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8 February 2021

mao tse-tung

it always rained in my hometown    the streets were slick as shit   beneath a toxic orange sky     where young aspirations  were squashed     each day at school   and dreams were all but murdered    when last orders came around    it was a place of broken promises     there was no explaining why

the dead    and undead   living    in the shade of the refinery   would pray each day to heaven     to deliver them from evil    but keep them in a job   to put meat on the table     and maybe save a couple if quid     for the saturday night debacle

poverty means crime   and crime means poverty   our lives were pressure cooked    in that bloody cauldron    violence was the release valve    and fearsome reputations   were forged in blood and gore    the mythology of violence      was part of our folklore    and we never questioned why

but we are the vital component    of the military industrial equation      living in barrack towns   hatched and batched as fodder    for some obscene machine     we have universal access    to the theatre of distraction     but we have no power over our lives    and we are forced to fight and toil     for other people’s pleasure 

it seems many may have settled     for criminal poverty      while others have been crying out for change    they don’t know what it means   but they know that change must come      that it will take a revolution   and there is no war   without blood   because all  political power     grows from the barrel of the gun

 

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