By Craig Boehman
Original link: http://www.boehman.org/2/post/2014/03/cry-sis-poem.html
Image credit: Art by Patrick Feller
Cry, sis
Because your husband will find no living wage here.
Your healthcare, if you’re “lucky” enough to have it at all,
will be insufficient and too expensive (and likely to put you into debt).
Cry, sis
Come the day when you realize your government is against you;
it spies on you and conspires with a variety of corporate powers
to fleece you of your savings, privacy, and even your home.
Come the day when you and others gather in public spaces to protest,
police in riot gear will send you home (if you’re “lucky” enough to still have it),
or to the hospital, to jail, or to the grave.
Cry, sis
Because your politicians do not represent you or have your best interests in mind.
Their elections were paid for by a few elite members of the 1%.
Did you know there are 85 individuals richer than half the planet combined?
They help write the laws, stack the courts with their judges,
and make sure the President’s only real concern is “The Economy”,
a code word for Wall Street.
Cry, sis
Because your democracy is defined by military intervention:
Ongoing wars, the decimation of civilian populations in places
you’ll likely never visit or even be able to locate on a map.
Your leaders routinely assassinate human beings to further their own agendas,
and this ultimately leads to the deaths of many men, women, and children
who happened to be at the WRONG place at the WRONG time.
Cry, sis
Because those brave men and women who blow the Whistle
on war crimes and government and corporate corruption
are imprisoned, demonized, or chased into exile.
Your prisons are fuller than Stalin’s ever were.
Your two-faced justice system ensures crimes of the elite will continue to go
unpunished.
Cry, sis
Because your nation is a slave to the Dead.
Companies level mountains in search of extinct life to burn.
Companies suck oil like mosquitoes, virtually guaranteeing that all life
on Earth will be subject to the malaria of Global Warming.
Companies seek to control the food supply.
Companies poison the soil, water, and sky.
Companies control most of what you see and hear.
Companies have two agendas: To make you buy, To make you fear.
Too many people have not learned to raise their fists.
So I say to you, cry, cry, cry, cry
Cry sis,
If you do not resist.
Very stark and penetrating poem on the major fault lines in our system under more and more pressure al the time. how can poems like these be heard where it most counts in order to raise awareness. The people who read and get these poems already understand the predicament we’re in. How do we get these into the minds of those who don’t get it yet?
Great observation, Dave. Preaching to the choir is definitely a real obstacle in forums like this. But as long as sites like Creative Resistance offer us the chance, contributing could help those who’ll inevitably follow a URL here out of curiosity. At least, this is my hope.