Same As It Ever Was

This is the age of razor wire and border walls

Manufactured fear of immigrants and refugees

But our rulers never ask why so many must flee

For their lives

Same as it ever was;

This is the age of endless War 

Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan

Accepted as necessary, as if there is no alternative

As if war is normal, peace an aberration

Same as it ever was;

This is the age of the rich few against the poor many,

stark inequality

Pervasive want  

Like war, accepted as inevitable

As if ordained that a handful of humans should control

Most of the world’s riches

We criminalize the poor for their misfortune

Hound them, cite them, arrest them, fine them

Blame the victims, make them pay in coin or flesh

Same as it ever was;

This is the age when Truth is impaled daily,

its rotting corpse left for all to behold on screens

Large and small

Flickering images, fleeting words

Meant to confuse, obfuscate, render meaningless

Same as it ever was;

This is the age when cruelty is policy

a migrant child dies in US custody

Her crime nothing more than being born in the wrong place

At the wrong time, with the wrong skin tone

Empires never apologize

And rarely bother to tally their victims

Same as it ever was;

This is the age when the rulers of the world dither

While Puerto Rico floods, California burns and children

Beg adults to stop fouling the air, water, and soil

In the name of profit,

But the rulers cower behind feeble declarations,

Push the problem down the road,

Capitalism must be allowed to torment the planet

For there is no other way

Same as it ever was;

This is an age that feels unique but is

not,

We’re locked in the same old human story

Of who should rule and how

By will of God or birth or money or brute force, by

The rack, the canon, the torture chamber,

Chains of bondage,

Dangling nooses,

Dead end lives on dead end streets,

Born facing death, a foot in the grave,

Like the French masses in 1789

Russians in 1917

Egyptians in 2011

Tired of austerity and overt corruption

Of chasing the scraps left behind by the haves,

People are dangerous when they’ve got nothing

To lose

Same as it ever was and ever will

Be.