Disgracing Lady Justice
By Samantha Terrell
2017
Disgracing Lady Justice
When will it end?
What’s it all for?
All this,
“Taking it on the chin”
And,
“Not keeping score”
When do the hard-workers
Get to stop working for free?
When will the greedy-haters
Start to finally see
The imbalance imbued by
A culture of mediocrity?
Taking away all the rules
Won’t make everything fair;
Protecting the interests
Of a small faction
Leaves countless many
Without regard or care
∞
Lest We Forget
Lady Liberty surely tires
Of holding
Her torch for others
While her constituents conspire
Against her or, equally
As wretched, take for granted,
Her selfless generosity
∞
Renovating the Capitol
A coup de maître is underway
To renovate and remodel,
Strip down and reshape our nation.
Rather than discarding the existing
Furniture, fabric bolts are expertly selected
For the reupholstering.
And, one discreet swipe at a time the mural of diversity,
Education and innovation,
Progress and industry
Will, with a final master stroke, be painted over,
Making a nation’s truth defenders
Into frustrated up-enders
Whereby their “resistance” was also planned,
Counted on,
And
Rendering the artisans’
Carefully sculpted Trojan horse,
Into one full of its own citizens
∞
Dark Money Ages
The Dark Ages of history, a natural extension
Of a humanity unready for its own consequences.
Wars and ignorance fail us, but persist;
The apple on Eden's tree that we can't resist.
And an age returns, as though anew.
It's the Dark 'Money' Ages we've now plunged into,
Creating a movement it cannot control.
Alas, man's empires will always fall
∞
‘Divided’ We Stand?
A pact of money
Binds the few,
Revealing positions that
Poison the many,
With a dense
And blinding fog
Consisting of droplets
Who choose to misrepresent.
Securing a foothold
On the right, means
Slippage on the left,
And if the left foot finds solid ground,
The right falters; back and forth again
Until the damp air turns murky,
And it’s hard to tell where
We are going, since
Policy shifts with money changing hands,
Dividing the people, and
Deciding the fate of
Where we all stand
∞
And to the ‘Hypocrites’ For Which We Stand…
It’s been a long time
In the making,
With hurt and hatred
Wrought by those, through many times,
In many places,
Who create
And re-create
An atmosphere
Of quiet turmoil, of
Reticence, and fear
But now
The hushed lulls in our
Melting pot of
Cultural questioning,
Have boiled over
Again, into an argument over
National security. And politicians, elected
By a system of freedom and democracy,
Happily succumb to
Blatant hypocrisy,
As they concede—they need
More time to find,
Or make, a legal way
Of keeping refugees, and
Civil liberties at bay
∞
The Terrorist Who Stole My Heart
A slimy coward full of anger,
Jealousy, and spite
Snuck in by day,
Not even requiring dark of night,
And stole from my treasure-trove
Of neighbors and community,
Replacing kindness and trust
With skepticism and anxiety.
Then, with my fellow citizens on board,
Some sleazy pick-up lines worked fine
To sway a few shadowy politicians
From their otherwise well-meaning positions.
Until, that terrorist's
Persuasions complete,
He slithered back to watch
My heart fall at his feet.
And though the terrorist
Is the one who is guilty,
I'm the one condemned to mourn
For lost freedoms...my heart, my liberty
∞
Our National Church
We say our daily prayers, and convene
With fellow man,
And our friends on a
Scrolling social media feed,
Tailored to reiterate our Likes.
And then we watch our evening shows,
Where bullets fly, and people don't die,
But miraculously rise again
To record the next
Most-watched season!
So, when
The news
Reports of lives lost
Due to needlessness, excuses
Are quickly made
To explain away the issue,
Or better yet, distract us
From the fact that we create
Endless victims of circumstance
When we prostrate ourselves
In worship at our revered church of violence.
∞
Southern Pride
Fly that Confederate flag
If you like,
Enjoy your southern pride.
Just don’t be surprised
If you sacrifice some rights.
Reread the history books.
Rights were not given;
It was rights they forsook.
And reading some
Other history can’t hurt.
The French revolted for rights' sake
But Marie Antoinette said,
"Let them eat cake."
As for the 99% that complain,
Standing strong despite the rain,
Eating their cake has been disrupted,
What with Hostess Twinkies bankrupted.
So please don’t claim to
Love heritage and history,
Touters of ignorance and
Rejecters of the real story.
Yes, there were defenders.
What was it they sought?
Freedoms and rights;
Plentitude, not plight;
Advancement of classes, yes;
Only, benefitting the few
At the expense of the masses
∞
Margins
Shards of glass
From broken ceilings
Cause a need
For fancy footwork
Then while we are
Dancing, dancing, the
Obvious pain we begin feeling
Isn't just a sharp-piece, stuck
But the realization
That we, reasonable,
&
nbsp; Have been crowded
Out to margins, left to luck
∞
Attempting to Bend the Invisible Bars
Liberating the innocent,
Sets both the captor and captive free,
And the release itself shows the prisoner
What they were never aware they could be.
Unless, it was only a party trick;
A cleverly placed mirror, for instance,
That would make
Steel bars appear bent.
But a caged animal cannot hope to become tame,
Until freed from its burdensome yokes,
And given a proper name,
Some training, guidance, and preparation
To face the cruelties outside the pen,
Because even the free, are not free from a magic mirror’s deception
∞
Hot Under the Blue Collar
Gas,
Groceries,
Gold
Up,
Up,
Mercury
Rises in
The thermometer
As middle-class peace of mind
Vanishes with the
Price per gallon
And, not by choice, but by force
The climate changes,
As do we.
Now, how do we
Break free
Of this dependency?
Perhaps
It is relative
To say we are free?
∞
‘America, America'
Playing in traffic
We gamble with
Our children’s future,
Our own already threatened.
We are adolescent
Thrill-seekers,
Sophomoric in our
Reasoning skills
Unwilling to admit
We might be wrong:
Wrong foreign policy,
Wrong economic policy,
Wrong social policy.
I tremble in the boots
By whose straps
I am supposed to pull myself up
I want off this
Carnival ride
But the crowds keep cheering it on and on,
Until all I can do is pray,
‘America, America’
God spare us from tragedy
Bring home our troops
Bring back our jobs
Bring healthcare to our needy
‘America, America’
God spare us from tragedy
And crown us again
With dignity
‘From sea to shining sea’
(‘America, America’ was first published with Poets Responding to Senate Bill 1070)
∞
Carnival Rides
In the hard work of peace,
Rather than passing by the ticket booths
That showcase others’ pain,
Or worse, absolving their attackers,
Or, still worse, retaliating in vain…
The times yearn for
Patrons to feel,
To learn, and to mourn,
With those multitudinous victims
And earth’s children, yet unborn
Rather than getting lost
In a house-of-mirrors,
Fueled by the delusion of denial,
Or making a childlike choice
To join in a tug-of-war with anger;
And, as an alternative to riding
The merry-go-round
Of emotional bargaining,
Or resigning to depression
In the tent of the grotesque man,
There is yet one more carnival feature,
A one of a kind!, Out of this world!
Venue with a show-host named Acceptance,
Who, amongst the chaos, posits the question:
“How can we be helpful?”
∞
'Bleak Mid-Winter'
Solemn hawk
In dormant tree
Oversees
The warmest
Yet harshest
Of winters
When bold flocks
Refuse to fly in sync
Stagnating
In indecision,
Stalling
Forward motion,
Except of
The advancement
Of corruption.
With fall-out from
A crumbling core, summoning
A bleak season of anarchy
∞
Undercurrents of Anarchy
The devil's horns have
Sharpest tips
Such that ache ekes
Out above evil's
Iceberg
Tripping up good
Intentions, with heartache
To act as bait,
Luring little
Minds, into
Narrowness,
Using naïveté, and with pointedness,
Pointing
Distracting masses
While massive
Motion beneath these
Pitchfork prongs,
Gains momentum,
Pushing undercurrents swiftly from
Facts, while rudimentary
Knowledge runs wildly away,
Chasing, instead, a pointed-seeming
Orange carrot, and carrying society,
Orderly,
Toward chaos
∞
Sleepwalkers
A deceitful
Society
Wanders
Purposelessly,
As with purpose,
Self-absorbed zombies
Stumbling
Blindly
In self-created
Darkness
Shining flashlights
Which simply project
Pre-meditated mental imagery,
Readily blurring
Out the needs of others,
Effortlessly reflecting
Personal desires,
Staggering
Determinedly,
Plodding
Toward the next objective.
All the while,
Unwittingly,
Beckoning the night
∞
Pandemic
As sickening death
Surrounds
A wanton cry
Resounds:
"Be more! Do more!"
It begs,
Prove that compassion
Is not dead--
A privilege reserved
For the select.
For, in a generation
Whose great iniquity
Is the practice of
Decided-neglect,
The true pandemic
Threat, is Apathy
(Pandemic was first published in West Chester University’s Ebola chapbook)
∞
Injustice, Done
When a scandal
That is a scandal,
Isn't why the scandal
Is a scandal;
When the truth keeps
Us from speaking,
Rather than teaching
Us to speak;
When the world believes
The lies we're told
Simply because
We are too weak
To worry about an injustice done;
And when we are relieved
That injustice, itself, is no longer a threat,
Injustice has already won.
∞
Upside-Down World
Too often we look emotionally
Upon that which needs objectivity,
And too often we look objectively
Upon matters of the heart
Why do we walk past
Our neighbors in need,
With more mouths
Than they can feed?
How can we neglect
A friend who is sick
?
Why is a note or a phone call
So hard to make?
And why do we often
Let fear
Drive our finances?
And our cars, frustration?
Work-places and politics
Driven by vague feelings,
Don’t make for strong nations;
We’re upside-down.
Let’s take the emotion
Out of our honeymoons
And put it
Into our marriages,
Stop over-thinking
Compassion
And basing decisions
On raw passion
There is a place for the heart
To be cautious, and