I have worn team colours in the past
Becoming cloaked in corporate identity
Giving away autonomy for crowd acceptance
Fitting in
Becoming a proxy for a marketing strategy
Where boardroom fictions based on superficial studies into buying habits
Create reality
Reality that echoes the worst excesses of selfish greed
When textiles were made with the blood of children mixed into cotton gins
And even Factory Acts failed to halt the exploitation of the poor
We thought we were better than our forebears
In our industrial self-righteousness
When union shops paid living wages
And workers could afford the products they made
Until the owners closed the factories
Shipped them overseas
Replicated the conditions of early 19th century Manchester
In countries far away
Countries that have no qualms about spilling blood
In support of commerce
So that marginalized westerners who no longer have factory jobs
Can afford cheap clothes at big box stores
Ignorant of the bloody fingerprints that are sewn into each label
Uncaring that everyday low prices reflect everyday absent ethics
And a high tolerance for suffering
So we buy products we don’t really need
Made in places that we’ll never see by fingers that we’ll never touch
Not caring that those fingers lie buried in rubble
Crushed by profit margins and unleavened greed
Victimized by the impersonal message of capitalism
That values money more than morality
And quarterly earnings more than souls
David Trudel © 2013
Sweatshops
I have worn team colours in the past
Becoming cloaked in corporate identity
Giving away autonomy for crowd acceptance
Fitting in
Becoming a proxy for a marketing strategy
Where boardroom fictions based on superficial studies into buying habits
Create reality
Reality that echoes the worst excesses of selfish greed
When textiles were made with the blood of children mixed into cotton gins
And even Factory Acts failed to halt the exploitation of the poor
We thought we were better than our forebears
In our industrial self-righteousness
When union shops paid living wages
And workers could afford the products they made
Until the owners closed the factories
Shipped them overseas
Replicated the conditions of early 19th century Manchester
In countries far away
Countries that have no qualms about spilling blood
In support of commerce
So that marginalized westerners who no longer have factory jobs
Can afford cheap clothes at big box stores
Ignorant of the bloody fingerprints that are sewn into each label
Uncaring that everyday low prices reflect everyday absent ethics
And a high tolerance for suffering
So we buy products we don’t really need
Made in places that we’ll never see by fingers that we’ll never touch
Not caring that those fingers lie buried in rubble
Crushed by profit margins and unleavened greed
Victimized by the impersonal message of capitalism
That values money more than morality
And quarterly earnings more than souls
David Trudel © 2013
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Filed under Poetry
Tagged as big box stores, blank verse, capitalism, creative writing, creativity, factories, free verse, industrialism, labour conditions, manufacturing, morality, poetry, profit, social activism, social commentary, social welfare, supply chain ethics, sweatshops, trade