Their Crimes a Neo-SocialistRealist poem by Wolf Larsen They invented the atomic bomb They tested their new weapon of mass destruction on the people of Hiroshima & Nagasaki They escalated the war in Vietnam They enslaved the black people They smash unions They steal pensions They don't pay taxes, instead they put all their money in offshore bank accounts When they're in trouble they get government bailouts, when you're in trouble you get nothing They get the best medical care in the world, while others skip on medical care because they can't afford the copayments They're taking over our inner cities and pushing us out in a wave of gentrification Their banks are stealing our homes in an orgy of foreclosures from sea to shining sea Their cops attack protesters on the street with pepper spray & clubs Their cops shot minority youth in the back Their prisons are overflowing with people incarcerated because of drugs They eat caviar & drink champagne while millions of American children grow up in poverty They have the nerve to call the unemployed "lazy", when in fact they are the ones who ruined the economy & caused massive unemployment They've overthrown democratically-elected governments throughout the world and aided dictators like Pinochet, Batista, & the Shaw of Iran They give bullets & armaments to right-wing death squads throughout Latin America They spend billions on war & exotic new weapons of mass destruction while the country falls to pieces They are Democrat, Republican, Libertarian – it does not matter. They used to be all white men, but now some of them are black, and some of them are women – it still does not matter They are preparing to make a war of terror against us, they just gave the military the right to detain us indefinitely without a trial The same drones that they use against the Afghanistanis & Pakistanis will be used against us one day You'll wake up one day and there will be government drones flying over you in Chicago, LA, New York City, Atlanta, etc. Copyright 2012 by Wolf Larsen. Advance permission is given to anyone wishing to publish, distribute, and/or read out loud to an audience this work to do so as long as no alterations are made to the work, and credit is given to the author. Now playing: Neo-SocialistRealismDiego Rivera! George Grosz! Gustav Klutsis!
