Foreboding Future
By Al Staggs, Sante Fe, NM
It’s Dickensesque,
It’s the kind of condition
That fostered the French Revolution,
When there are many with too little
And too few with too much.
The structures of laws,
Customs, policies and usual business practices
May soon be replaced by marches, strikes,
Protests and even violence
Growing out of this universal sense of despair.
A system that habitually and legally rewards
the rich Palestinians, at the expense of the poor
Is no longer legal,
No longer moral.
It’s not the Great Depression
But the Great Oppression.
For the present to change
May require an upheaval
The likes of which this nation
has never before experienced.
Inevitably, eventually, a bold new change
Must be forced upon the opulent
Because they will not willingly agree to
The major reversals which are required to
Greatly reduce the great gap between the rich and
the poor.
Capitalism, the Free Enterprise system is on the hot seat
Trickle down had trickled out.
There’s far less for the well-endowed to give
To charity and charity was never the answer to this
disparity anyway.
And the church whose overhead always mandated
Budgets which reflected mere pocket change to
human need
Will now be required to cut even deeper into those
meager allotments
The churches are trapped by their financial structure
and by maintaining
The houses in which they meet to pay homage to a
God who
Most certainly has a preferential option for the poor.
