After

After

That old hope is extinguished in the night,
Beneath the greedy ruler’s gloating face,
That simple words could stymie Capital.

The tools they give us are no tools of ours.
We cannot bend them to our cause and take
Them for our own. And so we must forsake
The ballot and the bayonet and all their pow’rs.

There is no easy way to win our fight,
But we endure. This is our final grace,
To struggle on, until we make it fall!

All power comes from labor as its source,
Each new creation and each finished deed.
And for this reason, profiteers still need
To seize our labor from us, by their force.

But if some terror comes, we have one right,
Just to resist, and not assist, their ways.
And as ‘we once were naught, we shall be all’.

For labor can control what it creates,
It needs no other class of any kind
And in our struggle, it shall surely find
The power and the will to right its fate.

Note: I wrote this several years ago, I had thought in response to the second Iraq War, but apparently before that. I have reservations about tying autonomy to labor-power, given my experiences living with worsening disabilities, and about ignoring all other axes of oppression besides economic exploitation.