Our Stars and Stripes raised
After being exiled
For fifty four years.
Ineffective policy
Has finally been ended.
Dissidents upset
Obama is selling out,
They’re completely wrong.
We have embraced the Chinese
Condoning communism.
Where is their outrage,
Aren’t they just as oppressive…
Maybe even more?
Where money and profits live
We’ll always turn a blind eye.
~~ 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 ~~
Please tell me….
What does it look like to win?
Ideology can’t be defeated on the battlefield,
No matter how you try you can’t kill it.
You can kill its adherents,
Destroying the body, but their hate lives on.
Containment is decried as weak,
Nothing short of all out war satisfies the hawks,
Annihilation of everyone and everything their only answer.
So then, please tell me…
What does the enemy look like?
Muslim?
Dark skinned?
Light skinned?
Man?
Woman?
Child?
Young?
Old?
Sounds like the faces of the innocent and the guilty.
Can you please tell me…
How will you know your foe?
They will not come at you waving a flag.
They will not march upon your positions in perfect high-step.
They will not be clothed in matching uniforms,
Blaring their trumpets and saluting.
So tell me again…
Who is the enemy?
The farmer?
The shopkeeper?
The mechanic?
The soldier?
The school teacher?
The Imam?
The mother?
The father?
The child?
Would you have us kill every living thing just to make your point?
You rhetoric says that you would!
Someone please tell me…
What does it look like to win?
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Complicit are they
Brandishing their mighty swords
While crying for war
They hold the blade to our necks
Prepared to slaughter skeptics
Monsters, murderers
A mess of their creation
Denied as fiction
How short the memory is
When the Right can blame the Left
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Their playground, our world
The bullies intimidate
Taking what they want
Caught in their dangerous game
We are expendable pawns
It is Deja Vu
Cold War resuscitated
There are no winners
Just two very big egos
Gambling our existence
.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Another cold war
A game of chess that we lost
To an old rival
Who pays for incompetence
The citizens of Ukraine
~
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
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 ~~
I feel not so inspired these days
The drudgery of our existence weighs heavy on me
Our division as a people
Who in times of crisis would unite
No longer seem capable of finding common ground
Certainly those that wish us harm must be in good humor
How foolish we must look
Dressed in our Sunday finest
Preaching…”In God We Trust!”
But trusting in no one but the self
I can do nothing to alter the fact
There is no election to hold
I can scream but no one can hear
Those in guilded monuments are deaf but to themselves
So here I sit with a cup of stale coffee
Choking down the morrning news
Chewing my nails to nubs in nervous anticipation
Only to be swallowed up in disappointment…again
Where are we going
I don’t think anyone knows
Those with the map…they too seem lost
Lost in their maze of arrogance
And we are the ones left in the darkness
•
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Brinkmanship of fools
Buffoons clutching at the rope
Game of Tug-O-War
A nation’s demise the prize
For their own self-interest
Not our finest hour
As default edges closer
A vicious cycle
Returned to our beginning
Tyranny and oppression
~
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Hands outstretched across Aisle hallowed
Feigning sincerity and honest concern
Smiles and handshakes, there meaning shallow
Political mutiny from stem to stern
~
Spoils for the taking a populace held hostage
Bends to their whim and their will
With head in the sand like proverbial ostrich
They cater to every tyrant and shill
~
Too blind to notice or choosing not to see
Middle panders fringe left and then right
With no sense of reason what will be will be
Too beat down to put up a fight
~
When self-interest takes over who holds the bag
Its the poor, elderly and non-essential
Defined by the very people who brag
That their views are the most consequential
~
Left with a government who has shuttered their doors
We The People have nowhere to turn
Being held at the mercy of liars and whores
May their pinstripes and wingtips catch fire and burn
~
Honestly looking upon the tragedy we face
On whom does the fault truly lie
Yes, on the rodents that inhabit this place
But also on the uninformed, uninvolved, you and I
~
So when next we sit down and complain of our state
Look inside to what you have done
For without participation, this inevitable fate
Will consume and never be undone
~
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Dom DiFrancesco 