Moral Rot

As I walk through this park

in a season when flowers bloom beauty

after a winter with sparkling stars

and twinkling stalactites of ice

hanging from every New Year’s eave,

I meditate on the moral rot that blossoms

everywhere

in these centuries of capitalist rule.

 

I think of terminal managers

who demand mechanics skimp on maintenance

so truck brakes freeze

and freight drivers and commuters

scatter bloody

across a rush-hour road.

 

Politicians with honest intent,

who gain votes for construction jobs

by backing coal-fired factories

and bombs to slaughter children in Gaza.

 

Rabbis and college trustees

who demand students be canned

for the sin of saying “Ceasefire”

since the God of Powerful Donors

etched His Commandments at Sinai,

“Thou must kill Palestinians,”

so the search for a Final Solution

seems expedient

once again.

 

College textbooks and media editorials

that teach that greed is

good,

profits

holy,

and evictions and homelessness

a sacrament that blesses the poor.

 

Leftists whose “Marxism” praises

smart bombs

that “de-Nazify” children

in the parks of Mariupol and Kyiv.

 

Hunting for morality in a world of capitalist rot

 

And yet, I think of honest people I have known

and how they agonize

to stay moral

in a world of rot.

 

A stalwart Teamster steward asking me

“Are you a Pharisee or Saduccee?”

and my responding “huh?”

 

Another steward almost boasting about the lies he put over on the bosses

in saving an erring worker’s job,

then asking,

“Did I do right?”

 

The Teamster Local President who laughed

recalling the day his anger at injustice

gave a terminal manager a heart attack

and he yelled as the sick man lay there,

“Die, you bastard, die!”—and then reminisced

 

about the many who stood strong

in their ten week wildcat strike

and the old friends who proved weak

and scabbed the line.

 

The stalwart comrades in our fight against

endless war

who supported a march against abortion

while others said “Hands off our bodies”

or demonstrated against state-mandated motherhood,

 

My friends who chant “From Ukraine to Palestine,

occupation is a crime,”

 

or my own attempt to frame a simple truth:

Never Again for Jews!

Never Again for Palestinians.

Never Again for Ukrainians.

Never Again for anyone. Anywhere.

 

all . . . seeking morality

within a world of rot,

 

Rot, rot, rot

 

while tankies who deem themselves leftists

join MAGA-types at microphones

to support Russia’s imperialist crimes,

 

and Communists some years before I was born chanted

“Unite and Fight!

For a White South Africa.”