I Really Dislike Political Poetry, But Sometimes Ya Gotta Give In

Aristocrats and the middle class sneered at the provocations

that brought the poor and disenfranchised to demonstrations.

They sought no concord or peace, nor attempted to discuss

the demonstrators discontent, but called them all riotous.

They gave them a taste of law and order back in nineteen five,

shooting them down in the Moscow streets, leaving few alive.

But in the year of our Saving Lord's Grace, nineteen seventeen,

a new premiere was in the making, a different act and scene.

Aristocrats, nobles, and middle class---like bullies in shifting cliques---

sloganed their prooftexts of law and order, in the name of the czar.

Then that bastard Lenin threw a party for Bolsheviks,

and the aristocrats and middle class faced a change much worse by far.

The crimson stain of shed blood was spread by the rise of the new Red Star.

But Lenin had spoken openly of exactly what he should do---

he called them the People's Enemies, and stood them against a wall,

and shot them dead with cheaply made rifles; most of them dead, if not all.

 

And with them a lot of innocent Christians, too . . . .

 

The lesson of this is that human beings bear the burden of this curse,

that when we attempt to suppress real problems, we only make them worse.

 

Starward

Author's Notes/Comments: 

The lessons of Russian experience in 1905 and 1917 are very germain to the situation we are experiencing now.  The snake in the grass is not so much our political opponents, but those, like Lenin, who wish to take advantage of political unrest.  I believe Donald the First has slightly less political acumen the Nicholas the Second.

 

The use of the word "riotous" and the allusion to prooftexting was inspired by William377Keith's poem, "He Said These Words Not Me."

View s74rw4rd's Full Portfolio