Tag Archives: economic crisis

The Dust Bowl

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The names and their faces
those times and their places,
the rundown rail depot
from where the last westbound left
in that dry-cracked goodbye summer
when water was heaven
and wells coughed their
grinding choking echo,
dust for a future
that had yet to be;
In those places and their times
heavy inked portraiture faces
made indistinguishable by
careless careworn thumb and fingers
of the ones chosen to
witness their passing,
so that records were kept
for whoever would come after
to research rediscover
those times and their places,
shrouded names and their faces
down by the rail depot
in that dry-cracked summer
when the westbound whistled its goodbye.

An Exercise in Disappointment

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We waited so long for answers

years went past like trains in the night

lights on, heading somewhere;

Back at the station ticket in hand

we waited till the memory of our

waiting decomposed in a lights out

going nowhere rustbelt town;

Our prayers for answers wore out

in the empty spaces between pews,

our hopes got outsourced somewhere else

where lights were on and years passed like trains;

We wait in line,

we observe the rituals

with diffident demeanour,

and the ticket in hand tells us

there are no answers.

 

5 a.m.

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We all recall something else
somewhere else ,someone else
other than the Here ,the Now
and least of all ourselves
in this predicament ;
We recollect the cadences,
the echo of the very long ago,
the fate and destiny of nations,
of future centuries unconceived;
Swaying on our threads of doubt
and all consuming impending failure
just as our forefathers did
trailing blindly across the quagmire
in the unlit darkness pressing on regardless ;
Here now we stand in the greying twilight
of our yesterday,ever today never today,
what we seek what we sought
becomes what we sold what we bought
with meagre recompense for our days of toil,
aeons of labour bound, chained, bonded
unwillingly to the desire of others ;
Those greater who fall ,are falling,fell
even as we look in upon ourselves ,
wanting,desiring,aspiring,striving
for that which was promised ,
all that was promised ,
all of our yesterdays,todays,tomorrows
Now.

Politics of Austerity

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Our three great Parliamentiary parties

the incompetent , the stupid and the greedy ,

concur that joblessness and poverty

are solely the fault of the needy ;

Government departments with their indifference

misinformation and bureaucratic sloth ,

have decreed that the poor and jobless

can no longer afford to be both ;

Budget cuts here there and everywhere

cuts to top rate taxes amongst others ,

lead us down Wall Street again

to the door of Lehman Brothers .

( Footnote :See also the recent similarly themed poems , “Welfare dependency” and “Economic Crisis” )

Welfare Dependency : Ode to Skivers

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No legs, no arms , no eyes
it came as quite a surprise ,
when I heard the Man on the radio say
how healthy I was feeling today ;

No legs, no arms , no eyes
he asked who was I to criticise ,
the Man on the radio said it was fair
to expect me to somehow get out of my chair ;

No legs, no arms , no eyes
the Man on the radio wanted no sad sighs ,
he said I could try to crawl out of the door
and get a job polishing the floor ;

The Man on the radio said
my condition had official data clear and empirical ,
to qualify for any benefits now
would require an old fashioned miracle .

footnote:
On June 10 2013 ,the present UK government introduced new.lower rates of benefit payments,subject to periodic ” fit for work” re-assessments for all disabled claimants .)

Economic Crisis

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STAND..Stand..stand

and STARE..Stare..stare ,

After all there’ll always be

somebody else to care ;

STOP..Stop..stop

and GO..Go..go ,

what you’ve missed out on in life

you will never know ;

HELLO..Hello..hello

G’BYE..G’bye..g’bye ,

All your tears have been wasted

but they still expect you to cry ;

BURN..Burn..burn

and SLASH..Slash..slash ,

They sold your birthright

for just a hand full of cash ;

STARE..Stare..stare

and STAND..Stand..stand ,

now everyone knows the names

of those who betrayed our Land.

Gluttony:The Hunger Games

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” They ” have stolen

the last of our days ,

” They ” have ripped

open our bellies ,

” They ” have taken

what little we had

mingled with blood and gore ;

When ” they ” finish gorging themselves

on the last of those days they stole ,

and lick clean their fingers

of the blood and gore ,

” They ” will choose not to remember

and we will choose never to forget ,

Dimitris Christoulas.

FOOTNOTE :-

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dimitris Christoulas was a Greek pensioner who committed suicide in Syntagma Square in Athens in April 4, 2012.

Christoulas left behind the following suicide note:

“The Tsolakoglou (The collaborationist occupation government established after the Nazi Germany invasion of Greece during World war two) government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. I believe that young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945″ [1]

Biography[edit]
Dimitris Christoulas, born in 1935, 77 years old at the time of his death, was a retired pharmacist who sold his pharmacy in 1994 and had been experiencing both financial and health problems, including difficulty paying for his medications, when the Greek government austerity measures slashed his pension.[2][3] Before his death, he had posted a sign outside his apartment that stated, “Can’t pay, won’t pay,” and his last words before shooting himself were “I am not committing suicide, they are killing me.”