DEATH MERCHANTS



Death merchants spreading grief
Make money from parents's sorrow,
Sending children to live in Hell
Rejoicing in their fear and horror.

The prophets of death celebrate
As good men and women die,
Their dark largess is all they need
As mothers and widows all cry.

Vultures swoop across the land
Watching as their evil profits soar,
Profiteering from the bloodshed
Grown rich on proceeds of war.

Death merchants starting battles
So they make mountains of cash,
Watching as the innocents die
So happy and unabashed.

Profiteering mass murderers
Acting with the UN's accord,
Billionaires are being grown
Corpses in a myriad score.

Death mongers are profiting
Lockheed Martin and Boeing,
Death mongers profiting from
The evil seeds they're sowing.

BAE Systems and General Dynamics
Conspiring in death with Raytheon,
Until only bloody bodies remain
All hope for the future is long gone.

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!

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Written on May 17, 2022

Submitted by philip0157 on June 04, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

52 sec read
4

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXXX XAXA XBXB XXAX XXXB CCXC XXXX XXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 956
Words 173
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3

Phil Roberts

I turn 65 on the 31st of January 2022. I love cats, rock music, and horror fiction and poetry more…

All Phil Roberts poems | Phil Roberts Books

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