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| Image source: DonkeyHotey |
"'Tis the season once again. You should know it well by now: a 'progressive' Democrat running in the primaries for president of the United States. We've seen it all before, from Jessie Jackson to Dennis Kucinich, left-leaning voters have time-and-again been asked to support candidates that are working to transform the corrupt and war-happy Democratic Party from within. And each and every time the strategy has failed..." Joshua Frank," Why Bernie Sanders is a Dead End," Counterpunch, June 3, 2015
Our poems burst with love for humanity,
We care for all its members, only not their oppressors.
We sign petitions, shout for peace and march for justice.
It's all so good, but we risk little and gain even less.
Is it time to put our bodies
Where our pens played and our words sprouted?
We shall confront once more what Tadeusz Borowski
Discovered after his liberation from Auschwitz:
"The world is ruled neither by justice nor by morality,
The world is ruled by power and power is obtained by money."
Been there, done that you say, but what did we do?
We blinked and vowed to go on writing and volunteering and organizing.
We played by the rules in the land of the lemming
And the home of the harmless.
"We tried," we'd say as the words curdle
Into cold comfort on our tongues while
Power grins and grants us our gestures.
Our words struggle to trade as conscience's currency.
What is to be done?
George Salamon taught German at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter on the St. Louis Business Journal and Sr. Editor for Defense Systems Review. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.