Merry Christmas from your friends at AT&T

Sometimes I wonder

About the morality of the corporate giants

That rule our world

On the day before Christmas

AT and T received a huge Christmas gift

From the President of the United States

The biggest tax cut in U.S. History

And the President proclaimed

That it would unleash jobs jobs jobs

Apparently, ATT never got the memo

And they announced thousands of layoffs

The day before Christmas

A true PR nightmare

That could have been avoided

They could have waited two weeks

And announced their restructuring plan

After the New Years

But no they decided to show the world

Their true colors

Heartless soulless monsters

Who don’t give a damn

About their workers, their customers

Or their employees

And certainly are not Christians

Though I am sure that they think

They are doing what Jesus would

All they care about

Is feathering their own pockets

Is it any wonder

That Americans hate the big corporations

That rule us like ancient emperors?

And will they fade away

Into the dustbin of history

One can only pray

For such a Christmas miracle

© Jake Aller

AT&T ANNOUNCES THOUSANDS OF LAYOFFS, FIRINGS JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet and former Foreign Service officer. He served 27 years with the U.S. State Department, in ten countries. An aspiring novelist for several years, he has completed four novels, and has published his poetry and fiction in over 25 literary journals. Jake grew up in Berkeley, California.

Two for New Year's Day

Self-defense

The slums are a-bleeding: “Drug pushers shot it out; police gunned them down,” per official reports.

Thousands of drug pushers in thousands of separate "encounters", each “attempted to outdraw

and out-shoot” well-trained and numerically-superior policemen (with some

imported from the president's home city from down south

to perform their special cleansing job

in so-called Imperial Manila.)

And it goes on, the slaughter

of small criminals

along the margins,

while most drug lords

ensconced in mansions,

inside exclusive subdivisions,

still rake in their profits.

© Karlo Sevilla

Duterte's war on drugs: The boys from Davao

Cold Stats

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." 

                                 – allegedly from heavily mustached genocidal 20th century dictator

Beyond lovers, family, friends, (close) neighbors: how much one heart bleeds for another?

(Or how far a heart falls for—dare we say it?—suffering humanity?)

The casualties on TV news, how much empathy? (And that claim of "loving the masses"...

what percentage of love and what percentage of the masses? Is it an all-or-nothing thing?)

Says the news about the Rohingya:

“An estimated 830,000 people now live on the border…6,700 deaths from violence…”

“…Mumtaz says she was dragged to a village house and raped by soldiers…”

“…one-year-old daughter Sohaifa thrown on a fire while she was still alive…”

Sad, but still no Agony in the Garden for me, no sweating of blood for sinful humanity.

(A "little" heart rattler: The odds of such happening to you or your loved ones?

Life insurance sales pitch goes, "The 999,999 don't matter,

if the one in a million victim is you.")

One heart bleeding in isolation is tragic, but a billion hearts beating as one...

is easier dreamed than done.

© Karlo Sevilla

Today marks four months since the start of the Rohingya refugee crisis and the situation remains dire

Karlo Sevilla (@KarloSevilla) writes from Quezon City, Philippines. His poems have appeared in Philippines Graphic and international political literary magazines Radius, Matter, Social Justice Poetry, and others.