poems about justice

Temporary Assistance

She rages at people
Who receive support
To feed their children,
Keep a roof over their heads,
Remain contributing members of society
Rather than scorned pariahs,
Cast off and left to perish.
She conveniently forgets the
Many times that some person
Helped her in a time of need,
A friend, a co-worker,
A family member, someone who
Believed that she just needed
A little temporary assistance.

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Family Values

He confides,
With great earnestness,
To the crowd,
That he’s for family values,
And by that he means the
Old-fashioned,
Tried and true,
Time-tested morals of
Exemplars deeply
Steeped in hypocrisy and
Callousness, effortlessly
Trampling over anyone who
Doesn’t believe in their
Particular brand of
Tribal decree,
A narrowing of scope,
Collapsing heart.

Scarcity

Scarcity spreads its
Bony fingers across
The landscape, an
Ominous shadow obliterating
Kindness and hope.
People huddle in fear,
Staring at the cracks
Developing in the dam.
Even in the most opulent
Board rooms people talk
Worriedly about the
Coming deluge and continue
Stuffing the vaults with
Stolen gold, expecting
They’ll survive the
Cataclysm they created.

On Display

Arms crossed,
Scrunched face,
Pouty lip,
Poor little tycoon
Sulks theatrically,
Explodes indignantly,
Threatens to withhold
Contrived largesse,
A normally selfless gesture
Becomes just another
Bargaining chip.
It’s all fine and dandy
When you can do it
Without being discovered,
But quite another when
Your modus operandi and
Shriveled heart
Are starkly on display,
Then you have to face
What kind of person
You’ve become,
It still doesn’t matter,
You’ve been through it before,
It’s how you got here.

Operating Expenses

At one of
Many thousands of
Enormous stores,
Filled with cheap things
Fabricated by impoverished
Hands in parts of the
World out of sight and mind,
Lavishly benefiting one
Obscenely wealthy,
Compassionless family,
Whose snickering members
Give almost nothing
To charity thanks to a
Fiendishly clever
Tax-evading foundation,
Another employee’s
Already meager hours
Are cut to reduce
Operating expenses,
Though routinely
Expected to work overtime,
Off the clock,
Or be replaced.

Survival of the Fittest

It was done to me,
So I’m going to
Do it to others.
I didn’t have it easy,
I had to fight for
Everything I’ve got.
I pulled myself up
By the bootstraps,
I shouldn’t have to
Support anyone else,
They’re all lazy,
I’m hard working,
They don’t deserve
Success like I do.
Let them shrivel
On the vine if they
Can’t figure it out,
It’s survival of
The fittest.

Rationalization

Perhaps it’s the
Repetition of ideas,
Labeled as common sense,
Rehashed and regurgitated
Way too many times,
Losing their original sting,
The memory of stern faces
Telling them what to believe,
The inability to bounce back
From the continuous onslaught,
The required rationalization
Of reprehensible positions,
That leads them to conclude
And say out loud,
Without a second thought,
That some people merit
Unconditional derision,
Exclusion, punishment.

Fantasies

A slimy, diseased presence
Insinuating itself into daily
Discourse, spreading spores
Infecting the conversation,
Blurring the lines of veracity.

Small, petty, diseased creatures
Bloviating about the latest
Manufactured outrage,
Anti-truth serum pulsating
Through collapsing veins.

Feeding more coal into the fire,
Stoking the flames of discord,
Prurient power fantasies,
Conscience gagged, extinguished,
Kneeling at the altar of money.