social inequality poems

Division | Alexis Garcia - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Division | Alexis Garcia

Since when did white America
Become the right America
I’ll tell you
Once shackles and chains
Got replaced by ignorant brains
They think we have welcomed
Prejudices and absurd allegations
Since we have become a divided nation
Since some fight the grossness of injustice
With protests in abundance
They tend to focus on the ones who pretend
Not to notice that we as a society
Are reverting back to a time
Where rights were conditional, not given
Where the color of your skin
Was used for target practice
And you were driven,
Almost to extinction
Because of the distinction between us and them
It’s been hard to determine
Who’s foe and who’s friend
Thanks to their privilege
We get to sit back
While they pillage our homes
It takes a village…
To raise a child
But as soon as they step outside
They’re stepping into the wild
Lines are getting blurred
Tensions are brewing
Racism Trumps human decency
They ignore the fact that
We are the ones they are screwing
With rapid frequency, they hunt us down
And the sound of our exhausted voices
Amplifies their need to subdue
Our personal choices.
They take silence as a sign of defeat
They take silence as a sign of acceptance
From the beginning of time
We were never the ones to retreat
But snap back into reality
And come to our senses
At the expense of our sanity
We let those who came from
The Caucasus Mountains
Straight to the oval office
Profit off of our sorrows
They have stolen our lands
But convince us that they just borrow
With no intention of returning
It’s concerning how little resistance
There is on our part
The fight’s never over
They may try to poison our minds
But they can’t infiltrate our hearts.

At the Wall | Roy Pullam - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

At the Wall | Roy Pullam

The wall stands somber
On that windy morning
Gales blowing rain
Into my face
I look at the names
Finding a school chum
A poor boy
His fate sealed
By lack of opportunity
Not unlike
Other 1A card carriers
Unable to afford college
To find a doctor
Who would shield them
From the draft
He believed
Willing to wear
The green
To fight in a land
Beyond his knowledge
One day in America
Experiencing the good life
The next
Landing in a strange world
A land of constant
Uncertainty
Four months
Of wading paddies
Four months of ambushes
Intense firefights
Then the pajama-clad phantoms
Disappeared
A land mine
In a clearing
A fatal step
And his life ended
Not the homecoming
We wished for him
But we gathered
Just the same
To hear the minister
Searching for an answer
Then sharing memories
Good times
With the boy
We knew
I took the paper
Placing it
Against the wall
Dragging the pencil
Across the paper
His name rising
On the page
Bold letters
I have read
Over and over
Remembering each time
The futility of Vietnam

Market Survey | Ankita Anand - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Market Survey | Ankita Anand

The rich write books
About how they got out of their rags
And that’s fair enough.
But is there a market
For other stories of miracle?
Stories by those who have the remains of the day
And yet remain.
Of those who live a little above, below, around the lines of poverty–
Measured and cut out for them by others
At a table with chairs made by, not for, them–
And yet manage to have lives.
Can that blurb produce a wow,
Inspire the reader to pick up the book?
Or do we predict more of a shrug, because the story is ordinary, because “they’re used to it”?

More at https://anandankita.blogspot.in.

Grenfell | Dan Tindall - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Grenfell | Dan Tindall

This morning everything
Tasted like dust
And the lustful blast
Of life and love
Was just a blushing
Empty husk of
Ashes

Plastic melts
Copper unwinds
Lights clears through smoke
Filling chambered hollows
With fiery ghosts
Fitted with the latest gear
To roast the souls
Of the gangster kings and queens

More at http://www.dantindall.com.

So Who Exactly Is Working for Whom? | Dan Tindall - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

So Who Exactly Is Working for Whom? | Dan Tindall

Fake news, foreign wars
And wiki-leaking
Generally speaking has
Only come to defence of the
Enemies of freedom
Not the voices of the lost
Or the poor who are the cost of
Making money at the double
Dollar euro rouble

So who exactly is working for whom?

I don’t see refugees resettled
Or rust belts get re-metalled
Hard-won rights are stripped and beaten
There’s fracking poison in the food you’ve eaten
Oil in water
Cancerous air
But the big boys don’t care

The proles loved Caesar because he said he was their guy
(He wasn’t)
His in-laws and friends killed him because they thought he meant it
(He didn’t)

So who exactly is working for whom?

More at http://www.dantindall.com.

Rear Entrance | JD DeHart - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Rear Entrance | JD DeHart

They told him to go
to the back door, face
the wrong shade
to walk in the front

Years later they would
tell him the playing
field was equal, those
were the sins of long-
ago ancestors

They would tell him
he lives in a country
that is longer racist,
sexist, or classist

But he would take
a long look around
and beg to differ.

More at http://jddehartpoetry.blogspot.com/.

Step into My Shoes | Marsha Owens - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Step into My Shoes | Marsha Owens

…he writes on the cell floor,
all to say, “tread on me
then hear
my whisper
caress this cell,
then feel my heart
beat, forgotten
kids wrapped in razor
wire in this pipeline
from school to prison
scream into the night.”

He scribbles “I’m scared,”
then writes his story entitled
“The End.”

(Art 180 in Richmond, Virginia encourages incarcerated youth to find expression through the arts. Virginia refers more youth to law enforcement than any other state. NPR News, 2016)

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