Ballad: To Vote "Yes" Always for the Winnipeg General Strike!

Prologue; or An Introduction to (Bourgeois) Political Economy

Gussied-up moneybags, penny-pinchingMisers and gimlet-eyed moneylenders,The pin-stripe suit vampires, and happy-hourCannibals, the well-dressed and sulky prudes,

The scumbag Molochs, plumped-up parasites,Plutocrats whose bureaucracy rendersDemocracy bankrupt Kleptocracy—Where workers are monetized (sweat's worth gold,

But sweat seldom overpowers gold, seldomOutweighs the treasured, troy-ounce brick of gold);Where workers hoard ale and bosses hoard gold;Where landlords hound renters to cough up coins,

And won't be buffalo'd, can't be appeased;Where vip's sphincters fart excuses—Such muck to mull over, so-so mouthfuls,As personages talk trash and write garbage,

Spit out bullshit and write up filth, and inkA shady vocabulary, pre-emptivePropaganda (a.k.a. Censorship),Malarkey sarcastic as meat-eaters

Denouncing vegetables; all to brandToilers as insufficient citizens,Inefficient subjects, yet optimalTroops, cops, who preserve Private Property,

For "God Saves the King"; but the poor are poorCos they fail to work and/or fail to save:Such is the policy analysesOf broadsheets and the tabloids' headline news—

The blood-red blues of the Yellow Press—justA lot of dirt; to back war profiteersWho count corpses; to back conspiratorsFixing bread prices behind boardrooms' oak doors;

To back Acts that frame Labour as boss-ruledEmployees, as ready cannon-fodder,As consumers; and to back the preachersWho tell the poor the Word of God is bread

Enough, to feast on prayers, become well-fedOn thou-shalt-nots, well-versed in black-robed cant—That lyrical, Latinate patina,Bamboozling, sidelining, maligning,

Casting the downtrodden as slobs, crooks, drunks,Addicts, hoboes, having only themselvesTo blame, being so unfriendable,Being so unlettered, who need accept

Insistently sour lectures, th'animalish,Crude grunts of lawyerly gangsters, those whoParade as legislators, and whose lawsFoster prejudices, invent outlaws….

Each perceptibly a bottom-feeder—Big cigars in the big mouths in big heads—The bastoods, lisping poisonously, nextAdding claptrap, just buttered up bullshit—

Cant's pure pollution, noxious, toxic plumes—Whatever obscures or overshadowsIncomprehensive pay cheques and budgets,Incomprehensible Austerity,

Reprehensible scandals, boondoggles—The supply-and-demand of meatless soup,And saltless gruel, of wine gone vinegar,So that drones chew fried cabbage, boiled cabbage,

Roots, chestnuts, beans, fibrous rubbish, porridge,Fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, naught else!And—as "junk"—bunk in ziggurats of rats,In cells, in trenches, in hospital wards….

But what else can be expected underCapital's robber-baron rule, whereinFiends constitute the State, and instituteDestitution? These wheeler-dealers tout

Prostitution, laissez-faire predators,Debauched, sewage-stuffed brains, assholes and schmucks(All as durable as hard, cold, Old Cash)As blue-blood, blue-chip Establishment. Well,

The bourgeois State is the workers' prison,Pitting the well-heeled gainst the sans-culottes,The bare-assed, whose toggery is ripped rags.Here Capital pens the laws and cuts the cheques

For politicos; and proletarianEfforts to better their lives, to evolveBeyond the struggle to breathe and eat, seemTantamount to touching off Civil War.

Winnipeg: The Strike, May-June 1919

Revolutionary, she's always been—Winnipeg, the Prairies gilt capitol;Thus, the Gold Lad capping her province'sParliament mirrors Paris's Bastille

Statuary, the proud symbol of folksEvolved insurrectionary, who claimedLiberté, Égalité, Charity—Which is also what Louis-Riel's Métis

Sought in Winnipeg, when, to win Freedom,They rebelled—ructioned—so unstoppablyVersus John A. Macdonald, they foundedManitoba. True: Their next Rebellion

Got put down and Riel got hanged, but no oneCould deny the Paris Commune brought home—The example that 1870Set for the Prairie Paris: The Bastille,

The Rebellions, The Commune, all foretold,Or foreshadowed, credibly, Winnipeg'sGeneral Strike, the Class War dividingCrescentwood mansions and North End hovels,

The Grain Exchange and Vulcan Iron facingDown plebes wanting One Big Union (no moreWaffling about Wobblies) and enough doughTo raise enough daily bread; and the State...