Look Within Your Heart My Wayward Son

Look within your heart my wayward son

To where your ancestry lies

At gun’s molten barrel the war won’t be won

No matter how hard you might try

 

Where did your fathers and mothers come from

No doubt from a long distant shore

Once arriving in America their journey’d begun

Facing more than their hopes bargained for

 

Fiery rhetoric from the ignorant right

Does nothing but insight hate filled fear

Isolating newcomers who fled terrors fight

Disillusioning their wish to be here

 

It’s amazing how little this nation’s progressed

Seeing prejudice and racism rear their heads

Taking one step forward then two we regress

Giving in to the hate mongers dread

 

Perhaps it is time we holster our guns

And temper our fork tongued speech

Instead doing what America should have done

Practicing exactly what we preach

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Look Under Rock and in Darkened Cave

Look under rock and in darkened cave,

Delve into nightmares your wakings enslaved.

 

Tell me O’ tell me what is it you fear

In each thing you see and each that you hear.

 

News of invasion and hordes stoke your fire,

Of conspiracy theories you never do tire.

 

Immigrants scare you though ancestors were one

You hide behind barricades with knife and with gun.

 

In each person of color is seen a terrorist’s face

Afraid they will conquer your white Christian place.

 

How sad it is to live with terror neverending,

An old way of life you are always defending.

 

Change is but natural and always has been

And not loving they neighbor…well that’s still one of God’s sins.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

What is it They Want

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 ~~

Unwelcome To Our Shores

Burqa, Dashiki, headscarf, turban,

Clothing nor traditions should fear instill.

Forgetting we are children of the melting pot,

Sprawling roots of Sicily, Belfast, Juarez, Berlin,

Many smaller port-of-call,

Spat on by bigots,

Held in contempt.

Amnesia plagued memory lost their father’s land,

Nothing has been learned o’er these many years,

Only the quarry has changed,

The slurs, the stares, the vindictive wit,

Disparate but analogous,

Yet none-the-less degrading.

Unwelcoming the huddled masses with open arms,

Seeing terror in every foreign face,

Like fools believing the rhetoric,

Stereotyping and profiling,

Demonizing difference.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~