Human Rights

These Social Problems Ignored

A Failure of Feedback

The big hot end of day becomes
The big hot end of the week
All efforts to labour seem futile
All work appears to be for the rich
And every year, economic inequality widens
However, there is no sign of revolution

Quite the contrary, the masses seem
More docile than ever, almost engineered to be
There is no news about injustice, only
Distractions, media blitz, cover-ups, white-washes
After all the shitty advertisements
You’d think we deserve something a

Bit more authentic, but no, culture has degraded
The sociology of control is here
Technology is a now worse-torture
And I can only continue on without being
Half-alive to the rising debt
The inflated house prices, the inflation of

The cost of living that demands budgeting
Without equality, what’s art but
Prayers of the impoverished, celebrations
Of the futile, but even the artists seem to
Ignore the real issues of the day
And prefer instead to write about nonsense.

Poem from the 21st Century

My inner artist burns
to build a new world
past the last revolution
for something special like

Freedom and equality for all
from an umbrella of social concern
it is the youth that change
the status quo, certainly not

The hooks of flowers, the marriages
family builders, who must
play their accustomed niche
the biological imperatives

where years blur in ancestral worship
descendant divinity, evolution’s
meditation on forms: self-replication
my inner artist burns

For this corrupt economy to fail
past the years of anarchy
for something special like
an ethical communal setting

It is the youth who envision
a better future, the elders
no longer have the courage
to act upon once lofty ideals.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Revolution-91757837

Inequality

This is the secret: these hearts
I held out to you, they weren’t mine
They were all the broken-hearted

All the poets I read, all the wives
I’ve witnessed abused and thwarted
My sensitivity wasn’t mine, it was

My personal reaction to the tragedy of others
I’ve seen, our own obstacles don’t seem like much
It’s this world’s capacity to suffer

That astounds me, that outrages me
The exploited, the underdogs, the innocents
This is the secret: when you want to help the world

You put others first, somehow, for community
Is what binds us together, waiting to be cared for
It’s not only your children that need your help

Meanwhile, we refuse to do more than survive
Our comforts suffice, our legacies are private
After we have inherited so much more
Than they can ever hope to receive.