Fault Lines

by David Alton / February 19th, 2023

The real fault is not subterranean.
Speculators and their compliant state
Caring more for profit than people’s fate,
Or inconvenient regulation
Simply circumscribed by backhanded gifts.
Body after body after body,
Battered, broken, lifted from the shoddy
Where apartments dropped like free falling lifts.
Charity appeals are quickly begun.
Survivors become miracles when dragged
From rubble, as the rest are body bagged
While the media poses, “What can be done?”
Through all societies fault lines are found,
With capital standing on shaky ground.

David Alton has been writing poetry since the early 1970s and is presently a contributor of a weekly Socialist Sonnet to Socialism or Your Money Back, the blog of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a member of the World Socialist Movement. Politically active since the late '60s he continues to push the socialist cause that he is convinced is the antidote to the recurrent epidemics of mass bloodshed, the disease of war. He is presently working with others on producing a socialist podcast they hope to have up and running in the next few months. Read other articles by David.

This article was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2023 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.