Trading Blows

Market traders in war are grim reapers

Of the spoils, snatching the ground from under

The feet of those living there, torn asunder

By rhetoric, and leaders who’re keepers

Of their nations’ destiny. People, who

Have far more in common than what divides,

Acquiesce to being on opposing sides

By accepting that their just war is true.

Logic and reason having been displaced,

The bombed-out impotently sit and curse,

Wishing those named enemies receive worse:

So does human potential go to waste.

That’s how it must be forever and all,

Until people choose life and take control.

D. A.

Victims

Refugees in their own homes shot and shelled.

Young men and women in battle fatigues,

Their own lives imperilled by the intrigues

And ambitions of those who feel impelled,

By destiny or profit, to fabricate

Self-serving, spurious justification,

Such gold braided vain glorification

Of leaders in a belligerent state.

War’s irony is its inanity,

The crass and brutal way it insists

In transforming mere men into rapists,

To deny women their humanity.

The world’s changed, or so politicians claim,

But for victims it is always the same.

D. A.

Tarnished Idols

It used to be mardy gods unleashing

Thunderbolts from the skies, but they have been

Superseded by those who are between

Demagogues and demiurges, ceasing

To regard common humanity

As other than expendable. They see

Themselves as supreme dealers of destiny,

Prime moulders of nationalist vanity.

Drones and missiles are their bolts from the blue,

Striking schools, hospitals, apartment blocks,

Rendered to ruin by reasoning that mocks

Reason, by insisting the lie is true.

Not by sanction, reprisal nor moral force

Can leaders be led to a change of course.

D. A.

Class Consciousness

In the reign of King Coal and Queen cotton

Class seemed clear, the sons and daughters of toil,

Drawn to industrial towns from the soil,

Knew precisely where all the ill-gotten

Gains from their labours went. To the mansion

Up on the hill, wherein dwelt the owner

Of all gathered below him, the loner

Being driven by capital’s expansion.

That dual monarchy has abdicated,

The mansion’s now a care home. Workers pass,

Too many are convinced, as middle class,

Though capital’s craving must still be sated.

Commodity dealers remain takers

Of profit, from commodity makers.

D. A.

Reform

The ballot box hold such great potential

To become the means of a real solution,

A decisive, conscious revolution

That has no need to invoke the martial.

The commonweal is ill-served by violence,

Which just spawns reaction and bitterness.

But, for votes to count, voters must address

Themselves collectively to an immense

Change in their political perspective.

No more tinkering reforms, or leaders

Of the left, right or centre, no breeders

Of false hopes: simply, do not self-deceive.

New parties arise and governments fall,

Yet, the day after, nothing’s changed at all.

D. A.

May Day

This feast day of Joseph the Artisan,

Liberated for Labor from the Church

When congregations of workers began

Gathering to confront the capital rich.

An infamous Haymarket bomb, a hail

Of police bullets, then the hangman’s rope

Demonstrated reasoned reforms would fail:

Workers must make and pursue their own hope.

Now, fourteen decades after the event,

Collective hopes remain unrealised,

So many parties, despite their intent,

Have left capital’s spirit unexorcised.

Yet potential power is marked by May Day,

Of workers turning history their way.

D.A.

Spectacle

Fascist is a lazy pejorative.

Too often a head of state struts and preens,

Engineering unedifying scenes;

His rhetoric and bluster combative.

The president becomes the spectacle

Personified, appears more an unsurer

Il Duce, than some latter day Fuehrer,

In his pomposity. The debacle

Unfolding of governance by whim,

And ideology of “what I say

Is forever true”, at least for today:

All resolution dissolves in him.

Endorsed by a cabal of the willing,

Willing themselves a financial killing.

D. A.

The Great Game

In the Great Game every player’s a dealer,

All shuffling the pack and palming a few,

Each card-sharp coldly determined to screw

The others and become the scene stealer,

The one who will gamble all he has got,

By raising the stakes again and again

Until others throw in their hands, and then

Laugh in their faces as he scoops the pot.

Very few play, but everyone loses

For as long as we allow this charade:

The name of the game? International trade.

Unless the great majority chooses

To close capital’s casino, and regard

The world improved without any Trump card.

D. A.

 Financial Statement

The chancellor stands to address the House,

Facing the vehemently disinclined,

Self-righteous, ambitious critics behind,

Knowing this financial statement must douse

Any ambition that needs might be met,

The reform fallacy will be laid bare,

Once again, the money is just not there,

No matter the targets set and reset.

Then some rogue state prepares to hinder trade,

Profits and growth begin to be expunged

And around the world stock markets have plunged,

Negating any financial plans made.

The chancellor, the statement completed,

Sits down again, utterly defeated.

D. A.

Change

The deserving and undeserving poor

Will be forever with us so it seems,

At least as long as capitalism’s

Allowed to remain. Poverty and war

Are its indelible marks, that might be

Obscured for a while by some cosmetic

Concealer, liberally applied by a sleek

Politician, who’s not actually free

To do much else, as it’s accountancy

That must have the final decisive say

While capital continues to hold sway,

The determinant of philosophy.

It’ll not change the world unless and until

Real change has become the popular will.

D. A.