Poetry

Glenn Halog photo

 

By

Norberto Franco Cisneros

 

 

 

The Faltering New Reich

 

 

Yesterday we prayed for rain

But it did not fall

Today we’re thirsty and our homes are burning

Our land is smoldering and turned to mud

 

On the other side of America torrents fall

Creating rivulets, that turn into floods

Rushing man’s refuse to the sea; the collector of human junk,

But is there enough money in Congress to pass laws to recycle?

 

Money abounds for the wealthy and for war,

but not for recycling, Social Security, the elderly

or money for sick veterans

the old don’t need more freebies, “They don’t pay taxes anyway,” they say.

 

The future belongs to young America

but getting an education is too expensive

So let’s tax the rich to improve America’s future

can’t be done, they have too many sycophants in Congress

 

Who’s making the decisions to tax?

The politicians who have their hands out

Ready to rule in business’ favor

Knowing business’ coffers have open spigots to feed their greed

 

Chasing the almighty buck

The rich live to acquire and accumulate the world’s resources

While the working man works for shiny things and handheld electronics

The American Dream has deteriorated into living in constant debt

 

Debt is a requirement in reaching for the top rung of the ladder

The Constitution and Bill of Rights are obsolete and outdated

Erase the principles of truth, honor, loyalty, and trust

Hail to the new people, not people, but called people nonetheless

 

Corporations are the new people

They make obscene amounts of money

And working people labor to help them make it

We know people are obsolete

 

Credit is the paradigm needed to show we’re on the team

But what will we do when robots lie in wait?

“Well, robots will make your lives better,” the corporate hype says

But we know the corporate spin is not said to better our lives

 

And today where incompetence rules our nation where up is down and down is sideways

and constant lying is rewarded putting truth in legal jeopardy it speaks to today’s

American Lebensraum (Nazi ideology), that the next presidential election

Will be fixed and favor the fake blond-haired, old chubby one.

 

According to Adolph Hitler, Germany’s Chancellor in the 1930’s and 40’s, “It is part of a great leader’s genius to make even widely separated adversaries appear as if they belonged to but one category, because among weak and undecided characters the recognition of various enemies marks the beginning of doubt of one’s own rightness.”

 

Nazi ideology rejects rationalism, liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and all movements of international cooperation and peace, it stressed instinct, the subordination of the individual to the state, and the necessity of blind and unswerving obedience to leaders appointed from above. It also emphasized the inequality of men and races and the right of the strong to rule the weak; sought to purge or suppress competing political, religious, and social institutions; advanced an ethic of hardness and ferocity; and partly destroyed class distinctions by drawing into the movement misfits and failures from all social classes (i.e. Cabinet members: Scott Pruitt, Secretary of EPA and Betsy DeVoss, Secretary of Education etc.).

 

The new American Lebensraum excludes those belonging to an “inferior” race and anybody not Caucasian is deemed inferior. (Immigrants (except Caucasians), American people of color).

 

The disillusionment, pauperization, and frustration—particularly among the lower middle classes—paved the way for the success of the propaganda Hitler and the Nazis espoused – Britannica.com

 

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, DOES ANY OF THE ABOVE SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU?  KNOW WHO AND WHAT YOUR COUNTRY STANDS FOR!

 

No border wall!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Greed And Callousness

 

 

If you don’t stop throwing your plastics, trash and garbage in the ocean.

The planet will die, it is dying now.

First and foremost, notice the absence of insects, then oceans becoming barren

all life then follows onto oblivion.

 

Humans are not immune not in a century or two

but in the next few years.

Do not procrastinate

So it is written in the forever after.

 

I could paint a picture of families starving, pestilence and dying,

but you don’t care about humanity, do you?

What drives you? Money and only money?

Do you ever consider the needs of living?

 

You, corporations, have made billions at the expense of many lives;

not very commendable and not much consolation for the soul,

but you made a billion dollars for every life lost, right?

Let’s count the damage beginning with your friends and family.

 

You made a billion for your father, another billion for your mother, wife and daughter

Money you safely tucked away in a safe bank, in a safe country.

But where is the money now? What about Life? They’re gone with everything else,

disappeared into the muck of historical mayhem; that is the legacy of the evil destroyers.

 

“Collateral damage, my boy, collateral damage,” said the war mongering businessman.

Unscrupulous people have an excuse for every indiscreet action and lie they tell.

They never blame themselves, the main culprits,

but everything is gone now including your miserable money and your families.

 

You could have made a difference and saved many lives

but that wasn’t your thing was it?  Money was.

Profits were the only motivation to fulfill your every Godforsaken desire.

Nobody is left now not even your family, Mr. Billionaire.

 

You have blown up billions of dollars and people,

blown with the bombs you manufactured.

So now what do you tell your grandchildren?

Oh yeah, you can’t, they’re all dead, shame, shame.

 

You took away health care, their savings and opportunities

You took away their future.

In the process, the toxins you produced destroyed lands, forests, rivers, oceans and seas,

but you lived a plush existence in gold gilded buildings.

 

What do you tell yourself sitting alone among your inanimate, useless green backs?

Surrounded by silence in your golden palace? Do, you feel secure or remorse?

Are you crying and cursing the darkness? The loss of life?

Do you truly feel regret for those now dead because of your calloused actions?

 

Or maybe you don’t feel any empathy for those you killed?

For those people who suffered due to your avarice and lack of compassion?

A probing question lingers,

do you even have a heart that beats human?

 

It is too late to change direction now, isn’t it, Mr. Businessman?

Your planet is heading towards oblivion, Mr. Industrialist?

Is it too late to change the damage you caused?

Politicians are you satisfied that with your help Business ran rampant?

 

You were willing to give up your integrity for greed and obscene lust for power?

Your avarice is too ingrained in your soul to accept that all living creatures,

living organisms, human or otherwise, are important and in the grand scheme of life

all creatures are needed to sustain life?

 

We need each other to survive. We do not live in a vacuum.

We live together to help each other, to share and to survive.

Living on this fragile sphere for such a short while generations depend on us.

To deny sharing resources for the sake of a few more profits is odious.

 

We are one and come from the same father spirit.

Will you change or be forever damned to the silence of deeply felt guilt

where nothing stirs, blows or breathes human and dark matter is all there is?

Be still, listen for it… Do you hear it? No? This horror is just beginning.

 

If you feel completely alone with your own gnarled, perverted thoughts, regrets

and impotence to change the damage you caused

allowing the gates of hell with the foulest smell to grip the soul of the forever dead and

swallow everything leaving no escape from the finality of extinction, be leery…

 

 

 

 

 

Norberto Franco Cisneros

My poems have been published in the following publications: Indiana University Journal Chiricu; Avocet Review (Avocet Press); Snow Jewel (Grey Sparrow Press); Ilumen (Mouthfeel Press/ Sam’s Dot Publishing) and several others, including e-zines, Black Petals, Ruhatish and have been a Featured Poet in Poetry Soup