Political Ponderings

Look Up

You fly in your jet plane, you sail in your yacht,
but others have paid for the things that you’ve got -
your mansion, your penthouse, your country estate
were built with the blood of the people you hate.

Look up from your table, look up from your plate,
changes are coming and changes won’t wait.
You think we are stupid, you think we don’t see
the way you despise all the people like me.

You think you’re so clever, you think you’re so grand,
you think we don’t notice the whip in your hand.
You try to control us with guns and with tanks,
with tear gas and tasers but mostly with banks.

Look up from your riches, look up from your wealth,
we’re sick of the way that you ruin our health
by keeping us hungry and homeless and poor.
You think that we’re stupid but don’t be too sure.

Changes must happen, the worm it must turn,
the people in power must finally learn
the masses won’t simply roll over and die,
we’ve seen through the fiction, we’ve seen through the lie.

Look up from your scheming, look up from your ploys,
we’re no longer willing to live as your toys,
Changes must happen, we’ve waited too long,
anger is spreading and anger is strong.

© CS 2016



Privileged

The privileged will never understand.
They’ve never been in dire need;
never had to stand in line,
never been abused because of
race, religion, gender.
The privileged will never understand.

The privileged will never understand.
They know the world belongs to them;
they won’t go hungry to their beds,
or wonder where they’ll sleep tonight
unless it’s just to choose which home,
the city one, the country one, or
maybe one abroad.

The privileged can smile,
can look down on the “others”
with a laugh, a joke, a snide remark.
They’ll never understand.
They’ll never know despair.
Their worries are a million miles
away from those that most of us
are prone to day by day.

No, the privileged will never understand.
But still there’s something we can have
that maybe they don’t know about:
a thankful heart, a helping hand,
the love that can’t be bought.
These are things the privileged
may never understand.


© CS 2016

A Turn To The Right

I’m watching the world take a turn to the right
and I sit here wondering why.
When I think of what the right can be
it makes me want to cry.
Very few people alive today
can remember World War Two:
the horrors of right wing politics,
what this shift to the right can do.

I watched as America voted for Trump,
that arrogant bloated greedy lump.
I see how France now flirts with Le Pen,
so will they flirt with Nazis again?
And here in Britain people want May
which worries me more than I can say.

Right wing politics play on fear
but fear leads to anger and hate.
Fear of poverty, fear of “them”,
I suppose are something innate.
But what it becomes can be horrible.
Couldn’t we overcome?
Be better than that? Be kind? Be loving?
Stop the me first pushing and shoving?
Or are we all too dumb?

© CS 2017



Right or Wrong?

The future isn’t looking bright:
as countries increasingly turn to the right.
War and hunger lead to migration;
people fear for their population.
Immigration is seen as a curse;
global warming will make it worse.
Voices calling for understanding
are drowned by fearful ones demanding
walls and barriers, “Keep them out!”
worried folk increasingly shout.
“Arm yourself for the conflicts to come!”
It might sound cruel, it might sound dumb
but many don’t see beyond their fears
and sadly it will end in tears.

CS 2017


Dangerous

What kind of a man lacks charm and grace
as he struts around with a sulky face;
a popinjay with a petulant air,
an orange face and ridiculous hair;
whose diatribes lack wisdom or wit,
whose lies prove him a hypocrite?
whose every utterance proves his lack
of intelligence? Just yack yack yack.
And yet this man has many fans:
those of his ilk who like his plans
without ever seeing where it could lead.
This man is dangerous indeed.

CS
October 2016


The Orange Man

I do not like the orange man
I don’t know how a person can.
I do not like the way he lies,
I do not like what he implies.
I do not like his silly hair,
his  vulgar, disrespectful air.
I do not like his “me me me”,
I do not like his history.
I do not like his stupid talk,
I do not like his pompous walk,
I do not like his lack of sense
or how he gives so much offence.
There’s not one thing of him I like.
I think that he should take a hike.

 CS


Man of Straw

A man of no substance,
a man of straw,
is put in charge of
the country, the law.
But life isn't simply
a panel game show
and it's anyone's guess
how things will go.

9/11/16


People

If people were just people
how great the world could be
If there was no more “them and us”
but only “you and me”
no labels,
no boxes
no pigeonholes
no hate,
no clichés
no stereotypes
no politics
no state.
If people were just people
with no more condemnation
how wonderful the world could be;
just peace and integration.

© CS 2016

Evil

Evil has a human face,
it has a human heart,
one devoid of compassion,
cold in every part.

It makes the mind it inhabits
completely deaf and blind
to the suffering of others,
refusing to be kind.

No need to look for horns and tail
no need for cloven hooves;
evil is what humans do
as watching some folk proves.

No other species acts this way,
they follow natural law.
So can we say humanity
is evil to the core?

No indeed, for many
show kindness every day.
Is it that evil people
have simply lost their way?

A sick mind can lead astray
and lead to evil deeds
but we may modify the thoughts
on which the sickness feeds.

No, evil doesn’t just happen;
it’s a choice that people make
and starts with that first decision
that ego decides to take.

Slowly, but deliberately,
they follow a downward turn,
descending into darkness
from which there’s no return.

© CS 2016


Points of View

Once a person has made up their mind,
established their point of view,
the door is shut, the boat has sailed,
there’s nothing that you can do.

Beliefs are essential to who we are
and change is exceedingly slow;
like a drowning man in a sea of change
we cling to what we know.

Our minds aren’t like a series of files
with elements easily changed;
they’re more of a network, each thought intertwined,
not easily rearranged.

To give up our core beliefs is hard,
but that’s what we seem to expect
when we ask folk to look at the way think
or tell them they’re incorrect.

No matter how good the intention
it’s a waste of time and breath
to try to change any mind made up;
they’ll argue the toss to the death!

© CS 2016


Politicians

They primp and preen and posture,
smile their smiles and lie,
convincing the people to vote for them.
Well, anyway they try.

But are we taken in by them?
Do we believe their claims?
Some clearly do, while others
are sickened by their games.

Who can we afford to trust?
Very few it seems.
Millionaires don’t care about us,
not in their wildest dreams.

Who will win, come election day
and wear the victor’s crown?
The tide of opprobrium escalates
as we watch integrity drown.

© CS 2016


 Strength

Two clenched fists don’t make you strong.
Weapons don’t make you a man.
Shouting and pointing have shown how weak
folks are, since time began.

For strength lies in patience, humility,
the support you give to another:
the women, the children, the dissposessed,
the homeless, the single mother.

Crushing people is not respect,
Insulting them isn’t smart.
Strength is shown in giving hope
and comes from a grateful heart.

© Oct 2016

The Capitalist
Sung to the tune of The Sewing Machine.

Oh, the capitalist, the capitalist, his own best friend.
If we didn’t have the capitalist this way of life would end.
For the money the money a dollar a buck
they say it trickles down
but as far as anyone here can see
it just goes round and round.

CS


The Privileged Few.

They sit in their decadent ivory towers
ignoring humanity's woes;
preened from the tops of their coiffured heads
to the tips of their pedicured toes.
Most care nothing for you or I.
Just imagine what they could do!
There's plenty of money to go around
but it's owned by the privileged few.

CS

They Tried

Yesterday they tried,

tried to bring terror to our shores 

and, briefly, they achieved it.

Today the flag flies at half mast

to honour those who died but

life goes on, as usual.
We will not arm ourselves with guns

 we will not hide behind a wall

we will not hate the foreigner

or walk in fear of strangers.
We manifest that wartime spirit,

demonstrated in the Blitz,

for that's how we behave.

Britons, as the anthem says,

never shall be slaves.

CS 23/03/17



Travesty

 There’s a lesson to be learned from
the emerging butterfly;
the struggle to escape
from its hard encasing shell
give form and definition to
the wings that will enable it
to fly.

Well meaning but mistaken hands
attempt to help the creature;
its wings do not develop.
Crippled, it will never fly,
a travesty of a butterfly.

So too the baby chick must fight
to work its way into the light
becoming strong and worthy
of the life tit has to lead.

When parents who have prospered
by the work of their own hands
decide to make it easy for
their offspring to succeed
they too create a travesty
which lacks a strength of purpose,
who has no understanding of
what life is all about.

CS 2017

Truth


It's a tricky thing, the truth.
We sometimes avoid it, step aside,
withdraw, becoming guarded.

At other times we launch an attack,
lunge and parry, feint and riposte.

We dance around it, disengage,
use rapier wit, deception.

But often, in a wider sense,
truth is what we choose to believe,
a variable, our raison d'etre.

One man's truth is another's myth
but he'll fight to the death to defend it.


Words

Sometimes people seem so blind,
they look but do not see.
Other folk appear unkind,
or so it seems to me.

They see a thing and just react,
they do not stop to think,
then words pour out, devoid of tact,
as quick as they can blink.

Hasty words, malicious words,
like bullets from a gun
or like a flock of pecking birds;
they stupefy and stun.

Don’t these people realise
the harm that words can do?
Do they never empathise
or see another’s view?

Some, I know, act wilfully
intending to distress,
wielding words most skilfully
to agitate and stress.

However, most are not like that,
just thoughtless and unwise.
Perhaps they need to pause a while
and open up their eyes.

© CS 2016


Rights

Letters, marches, demonstrations,
voices raised in protest,
“Give us our rights,” they say,
“I want” …  this  … or that
“I want”
“I”

But what of those who have no voice:
the animals, the unborn or the old?
They must suffer silently
give up their rights
and die.

Can we excuse the inexcusable?
Selfishness almost beyond belief.
Your rights or mine?
The hunter or the hunted?
The mother or the unborn child?
The feeble aged parent or
the relatives who have no time?

This is how the world will be destroyed;
life wiped out by “me” and “mine”.

CS 1990