Individual Sanctity [rev] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Cuba's government winnows 95% of the money
received by workers from foreign companies and
claims to use it for public health: covert research
reveals a run-down health-care system, shortages
in medicine, state clinics & hospitals in bad repair
with doctors badly paid

Fabricated health statistics add shine to Castro's
revolution in Cubans' segregation from decadent
tourist beaches, hotels and hospitals with the best
medicine & service - they're second-class citizens
forbidden to enter beautiful tourist facilities, no
discourse with tourists allowed

The State uses profit from workers & tourists to
fund the lavish lifestyle of the officials who enjoy
free medical service in tourist hospitals - while the
so-called ‘free' health care system is used to spy
on the people & report insubordination when an
individual objects to having no Internet access

No cell-phones & satellite TV keeps them from
Western individualism contamination while they
must provide cheap slave labour for the wealthy
government. Money & power corrupts & destroys
moral worth, the greedy become more insensitive
and take ALL from the suffering

Why should the poor grow poorer as the rich
increase in wealth? Maybe this is the chalice
they chose, the fire by which true worth will be
revealed - which would otherwise never have
known itself as good growing better and bad
rotting completely - these people are forced

To face themselves in a testing ground of true
nobility; is it by their own free choice to define
themselves within a socialist system? Why is
this happening to them otherwise? But my wish
for them is, may the oppressed rise to fight for
their freedom, may they discover the delight

Of individual sanctity & egalitarianism…