End of Term Report

This, my two hundredth Socialist Sonnet,

Two thousand, eight hundred lines for the cause,

And perhaps time to stop, or at least pause.

Poems of possibilities, and yet

People largely remain loyal to their states,

While workers of the world have made some gains,

Too few seem to want to throw off their chains;

Capitalism still proliferates.

Socialism? There’s no foretelling when

Or even if. But a resort to force

Can’t hurry history along its course,

As words won’t either. So I’ll sheath my pen,

Having not changed the world one iota

And my now having written my quota.

D. A.

Herodians

Now is the time of new Herodians,

Those corrupted by power and vanity

Until, devoid of all humanity,

They are utterly blind to their own plans

Requiring the merciless massacring

Of children. They constantly justify

This infanticide with barely a sigh,

While parasitic sycophants sing

Their praises. Herods don’t do the killing

Of course, child murder is made easy,

Avoiding any need to feel queasy

When it’s done for you by the all too willing.

Also Herods in the shadows without qualms,

Counting profits from the market in arms.

D. A.

Penny Pinching

Treasuries are empty vessels.

Chancellors, in a parlous state

Of limited means, must wrestle

With demands as they inflate.

More for defence and more for health,

More for increasing benefits;

Meanwhile, the wealthy guard their wealth

Or money markets take the hits.

Every penny capital pays

Whether as salaries or doles,

If taxes rise so must wages,

Too much by capitals’ gauges

And it’s then the stock market falls:

So, back again, to crisis days.

D. A.

Public Purse Strings Attached

Came the day when well-meaning magistrates

Gathered in Speenhamland’s Pelican Inn,

To settle supplements for wages too thin

To maintain life.  Doles from the parish rates

Would make up for any deficiencies.

Although the sentiment’s always well placed,

It stops the cause of poverty being faced.

The real source of wealth’s inequalities;

All necessities for life are produced

For profit, it’s what the market’s about.

Whosoever can’t pay must do without,

Leaving those at the margins traduced.

Back in Speenhamland the parish rates soared,

While today it’s what the state can’t afford.

D. A.

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.