To the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”
Listen closely, hear that? It’s a steady, low and trembling
hum that’s in the air, rumbling, crackle that’s assembling
a static on the wires buzzing, like nothing yet resembling
a conference call to arms
Your census doesn’t sense us since its refinery’s designed
to weed us out, to cull us into reject bins, we’re reassigned
for processing, for products at the barrel’s bottom, grind
at the margins off the books
Our hungers for redemption click on coupon rebate codes
our angers at the one percent we soothe on rerun episodes
of Real Housewives help us exorcize the ghost of Tom Joad
just queued itself on Spotify
The borders of her garment only we know how to hem
she poured herself a glass of white once we dried the stem
her mail order package just arrived from Bethlehem
handmade Nativity for Christmas
The steel mill was founded just before the Civil War
it helped the Union effort, iron rails shore to shore
but tariffs didn’t help it and it finally closed its doors
until the Sands Casino opened
There’s an outlet mall and parking’s free at the new hotel
Emeril’s got three restaurants and nightlife’s going swell
if you thought that times were tough you could never tell
from all the ringing slots
Year round A-list performers play, there’s boxing and trade shows,
the Food and Wine Fest in May benefits student chefs who go
through Northampton’s cooking school, all graduates will know
successful skills and recipes
In the growing shadows of the shuttered plants and factories
in the migrant camps and gutters living, dying to be free
of free time off the clock and lacking labor’s dignity
our youth are smoking weed
And growing more and more of it, the plants are budding wild
we’re bringing farm jobs back, it’s all sweet and kind and mild
we’re adding to the tax base, making medicine for your child
it’s a miracle cure for many
For twenty years the dealers pushing Oxy from Purdue
fed loose-script doctors, six-figured sales reps who knew
the market, shark law firms to keep the regulators true
to laissez-faire for overdoses
Let the heroes born of woman rise, it’s all too much by now
Republicans and Democrats, they’re all plutocrats anyhow
let’s occupy the White House, defund Wall Street somehow
revolution is our only hope
In the shade of steel glass towers, on cables stiff with cold
in static on statistic feeds, our numbers young and old
our desperate chill is rising, our reckless courage bold
our tools are in our hands