The Real Battles Won- Written January 2014 (Aged 38)

The Real Battles Won

it is laziness
infant mortality no longer at a rate to alarm
it is consigned to the past
you turn up at a+e and you can be seen
ex soldiers no longer beg on inter war streets
slums have been pulled down
or at least enough people have diverted their eyes
you are well looked after and you are cared for
people have forgotten the struggle
those who fought and battled
from child labour, women’s votes,
the struggles of working people
the fights that had to be fought
all to strive for a better fairer more equal society
now we have people,
betraying all those struggles
and all that has been hard fought for
they have fallen into traps where greed and demons
have led them to blame others
skin, culture, language,
it is a simply proposal of genocide
there is not value placed on that that we have
on the nhs or the welfare state

it is laziness,
and ignorance that has dragged them to this place
lazy thinking,
socialism has become a dirty word
one that must be scrubbed clean
the free market capitalism is the all giving dream
but people seem unwilling to look inside
and life changes and things can and do go wrong
do these people just fail to accept,
as the embers of the nhs and the welfare state
cling to our almost final breaths
does anyone know where it went wrong
was it thatcher and her monstrous song
was it the greed and materialism
and every person for themselves,
that consigned the notion of, ‘greater good’ to a shelf
and still people treat immigration as a negative term
not an umbrella phrase,
maybe it is english history these people need to learn
have they ever looked at any past day
they say, pick your battles and that you should quell
the bully anger deep inside
but there is a startling truth to tell
we are surrounded on each and every side
as the media joins in with this this far right government
in demonising them ‘poor’

It’s laziness,
it is about divide and conquer
vested interested and an embedded belief in elitism
it is about breeding and selection
and if they continue to blame and other
it will, as evidence suggests, lead them into power
laziness in others,
has caused this dysfunctional shower
but where do we being,
bought up with a better life it is easy to forget
people talk about, ‘the good old days’
but compassion still has a space to let
and i know that soon it will be too late
we will be cleaning out the ashes from the fire’s grate
and still, still we blame others
when the truth is, if not next door then its closer to home
i fear we have forgotten as a society how to care
and we have certainly forgotten collective suffering
we have forgotten about others,
we are consumers just concentrating on our own lives
and that is the trouble
we have have divorced ourselves from the world outside
we too often breath through hate filled lungs,
forgetting that here and now and how we got here
and all those who fought the real battles and won




James Garratt – January 2014


More poems at
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/


More about this blog, The Boy Behind the Glasses, here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/2020/01/08/the-boy-behind-the-glasses-an-introduction/


More poems from 2014 here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/poems-and-writing-2014/