hard times, in the land of plenty

hard times, in the land of plenty

A home

Two kids

Two cars

A giant TV

A comfy wife

And to support them

A giant mortgage

And of course

A job for life

That’s what you were promised

That’s what you believed

Brother

Come on

Were you really that naïve

Did you think

Some inalienable right

Constitutionally enshrined

That

No matter how hard

You played

You’d never know hard times

A right delivered with

Your pay cheque

Your employee log-in code

For banging bolts

In truck frames

Brother

More rubber on the road

You’ve seen them

In the newsclips

Between the banker’s ads

Patrician politicians

Rubbing shoulders

With the lads

Grimly smiling

For the camera

Sincere enough

To choke

We’d never

Steal your pension

Brother

Now do we get your vote

So while politicians

Mug it for the cameras

Lying through their teeth

Padlocked gates and boarded windows

Workers in the street

Curiouser and curiouser

With the company going down

The architects of disaster

Are nowhere to be found

Silver haired executives

Bonuses tightly drafted

Sliding smiling into Lexuses

Brother

You’ve been shafted

But come on

Lets be honest

Now the game is done

Dress it up

All you like

You looked out

For number one

You knew that while

Your brood got fat

On first world

Exploitation

Somewhere

Beyond The Shopping Channel

A family faced starvation

Do we ever pause

To wonder

Pause long enough to care

That if we got by

On just a little less

We’d have some left

To share

The suit behind

That tinted screen

An obscenity

I agree

But if we look a little closer

Brother

That obscenity’s

You and me

Nick Faragher

November 12, 2009