Tag Archives: poetry about injustice

What Can One Man Do?

What Can One Man Do?

I’m feeling sort of creepy. I’m feeling sort of weird.
Everything is happening as I’ve always feared.
Each heroic patriot is spinning in his grave
observing how politicos are choosing to behave.
Opportunists rule the day. Liberty is dying.
If our founding fathers saw ,it would be grounds for crying.

Rights of free assembly are brutally curtailed
by countless senseless massacres, no sooner one man jailed
than another slaughter comes across our screen.
When did our land of immigrants turn so crass and mean?
What god puts kids in cages, rips a mother from her baby?

What scripture teaches brotherhood tempered with a maybe? 

One
hundred thirty million of her native sons
slaughtered by our founders is how the west was won.
Our history books rewritten by a kinder pen

Mass lynchings in Arkansas? A secret way back when
history was written. Only now we know the shame.
Even at our founding, “more profit” was to blame.

If we are tired of hearing of greed and violence,

perhaps its time that more of us climbed down from the fence
and let communal voices be heard above the din
of Game of Thrones and other dream worlds we live in.
These films of gore and violence with which we are suffused
make us numb to how real people are abused.

We must take off our blinders and see the truth at last.

It’s time to break these heartless molds in which we have been cast.
Speak with your pen. Bring change about by changing those in power.
Do not turn to fantasy. Do not cringe and cower
in your homes for fear of guns. Ban assault guns for a start.
Show that real Americans have a kinder heart.

Cut our country’s cancer from where it’s gone to fester.

Remove our gallery of fools, starting with its jester.
Each one who sits upon his chair thinking his votes don’t count
votes to keep the status quo. One after one, they mount
a ship of fools who think that politicians are the same—
that refusing to make choices makes them without blame.

So thought the men who saw the tree with bodies hanging slack

and overlooked injustice because the men were black.
If your God is one of mercy, does he not view all?
Does he not see even the smallest sparrow fall?
Would he sanction kids in cages, mother ripped from baby?
Does the God who loves us all temper justice with “maybe?”

What can we do about it? Take up pen and make a check.

Vote out the opportunists. Seize injustice by the neck.
Protect our dying planet. Seize our final chance.
Don’t think that fate is ruled by impartial circumstance.
Looking for a solution for what one man can do?
Take pen in hand. The answer, my friend, is simply you!

Prompts for the day are weird, creepy, and memorialize.

Sentimental Journey

IMG_2672

The Smell of Curry

Would that sentiment were only
positive and never lonely––
but all emotions of the world
in sentiment are tightly curled.
Every  memory we cherish
is doubly edged with “live” and “perish.”
In every city, country, land––
bad and good go hand in hand.

The blend of cardamom and lentil
always makes me sentimental.
Odors of turmeric and its ilk,
garam masala and coco milk.
Curry spices being roasted,
degree of peppers being boasted,
chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, rice––
stirring in each thing that’s nice.

What do I think of when I smell
and taste that it is going well?
Bombay and wedding saris thin
sliding down my youthful skin.
Visions of a midnight ride
to cages with young girls inside
sold by their parents and then resold
nightly for a bit of gold.

Traffic, sitar music, fingers
scooping curry––all this lingers.
The beauty of that winsome song
that showed me where the world’s gone wrong.
His action, swift, unthinking, curt
of small coins cast into the dirt
to deflect those who beg and bleat,
surrounding us in every street.

Palaces and then the clash
of children in a world of trash,
the refuse of this giant city
the world they lived in—what a pity.
Back when traveling was new,
experiences were so few
that India changed my life forever.
So, will I forget it?  Never.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/cherish/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sentimental/