Fiddling While Rome Burns Poem by Deborah Downes

Unkempt in camoflage, one-legged, and vacant-eyed
he rolls his rickety wheelchair along grassy median with muted effort
displaying cardboard sign, childishly scripted
in one weather-worn and gnarled hand
while clutching a decapitated jug in its twin
Forgotten, forlorn, and discarded veteran
victimized far more by country than foe
….but free to pursue happiness and enterprise
while begging on street corners
as upright citizens dispense unwelcome opinions
or pocket change with equal self-righteousness.

Fever-flushed children and broken bodies
litter hospital halls like so much human refuse
Waiting, wanting, and wondering why
their need for compassion is treated so dispassionately
by a society which more values profits, power, and prestige
than charity, service, and self-sacrifice
Waiting while they wallow in their anguish
as privacy, paperwork, and payment are debated by bureaucrats in cubicles
Wanting to be refreshed and restored to some measure of usefulness
….but free to pursue life on their own terms
in exchange for their silence, acceptance, and despair.

Huddling for warmth and in fear of discovery
they assemble in rag-tag formation
having scaled formidable fences, seeking freedom
from poverty and oppression, searching for work of any sort
No matter how humiliating or hard
No matter the cost or conditions
Disparaged and even despised they labor
in hope that their children can be born in the land of the free
instead of suffering a similar fate
…..but free to pursue liberty in a land where their haunting presence
is often ignored, if not denied.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….
Ideals that slowly incinerate on the altar of capitalism
Songs forever lost in the cacophony now played on the instrument of politics.