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This Time We'll Do It Right

I know you say that there’s bodies
across the Russian land,
outside of abandoned work camps,
where countless souls were damned,
and yes, there’s twenty million gone
by those who claimed our name,
and radiation splashed about,
I know that seems insane,
but what you do not understand
is those guys screwed it up,
that Lenina and that Stalin guy,
they pushed too hard, too much.
Thought they could make socialism
with cruelty and might,
but we’re not like those tyrants, no,
this time we’ll do it right!

I know you saw that great famine
when China tried to leap,
and it’s hard not to be appalled,
when the price seems so steep,
and seeing government teach kids
to turn against their own…
yes, sixty million is a lot,
we’ve seen the stats, we know,
but that Mao guy was way off base,
strayed too far from the path,
I mean, that guy liked little girls,
you can’t trust men like that.
We want to build a better world,
not brutal appetites,
we’d never let in men like that,
this time we’ll do it right!

I know that those darn killing fields
can leave bad impressions,
that turning back to ‘Year Zero,’
seems a mad obsession,
that a third of Cambodians
going off to their death
is honestly the sort of thing
that makes you catch your breath.
But that Pol Pot was out-of-whack,
that’s not what we’re about,
to rebuild all society?
Who would dream of that now?
To think we’d have such arrogance
when bringing you to light,
we’d never kill those who stand out,
This time we’ll do it right!

Yes, Cuba and North Korea
are poor, broken, and lost,
and sure, their people, to get out
will open oceans cross.
We’re aware the Venezuela
collapsed in just ten years,
that they once had great oil wealth,
but now are drowned in tears.
You have to see, in all of this,
they don’t get Marx’s point,
and if they knew it like we do,
they’d not be out-of-joint.
When we’re in charge you’ll never see
the genocides or blight,
we’re gonna build a paradise,
this time we’ll do it right!


…Hey, why are they all pointing guns at me? Who let the
peasants have gu—

Copyright © David Welch | Year Posted 2024

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