By Doug Bolling
The people are here
And not.
They move among themselves
As companions in suffering
As sinners and lovers
As pleaders for a vision
Now lost.
The people are unseen
As they walk and talk and
Measure their debts and
Ask how much is a life worth
To the politicians who ride
To the banks on backs
Of the ill and underfed.
The people know and they don’t.
They watch the wealth flow in
A golden stream to the
Golden few and they
Vote if they do for the
surge of the stream
Everlasting.
The people live and die
Hearing but not listening.
They move within a
Cocoon of unfact,
A redistribution of
Truths into lies
To be loved
And obeyed.
Yet there are those
Who push against the
Carapace of control.
They push and push
Until the taut fibers
Bend and break
And legs arms minds
Begin the journey
To redeem what lost
In murk and stench
Of capitalized greed.
It is said that reform
Must first build a rhetoric
Precise and firm straight
To the wounds,
that then words must
Bond with action,
A knowing and a
Doing.
Doug Bolling's poetry has appeared in many reviews including Posit, Poetry Pacific, Indefinite Space, Blue Collar Review, Struggle, and Swamp Ape among others. He has received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations and several awards, most recently the Mathiasen Award from the University of Arizona for the poem "Body and Soul.” He lives in the environs of Chicago.