Tag Archives: political poem

Evolutional Malfunction

\Image by Francesco De Tommaso on Unsplash, used with permission

Evolutional Malfunction

In the shadows of the tundra, the lion hunts tonight.
What unsuspecting detour will still a gazelle’s flight?
Nightfall cancels the good fortune of the graceful beast.
The ballet of his progress has mercilessly ceased.
So nature feasts on nature in our world’s cruel plan—
animal on animal and man on weaker man.

Much as we hope that we’ve evolved, we cycle back again,
supplementing power by feeding on the pain
of people that we use as stepping stones to power.
What man can stand above unless other humans cower?
The nature of wild animals is that they give short shrift. 
The kill is sane and merciful. The slaughter sure and swift.

Mankind is the species where cruelty was born.
Their hunts don’t end in darkness, but leak over to the morn.
Men amassing billions while other billions starve—
how big is the kingdom that they hope to carve?
A lion with its appetite sated ends the slaughter.
Not so the questing magnate or his greedy daughter.

Send back the starving children, parentless and weak.
They will not have the mercy or safety that they seek.
Recycle them to other lions on the hunt.
In darkness or in light of day, their stalkers never punt.
Oh how the jaded mighty exercise their powers

by stacking bodies of the powerless to build their lofty towers.

 

Prompt words today are shadows, detour, fortune, lion and nightfall.

Oligarchy


Oligarchy

The chill is on the mountain. Its  height seems insurmountable.
Tenebrous and unpassable, its obstacles uncountable.
And though failure is eminent, still we’ll do our best.
Deal with problems as they come. This is no time to rest.
Lend your hand for brothers struggling with the task.
Don’t settle for what’s easy and give them what they ask.
The dangers in just turning your back to the ordeal
is that the villains at the top will plot and cheat and steal
your conscience and your water, your air and liberty
until they’ve taken everything they can from you and me
and view the ruins of what they own, from sea to shining sea.

 

Prompt words today are tenebrous, chill, insurmountable, eminent and rest.

Before it’s Too Late

Photo by David Everett Strickler on unsplash, Used with permission.

Before it’s Too Late

We could use a sentient being in the White House about now.
Surely his staunchest backers must be wondering how
they can save face. How can they be suffering no qualms?
You can tell them by their panicked looks and their sweating palms.
How can they stand behind him? How can they fail to see
how he’s cast our ship of state into a stormy sea?
Already, they’re too slow to recognize the fact that they 
jeopardize our country. Their fealty just may
bring about our final fall. This game that he’s been playing at,
remember, when he’s gone, is still the world that we’ll be staying at.
Judges, remove your blinders. Senators, seize the rein.
Acknowledge that our captain has slowly gone insane.
It’s not too late for action, but if we do not act,
we’ll go the way of other fallen empires. That’s a fact! 

 

Prompts today are slow, cast, qualm, sentience and sea.

Blind Judgment

 Are you registered? It is now more important than ever to do so, and since today is ​National Voter Registration Day, I think it is time to reblog this poem written three years ago. Person by person, vote by vote, we need to get some balance into our government. We have come to an age where lack of leadership has led to our needing to be led by children!  If they can’t shame us into caring about the world we are handing over to them, then the world is lost. I think this poem is as valid as it was when I wrote it, so here it is again. And remember, it is possible that the current administration might withdraw the U.S. from the international postal system, so if you are registering to vote from abroad, arrange to do so via email. (If you don’t believe me, Google it.)

Blind Judgment

dsc08411“Macho” by Judy Dykstra-Brown, jdbphoto  

Blind Judgment

Wielding words like bludgeons, they stumble through our world,
supporting fools as their gods, confederate flags unfurled.
Motivated more by hate than any rational thought,
they’d have no more spices added to our melting pot.

Hooligans wielding bludgeons as simple as a vote
cannot see the truth of what their voting might denote.
A businessman with ethics determined by the dollar
seems to have convinced them he’s the friend of the blue collar.

Bankruptcy and divorces, rash words and rasher actions.
Tax-dodging obligations, like a child in his reactions.
His minions yielding weapons, be they cudgels, guns or mallets,
now have it in their power to trash the world with ballots.

So all these bleating sheep with their lovely little daughters
will feed them to misogyny, like lambs led to their slaughters.
What leads nations on in these times of mass delusion?
Tomfoolery and hate and fear can lead to mass confusion.

We’ve seen it down through history with Hitler and Pol Pot.
Attila and Idi Amin, Gaddafi and Sadat.
All the blind majority led onward by a dunce.
All the dark sides of the world coming out at once.

Please, fathers love your daughters and mothers love your sons.
Protect them from the hatred of bigots wielding guns.
From politicians inventing facts and changing history,
leaving devastation wherever they might be.

We’re taught that justice must be blind to shield in its detection
of prejudice, and yet that selfsame blindness in election
may lead to faulty judgment that leads to foolish acts.
We should not cast our ballots when blinded to the facts.

 

 

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Just today, Nov 4, 2025, I received this message from “Handy Barker” concerning this poem, which was quoted as a Dr. Seuss poem everywhere I could find it, or I would have quoted him as its author. Here is the note I received

Serving up Karma for Donald Trump

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Serving up Karma for Donald Trump

When it comes to authority, Karma takes the cake.
What starts out as a landslide ends up as a quake.
She is no polite lady. She dishes and she serves
what you’ve done in one life as the coming life’s hors d’ oeuvres.
So be careful of schemes you cook up, for there is no beating them.
Chances are that in the next life you may well be eating them.

 

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Prompt words today are spacious, authority, lady, karma and take.

 

We Have Met the Enemy, and It Is Us

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We Have Met the Enemy, and It Is Us

Three years of fear and loathing? The world has turned surreal.
News programs sanctify our fear, our horrors the real deal.
A man once enigmatic tweets himself too clearly.
Those truths that we held evident and came to hold most dearly
were fictions in our history books. Our empire’s like the others––
built upon the backs and bones of those we call our brothers.
Who is guilty of these sins? We all are, one by one
for watching TV movies and not the smoking gun.
Our leaders, all fine actors, draw their princely wages
While madmen fire on schools, it’s children we put in cages.
America, unite as one and see the truth about you.
See what the whole world now sees that causes them to doubt you.
If you hold religion as your reason to support
this man who isn’t really all that he might purport,
what religion really is, please take the time to see:
“What you do to the least of my children, you have done to me.”
Whatever else might profit you, this is the bottom line.
God’s children aren’t all born within the borders you define.
“Give me your tired and weary, your yearning to be free.”
Must we scrape these words off the statue of Liberty?
Open your eyes. We are no longer saviors of all.
Perhaps we never were. We turn our backs and build a wall.

 

Prompt words today are fear, surreal, sanctify, enigmatic and program.

Tomb

Tomb

Every tactless comment, every lurid lie
pollutes the world around us—the water and the sky.
Rude winds disturb the quiet with cacophonous shrieking.
From floods and fires and hurricanes, safe shelter we are seeking.
They expect our gratitude for charity provided.
Instead they should be shamed for it. Charged and then indicted.
They cause disaster every day. The world grows daily worse
as they turn the ship of state into a floating hearse.
Rivers flowing poisons—clouds of toxic gas—
unheeded in the legislation that they pass.
They make a crypt out of our world. They seal their children’s doom,
converting our whole lovely world into a giant tomb.

Prompt words today were gratitude, cacophony, quiet and tactless.

What We Must Do

What We Must Do

I take an inventory of my heart.
There is nurture there,
and some peace,
but when I think about
the jealous nature of our world, 
a bit of it nestled, I must admit,
in me as well,
I worry about the heart of all of us,

for surely the hate and greed that jealousy seeds
is somehow fostered by us all,
no matter how much we protest it.

Where has putting up with this greed brought us?
Children are taken from their parents
and kept in cages in our country.

What can we do save protesting on Facebook?
Are we willing to face the guns
of those whose salaries we pay
to risk saving the children ourselves?

Weak children of our century,
we have to brandish our voting pens like swords.
They are our weapons.
Our agents for nourishing our souls.

The prompts for today are peace, inventory, nurture and jealous.

America is Frozen

America is Frozen

America is frozen—held fast in winter’s maw,
her government held prisoner under a greedy claw.
For any children but her own, her arms grown arch and cold.
No room for diversity. No room for her to hold 
any but the richest, the whitest and the chosen.
No room left in liberty for any but the frozen.
“Give me your tired and your poor” relegated to the past
by the chilling Nordic air that holds us in its blast.

The thaw that brings the blush of spring—the budding of the flower
is held for ransom by the few who have usurped our power.
Our ship of state held fast by ice, its sails still bravely strain
to crack the ice and open up to justice once again.
If they only had the power to billow they might start
to bring us back to sanity and thaw each frozen heart.
The poor would share the power that only the rich can buy
and have their proper portion of the great American pie.

Prompt words today were thaw, power, sail and justice. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/rdp-thursday-thaw/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/14/fowc-with-fandango-power/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/your-daily-word-prompt-sail-march-14-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/justice/