Day 40. The Rap of Liberation 2nd Movement

This is Day 40 of the Poetry for Peace Challenge 2018-2019. Here is Poem#40. I've learned a lot by doing this but it seems to be getting a little easier. It can be hard when one is tired, not in the mood, short of time or getting up at five in the morning to write a poem but it seems to me that with practice one can turn the creative juices on at will. The only reason we "can't" do it is when we tell ourselves we can't. Try it!

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The Rap of Liberation - 2nd Movement

by Steve Cook

Have you ever noticed

How flung shit never sticks at home?

Some bone of contention

Some reason why we're miserable,

Fearful, unreasonable

Or plagued by something horrible

Is buried in the backyard of

Far and distant people

We often never even met.

Blame sits square on the shoulders

Of neighbors or strangers

As far away as possible

Who are by accusation

And circumstancial evidence

Conveniently culpable,

Ultimately responsible

And intimately liable

For things we find uncomfortable,

Detestable or regrettable.

The problem's always "over there"

With someone else's government,

Economy, choices or environment.

It never sits at home,

Just up the road in Parliament

Whose politicians

Pontificate, prevaricate,

Equivocate and exaggerate

And point accusing fingers

At the Russians, Iranians,

Syrians, Jews or Americans.

They urge us desperately

With slick affability

And bland insincerity,

"Don't look at us, look at them!"

They blamed the Germans

When our own bankers

Shysters and shit-stirrers

Were quietly and covertly

Bankrolling Hitler

And they're doing it again

With some latter day equivalent,

Some cheap politician

Demonising immigrants,

Muslims, foreigners or some other

Convenient scapegoat

Elected to villainy

By an idiot deflecting blame

By peddling unworkable solutions.

The stuffed shirts tell us

They're the experts and we better

Prepare for the worst

'Cos they can predict with confidence

The grim inevitability

That the ailing economy

Is gonna be dreadful

And all of us probably

Will be living in chaos

Penury and poverty,

Out of luck and out of work.

And the world meanwhile

Is going pear-shaped

Tits-up, disorderly or dangerous,

Refuses to behave

With grim intractability

Like something fickle, feral,

Or ominous,

Created by gods

Who are inimical,

Bloody-minded or obstinate.

And we never ask the obvious:

"If you're such an expert,

What are you doing about it

Instead of sitting there in apathy,

You clueless wally?"

But apparently they're helpless,

Impotent and powerless

'Cos some businessman

In Shanghai was late for a meeting,

Or the dice fell badly

In the casino called the Stock Market,

Or Vladimir Putin's running Russia

Instead of Boris Yeltsin,

Or it's all the fault of Europe's

Brain-dead bureaucracy,

Or 'cos people got the hump

Over genocide in Palestine,

Or the fickle ruddy consumer

Lost his enthusiasm for borrowing,

The uncooperative cretin.

The problem is always

Someone else's fault,

The ball's in their court

And we're always the victim,

The effect, never the cause.

And ultimately,

In the final analysis,

When you get right down to it,

The person responsible

Is undoubtedly on the TV,

Never sitting in front of it.

Find more free poetry in the Poetry for Peace series, here