Hubris and Debt, Fools and Ghouls
(and Trump, Obama and Clinton)
Hubris and Debt, Fools and Ghouls
(and Trump, Obama and Clinton)
So many wars that will not end!
So many products still to vend!
We’ve murdered people, murdered whales.
We’ve raised the stocks and boosted sales.
What’s left of fabrics still to rend?
And who can hope to heal and mend?
We’ve birthed the storm. So hear the gales,
As hammers pound on coffins’ nails.
How many left, who still are sane,
And not in jail or judged insane
By those who dance as puppets do,
While saying, “Dance!” to me and you?
And if we don’t, we suffer pain,
And find our efforts are in vain,
For labor must be service too,
To those who reign, as masters do.
How sad that this, our human race,
Must serve as serfs, with each in place
To work, produce—and buy, consume,
And all those qualities assume
That are expected, while we race
And vie for each coveted place.
We work—to fly and to consume
And then return—and jobs resume.
For now, vacations too are sales.
Our kids are swayed by seller’s tales.
They buy the gizmos, clothes and cars,
Cosmetics—even buying wars.
As elders quaff their wines and ales,
So youngsters guzzle sodas, sales.
As long as we are buying cars,
We also will be starting wars.
Who knows of science and history
And is intrigued by mystery?
Who dares to think and question why
We come to live and work and die?
We learn, in schools, our “history”,
But truth remains a mystery.
We lack in patience and in depth,
But not in hubris or in debt.
Where patience can be judged a vice,
There nasties rule, and those who’re nice,
Are seen as useless, worthless fools,
Who can’t be fashioned into tools
That aid those, who, ignoring price,
Would make decisions in a trice.
But who, we ask, are more the fools—
The slow—or those who serve the ghouls?
A few may feast on human flesh,
But others do on labor, fresh.
Our role, for them, is just to work,
To never raise our voice to irk
Their majesty, or rip that mesh
In which both France and Bangladesh
Are trapped. They view us as a quirk,
And squash us, as they smugly smirk.
Our role is labor and consumption,
Paying taxes, lacking gumption,
Lowing, bleating with the herd,
Being redneck, worker, nerd,
Being conditioned, drained of passion,
Trained to follow swings of fashion…
Injustice? If we’ve ever heard,
We’ve learned to flush it, like a turd.
The cannons boom, the bombs descend,
The drones deliver and ascend.
The helicopters dive and strafe.
And who, from all of this, is safe?
The fighters die, the migrants wend
Their way—and souls and bodies vend.
From poverty and death and rape,
They flee—but find there’s no escape.
Where capital, at speed, can flow,
There labor follows, stressed and slow.
The money drains from villages,
As those who did the tillages
Must find their ways to cities. So
The workers, to the anthills, flow.
But both in towns and villages,
The ghoul is there, who pillages.
He feeds on interest and rent,
And bribing is his special bent.
He views the worker as a chump.
He shows his underlings his rump.
The migrants, to his mills, are sent.
For a nickel’s work, he pays a cent.
And yet, if he is Donald Trump,
On migrants, he can take his dump.
“They’re rapists, murderers!” he cries.
And many chumps believe his lies.
And who is there to counter Don,
To ask, “What planet are you on?”
Why, there’s Obama, gals and guys,
And Hillary, who tries and tries.
But Wall Street says, “No Sanders- Warren!”
She bows and curtsies. She’s no moron.
2016 July 24th, Sun.
Brooklyn, New York
