Analysis of SMILING ASSASSINS
When I say, “I’m desperate,”
They smile and say, “I know,”
When I ask for a little succour
They smile and then say, “No!”
They’re smiling at my poverty
They’re smiling at my pain,
I tell them that I’m starving
So they smile, and smile again.
They smile to see me suffer
And when I ask for help,
They say they’d like to help me, but
“You’ve got to help yourself!”
I live in utter destitution
Well below the poverty line,
I try to make them care a bit
But they smile and say, “That’s fine.”
They smile to see me bleeding
Half-dead on Melbourne’s streets,
They smile and say they cannot
Help me back onto my feet.
THE END
© Copyright 2021, Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Scheme | ABCB XXDX CXXX XEAE DXXX XXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111110 110111 11110101 110111 11011100 110111 1111110 1110101 1111110 011111 11111111 111101 11010100 10101001 11111101 1110111 1111110 11111 1101110 1111011 01 101010 100100010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 698 |
Words | 133 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 23 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 86 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
About this poem
While backbenchers in Australian politics get $131,900 a year tax-free, the unemployed get less than $12,000 to live on. If this is insufficient, Centrelink will laugh in your face as you beg for help. And unlike other countries, if you cannot pay your rent and move into the streets in Australia, you lose your pension when you cannot give a fixed address.
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Written on October 15, 2008
Submitted by PHIL_ROBERTS on July 11, 2021
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 39 sec read
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"SMILING ASSASSINS" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 22 Sep. 2023. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/104734/smiling-assassins>.
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