The Working Class Flu: a poem about social ills. Adults Only

 While looking back over the decades remembering how I had worked night and day and being aware of those who are today, decades later and younger than me, working night and day until they get old and look back and write their own poem to warn a younger generation. 

I wrote the following poem, The Working Class Flu, after looking back and looking forward, For adults only.

I made a video of the poem and set it to music.  Take a look.  The music and the reading of the poem went together well.  Enjoy.

Democracy's Blues: Poetry and Commentary

So what are democracy's blues?  I define that status as existing when the People, the electorate, are divided against their own interests by the political elite. This condition is exemplified by the Republican and Democratic Parties and the issues that are used to cause division.  Issues like abortion, gun control, freedom of speech, police reform.  I'm sure there are more. These issues are used by the various Parties to divide the electorate. 

The effect of a divided electorate can be seen in the failures of society that populate our daily experience.  People, families without homes, people, families without enough to eat, people without lucrative employment, people, families without health insurance that actually pays their medical expenses, people who need education. These are things every member of the working class needs. 

Every working class family or person needs all of those things. But the Republicans and Democrats have artfully found a way to divide the working class and encourage them to vote in a way that denies themselves the very basic things they all need in common.  

This division is created and maintained by the Republican and Democratic Parties. It is this division that is keeping the American People from uniting along class lines and voting as a bloc.  As long as this blindness created by the two political parties remains the same old same old remains and the People are left hopeless without a vision. 

Democracy's Blues is a poem written about the way we the people are used by the Republican and Democratic Parties to keep us fighting each other and to keep us from having a just and equitable society for the working class.

Democracy's Blues

The nations are angry,

men run to and fro,

the People are feeling uneasy

as if waiting for something to blow.

While the President pontificates

holding in his hands our fate

legislators disingenuously debate

about who to save

and who to eliminate.

All the while the People despair,

their life has become a lamentation.

Their future is dark, 

cold and bleak;

as is that of the nation.

The People long for a leader to lead them,

but receive only knaves and fools.

who meet them with smiles 

and promises;

but smiling faces making promises not kept

are cruel.

Promises unkept

leave the People broken 

and bereft,

desperate for hope

when no hope is left.

The way out is closed

without a Vision that unites

making them see, 

how to set things right.

A nation divided

does not long endure,

or to the People be true;

until we see 

we all need the same things

we'll keep playing 

democracy's blues.

January 10, 2023