poems about justice

Turn Back

A cabal of petty,
Unreconstructed hacks
With no experience of
Being discriminated against,
Making sweeping
Discriminatory decisions
Against the unprotected,
Limiting their rights,
Restricting their ability to
Achieve their dreams,
Ignoring heinous past and
Present transgressions.
Inequality institutionalized,
Codified by privileged brutes
Who’ve never had to
See things from
Someone else’s perspective,
Or have some kind of
Strange axe to grind,
Smugly decreeing a
Less compassionate world.
Turn back the clock,
Reverse progress.

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Indisputable

No room for debate,
Mind made up beforehand.
Unrelentingly imposed
Hierarchy – a few on top,
Most on the bottom.
Homogeneity of belief,
Indoctrinated from birth,
Perpetuated by self-interested
Megalomaniacs unwilling to
Consider other perspectives,
Their version of the truth
Absolute, indisputable.
Fabricate the doctrine,
Tighten the yoke around
Subservient subjects,
Keep them in the dark,
The malleable uninformed.

Longstanding

Outraged that their longstanding
Position is being challenged,
They scramble out angrily
From their holes,
Attacking anyone
Who doesn’t fit the profile,
Obnoxiously making everything
Worse for everyone,
Terrified of equality.

Disregard

Cavalierly excuses himself
When she deferentially
Asks for help for her family.
A rigged game dependent on
Her subservience and
Fear of merciless reprisal.
Surviving day to day
On the fringes of a
Community that scorns her,
Demeans her very existence,
Considers her less than a person.
Spoiled starched gentlemen,
Primped wilting ladies,
An air of contrived civility
Masks a ruthless
Disregard for humanity.

Reverberating

Reposing in fortified edifice
Overlooking tattered hovels,
Broken dreams that never
Took flight.

Counting his earnings
From the sweat of
Indentured
Beings.

Surveying his lands,
Faceless toiling peasantry,
Noble tradition reverberating
In the present.

It Is

They say it’s
Not about race,
But it is.

They say it’s
Not about bigotry,
But it is.

They say it’s
Not about prejudice,
But it is.

This Way

What will happen when he
Achieves total world domination?
Will it quell the
Feelings of insecurity —
Restore to wholeness
Countless victims fallen
Prey to avarice?
It won’t matter in the end —
He’ll vanish in time —
As we all do.
The legacy of destruction
Cries louder than any
Philanthropic pretense,
Eviscerating the world
To seize some
Artificial sense of security.
As the smoke clears,
We discover, as always, that
It didn’t have to be this way.

All Him

Abundant wealth,
Copious success,
Bountiful opportunities,
Doors open at all turns.

Takes time out of busy schedule,
Attends local governance meetings,
Rails against
Programs for the less fortunate.

Compassion gene missing.
A series of people
Helped him along the way,
Fancies it was all him.

Keep It

Let’s keep it
The way it’s always been,
Advantage us – scarcity you,
We get all the stuff,
You get meager scraps.
Let’s sit smugly on our porches,
Exchanging phony, chummy banter,
One-upping each other,
Reliving past glories.
Not a trouble-maker in sight,
They’re across the tracks
Where they belong.
Neatly manicured lawns,
Freshly painted homes,
Spurious smiles pasted on
Stiff wax faces,
Underplayed horror stories.