Crosspost: Empire in the Mirror

It was a dream, a gilded fire,
built on whispers, woven higher,
streets of silk, a golden crest,
the hands that took, the hearts oppressed.

They smiled—soft, sweet, serene,
a kingdom carved from borrowed dreams,
but mirrors do not lie for long,
the empire’s face was sharp and strong.

A shatter—silver shards that gleam,
truth cut deeper than the dream,
and in the dust, the voices rose,
the stolen lands, the fractured throne.

No banners left, no songs remain,
the wrong, the right, the ash, the rain.
Time will teach what power hides—
the face of conquest, stripped of pride.

T.A.

Crosspost: The Unpretty Souls


Credit: Darkmoon_Art on Pixabay

Unpretty people, heartless and cold,
Their greed for profit, a story oft told.
No sympathy flows for the downtrodden’s plight,
Their eyes see only gold, no wrong or right.

Dollar signs gleam where their hearts should be,
Their profit motive blinds morality.
They’ve sold their souls for a sixpence’s gain,
A bargain with darkness, a life of disdain.

Once in the temple, tables were turned,
By He who saw greed and with anger burned.
“A den of robbers!” His voice did declare,
For prayer and peace, no room was there.

“A camel through a needle’s eye,” He said,
“Is simpler than riches leading souls to dread.
For wealth may chain what the spirit should free,
And bar the way to eternity.”

If there’s a God, justice will reign,
And the money changers will meet their pain.
Yet fear remains, will justice be served?
Or will greed’s legacy go undisturbed?

Unpretty souls, with hearts of stone,
May they find grace before the throne.
For wealth is fleeting, but love endures,
And only kindness truly cures.

by Tina Antonis

Trotsky: The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism

LEAVING out of account the weak echoes of pre-Revolutionary ideologic systems, the only theory which has opposed Marxism in Soviet Russia these years is the Formalist theory of Art. The paradox consists in the fact that Russian Formalism connected itself closely with Russian Futurism, and that while the latter was capitulating politically before Communism, Formalism opposed Marxism with all its might theoretically.

Literature and Revolution: The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism

FIORE DI CAMPO

FIORE DI CAMPO.

by caterina rotondi

WILD FLOWER.

That feeling of helplessness 
explodes inside me 
when 
I look around 
and find only pain.

I’ll stop 
one day I’ll stop. 
It will be today 
or tomorrow.

I will dry 
those eyes of tears. 
I will wait 
for a smile to be born in you.

Like a wild flower 
I will place it 
on my heart.

And they will remain without fearing 
the darkness of the night.

I Am the People, the Mob

Source

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.