Cutbacks run deep across the land.
Consultants cut with a diffident hand.
CEOs watch with a confident glee,
Fortunes rise with the fall of each employee.
Please the stockholders is all they do,
Cut costs to show a profit or two.
Outsource operations to foreign lands.
Let cheap labor get the dirty hands.
American know-how and American guile.
Not since robber barons have we seen such style.
Unseen, the lonely underemployed lurk.
Unemployment run out; feeling like a jerk.
Years of education down the drain.
Well earned seniority held with disdain.
Along with the money goes self-esteem,
The car, the family, the American dream.
An undercurrent of despair in a prosperous land.
Can’t you hear their mournful cry so close at hand?
And so I ask you as the new century unfolds,
Have we learned from the past, or are we too old?
More Poems
My Place
Read War's End the Novel
Copyright 2005 © Ronald W. Hull
o:p>
2/26/05
