JACKALS
Jackals are profiteering
Selling off human lives,
Anything to make a dollar
Selling guns, grenades, knives.
Pariahs run an industry
Which profits when the good die,
Gladly selling killing machines
To anyone willing to buy.
"Morals are for the weak!"
Is what these racketeers say,
Making money out of misery
Sending innocents to the grave.
Fields run red with blood
After the death sellers pass by,
Soldiers lying dead and bloody
As their widows sit and cry.
Really no better than mobsters,
These evil bringers of death,
Leaving lands filled with corpses
Widows, lovers, nations bereft.
Jackals are profiteering
Sending men and women to die,
Laughing all the way to the bank
As the profits keep going high.
Good young men die for nothing
Bad old men sell death for cash,
As the graveyards are overflowing
Jackals are counting their stash.
THE END
© Copyright 2022 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
About this poem
I remember the saddest day of my life, when I was nine or ten. When I learnt the most obscene thing I've ever heard. That private companies are allowed to make weapons of war for profit. Despite being unemotional as a rule, I cried out loud when I heard this. I still believe that if the UN passed a worldwide law that only governments could own factories making weapons of war, that war would virtually end. History is resplendent with examples of private companies giving millions of dollars worth of weapons to small nations, then grossly overcharging the big nations, to keep what should have been a short war going for years or even decades, so that they could grow fat on the profits of death!
Written on May 14, 2022
Submitted by philip0157 on May 14, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 52 sec read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | Axxx bcxc xxbx xcbc xxxx Acxc adad xxx |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 918 |
Words | 176 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
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"JACKALS" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/127564/jackals>.
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