of the fittest where the rich become richer
And everyone else becomes irrelevant.
This is not the country I knew and loved,
It is an abomination of the worst kind
Feasting on the bones and blood of our children
To fuel its unquenchable lust and greed.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Vultures every one, they pluck at the carcass.
Oh yes, it is dead and has been for some time,
But they choose to masquerade it in lively rhetoric.
Speaking not of how they will resuscitate the corpse
They prefer to spew bile at those they accuse of murdering it.
Solving nothing, they offer up a civics lesson as hope,
A promise of a return to days long gone by.
They know this can never be,
That we should never return to the cesspool of the past that got us here,
Still they desire with a selfish heart, to thrust this upon us.
No longer a land, by the people, of the people, for the people,
We have devolved into a country of the corporation,
By the corporation, for the corporation.
Our politicians, beholden to these behemoths disregard the people,
Believing their constituents too inept to notice.
Sadly, our elections show they are too often right.
Seats of government are filled with crazies, radicals and thieves
Looking to promote their own self-interests,
Their own delusional ideals,
The interests of those that bought their loyalty.
Their records show nothing but opposition to the other side,
No compromise, no debate, just blatant obstruction,
This they do, all the while claiming to be patriots and waving their tattered flags.
Perhaps we are as much to blame for this violent death as they.
Each vote cast inflicts another gangrenous wound on this once vibrant body.
I fear it too late for meaningful change.
Our young prefer social media and video games to interest in things political.
What the future holds is anyones guess,
But with crystal ball in hand I foretell a funeral, the body in shrouds,
No taps being played, no mourners present to pay their last respects,
They can’t because they are too busy texting and watching youtube to notice.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Young men and women do volunteer
To fight for their country to the death, showing no fear
Their orders arrive just as they would
Off they go overseas in the hopes of doing good
Then there’s reality, oh the shock
Our core cultural values, by their ways they do rock
Women are property, used for sex
Sold to the highest bidder, the western mind perplexed
Wanting to react, but told they can’t
They turn a blind eye, though to each other they do rant
Lying in their cots, many tears shed
This war was not what they thought, they have all been misled
Romantic ideas, wars of the past
Live only in the movies there’s no way they could last
War is not romantic, kill and maim
Each victim has a mother and each face has a name
Someones left mourning, crying revenge
Seeking to draw blood, to honor loved ones they avenge
How do pray tell, will this cycle end
When it’s all about oil, our interests they pretend
After a decade, I doubt it will
The military industries haven’t had their fill
When this war ends another will come
Reasoned by our government, just watch and see their fun
Be sure and take my word, more will die
No matter how we complain, no matter how we try
As always, our young will volunteer
Believing propaganda from mongers they will hear
Gung-ho with ideals, noble ‘tis true
Witnessed in commercials they’re the brave, the proud, the few
Til God forbid the time ever comes
You gaze into their eyes, pull the trigger of the gun
From that moment on your life will change
You become a killer, a feeling that must be strange
Hoping that the reasons are pure, true
To live with such an action, the rest of your life through
Mourn for those who died and those alive
They will never be the same no matter how they strive
Mourn this generation raised with war
Think about the reasons, they are poisoned to the core
What kind of legacy will we leave
One that’s draped in death, they are constantly left to grieve
Can this end before it is too late
I pray that it can or destruction will be our fate
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
NOTE: Origination Afghanistan – a landay has only a few formal properties. Each has twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second. The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.” Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not. In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love. Within these five main tropes, the couplets express a collective fury, a lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa. The full description and some history of the form can be found at poetryfoundation.org. I took some liberties with this form as it does not translate perfectly into English. I did maintain the 9 and 13 syllables per line format, but eliminated the “ma” or “na” ending sound requirement opting instead to rhyme which can occur with this form.
We live in a time of paranoia and prejudice,
Danger lurking around every corner,
Evil in strangers faces we pass on the street.
Every act of senseless violence is labeled terrorism,
Can not a murder just be a murder?
Despicable as it is this act has transcended our history.
Must religious affiliation define every murderous act?
Must every act of violence be by the hands of a terrorist?
Vigilance is indeed prudent
Though hypervigilance is divisive.
This world if full of people with mental instability.
Those disillusioned by their circumstances.
Many feeling small or invisible
Seeking attention by the most horrible means.
Christians and Jews are among them
Though they are not so quickly label terrorists.
Our government is in collusion with the media
Spreading fear and hysteria, but to what end?
Perhaps to convince us to willingly forfeit our freedoms
All under the guise of greater protection.
Just realize that once gone
Freedoms lost will be difficult to recapture.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Dom DiFrancesco 