Monday, September 10, 2012

Why Are We?

Why are we celebrating instead of worrying incessantly
When we reach sixty-five, and are, from our jobs, free?
We then live off the taxes paid by our children's generation;
This isn't what was envisioned as "Social Security" in our nation.

Not one of us wants to see the widowed, orphaned or disabled
Have to beg for a place at our society's abundant table.
We set up a tax-funded programs as a safety net for them,
Not a way out of work for differently-abled women and men.

What horrible abuses of our generosity and naivety
That generation after generation, on our payroll, stay.
These are people who have provided not even a fraction
Of what they will collect from the lobbyist's actions.

If there was a way I could end my life with dignity
So that my grandchildren would be, from my debt, free,
I would gladly give any years I have left to them,
Hoping they will do a better job than my generation.

I am so tired of blowing the horn of consequences
To those who make societal control pretenses.
I now hide behind my home's walls and make pleas
That we will, one day, magical thinking cease.

Each of our actions, including our own speech,
Has long-lasting consequences, perhaps to teach?
It matters not whether we are sober or inebriated,
Our behaviors are that by which our values are rated.

How can we continue to collect on others' sacrifice,
Though we have ample resources, to our needs suffice?
The fallacy of the unregulated stock market is plain to me:
Bankruptcy of the vulnerable, so the rich continue to be.

Don't get me wrong, I am considered part of the rich;
My access to perverse power has long made me itch.
I have given away much of our jointly held resources;
My desire for justice has led to lively discourses.

A whistle blower must have the contacts to infiltrate,
To have the information and terms with which to relate.
I am sickened by what I have gathered from non-profits;
There are many on whom the shoe of corruption fits.

All who want justice in our deeply divided nation
Must unite against our church/state ideation.
A corporation that, by definition, is a sovereign  entity
Shouldn't have privileges from which citizens are free.

I am so tired of the visions and platforms of politicians
Pretending they care about our spiritual convictions.
Only the individual person, not a corporation, has a soul;
Democracy, as its purpose, seeks to include the whole.

I'm not sure that, under a republic, our nation should stay;
I believe that this system has seen its best days.
Because we exempt "our" representatives from our laws,
Our consequences, as citizens, give them little pause.

We go along to get along, believing we have no power,
But rational voices on the internet can grow by the hour.
I'd like to see more about what others truly believe,
Not religious and political messages, by others conceived.

How do we apply our beliefs to our own families?
How do we benefit from caring communities?
What benefits do we each derive from paying tax?
What are we willing, as humans, to give back?

Our country and religions build in protections
We continue to want to age past all projections.
Who is willing to give up some of their own life
To secure, for the next generation, less strife.?