Nationalist Vision

Nationalists are generally myopic

From looking through unfocused spectacles,

Speech incoherent and vitriolic.

Denying reason and raising hackles.

From looking through unfocused spectacles

The cause of common woes remain unseen,

Denying reason and raising hackles;

All foreigners are cast as being unclean.

The cause of common woes remain unseen,

Such is nationalism’s inanity,

All foreigners are cast as being unclean,

Though they’re of our common humanity.

Such is nationalism’s inanity,

Speech incoherent and vitriolic,

Though they’re of our common humanity,

Nationalists are generally myopic.

D. A.

Anti-speak

Sundering people by race, religion

Or some other such arbitrary means,

Brings its horrors to our doom scrolling screens:

Bombed-out news bytes from a bloodied region.

Who were victims become perpetrators,

Those once herded into camps will become

Herders, with power to strike their critics dumb

By framing them as virulent haters.

The persecuted dead will be recalled

By those who consider themselves chosen,

Their determination certain, frozen,

As if humanity has failed and stalled.

Not one state! Nor two states! A better call

To end war and terror, ‘No States At All!’

D. A.

Going through the Motions

Fine promises are all too glibly made

In a conference hall, filled with delegates

Gathered from the political estate,

Where future electoral plans are being laid.

All this nation’s ills are the fault, of course,

Of other parties, but power won’t be lost

With well thought through proposals, fingers crossed:

All delivered with rhetorical force.

The only real obstacle is the cost,

Because money’s always in short supply.

Profits remain sacrosanct, which is why

Though politicians try, markets won’t be bossed.

Conference approves what has been arranged

And then departs; yet nothing will have changed.

D. A.

Social Truth

‘What is truth?’ Is an immemorial

Question posed by Pilate, and still a sage

Query this secular social media age

That’s dominated by the spectacle.

Don’t let bare-faced fact tarnish an image

Fostered by some present day potentate,

Determined to determine others’ fates

As he pompously struts his national stage.

Meanwhile, red hobgoblins haunt the courts

Of public debate, their schemes and schisms

Practically confusing socialism

With nostrums, redundant and out of sorts.

While potentates will secure their capitals

For as long as the spectacle holds.

D. A.

Today

Today billions did not kill each other,

Didn’t perpetrate any atrocity,

Didn’t bomb any village, town or city,

Didn’t knowingly exploit one another.

Didn’t become celebrities or famous,

Didn’t receive honours for doing their jobs,

Didn’t gather together in murderous mobs,

Didn’t see different colours and make a fuss.

They did work required for wealth creation,

They did hours of housework, as ever unpaid,

They did see folk in need, came to their aid,

They did all the world’s administration.

And no one ever really seeks their views,

And not even be mentioned in the news.

D. A.

What Price Democracy?

Why democracy? What does it entail?

Best chance to change the world from how it runs

Now, by revolution that seeks no guns.

Except, of course, it’s been put up for sale

To shady crypto-coiners who profit

From sharp selling of bubbles, which float

Higher, for a moment, than they aught,

Before skimming the dividend off it.

There are those who can be bought by the rich,

Self-aggrandising, dismissive of need,

Being single minded about personal greed,

Making dubious deals to secure their pitch.

We who have clear vision, nothing shocks us,

Not even buying of ballot boxes.

D.A.

Echoes

Socialism or Barbarism! Which?

Citizens, of what once was the Third Reich,

Voting in numbers for the barbaric;

Can they be persuaded, one day, to switch

From all parties left and right and centre?

They’ve fundamental grievances of course,

Yet bitter politics lead to remorse

Once nationalism’s allowed to enter

Everyday discourse. Politicians try,

But their best intentions fail hour by hour

Because capital holds the real power:

And patriotism is its biggest lie.

The ballot box can leave pundits aghast,

When it’s an echo chamber for the past.

D.A.

Making Waves

Take a body of water, a Great Lake

And draw a line, calling it a border.

Then let a president give the order

That he has a pressing claim to stake,

Being the Commander in Chief of the rain,

And which way the wind blows depends on him,

With the whole world subject to his whim,

No reason required, no need to explain.

Never mind those who have lived and still live

Lakeside and beyond, or generations

Yet to be who’ll transcend contending nations

And the imperial imperative.

Water laps at the shore ever the same,

Utterly indifferent to a name.

D. A.

Do not question, they want you to Obey,

Just be quiet, acquiesce to the state of Play.

Keep Marching to the tune of Capitalism’s Might:

Left Right! Left Right! both wings claim to be Right.

If you look no further than your own garden Gate,

The divide and conquer agenda facilitates the Hate;

This dog-eat-dog rat race is long past it’s sell by Date.

Whether it’s Labour, Liberal, Green, Reform or Tory,

It will still end up the same old worn out Story.

To survive this system needs to Dehumanise;

We need to Agitate! Educate! And Organise!

The man made nation state keeps us on a Plate,

But why sell our labour even for the highest Rate?

We can replace this system based on Greed,

With a just society based on human Need.

Harley Wears

Mr. Presidents…

Mr. Presidents in Washington and

Moscow, presiding on a mystery:

What’s made them myopic to history?

Have they seen some virtue in what they’ve planned,

Ignoring examples of Stalingrad,

Of bombing Hanoi back to the stone age?

The blitzing of London provoked cold rage,

But no surrender, no matter how bad.

Missiles and drones don’t defeat, they incense.

Kiev and Tehran shaken, yet do not fall,

While the shattered dead lie beneath it all,

Civvy Street victims of absence of sense.

Mr. Presidents, brother to brother,

Look in the mirror and see the other.

D.A.