What fickle creatures are we
Such predictable mammals
Led astray by emotion
Bright smiles and colours
Easily sway our cognition
How does poisonous rhetoric
Take hold of hearts
All teeth and bite
Circumventing logic
A cunning serpent
Winding concentric circles
Tightening its grasp
Common sense squeezed out
Our eyes, ears and minds
Receptor cells damaged
No longer able to process
Life's nuanced complexity
Insidious, corrupt
My local government
Employs predictable strategies
To incite panic and mayhem
In the untutored
An exhausted populous
Give us “busy” as our prized buzzword
And we will lay down our discernment
On the altar of convenience
And big box stores
This provincial messaging
A clear grab for power
Through its policing of children’s libraries
Two books of sexual content
Amidst a sea
Of beautiful tomes
Literature to infuse their minds
With critical thinking
Imagining a better kind of world
The confidence that comes with truth
Undermined by stupid, greedy manipulators
The latest spark to incense the masses
Feels like a plant; deliberate sabotage
To rile up the people
Who give away
The last puffs
Of their fading breath
For monoxide fumes
Puppets of powerful idiots
Dancing in reverie
To atonal, jarring chords
Wearing iron slippers
Embracing their crippling confinement
While our overlords
Line their pockets
With our time
Our minds
Our sweat
Our blood
Generations to come
Enslaved by stupidity
All of this occurs
Because my peers
Can’t manage
Their fear
About the Creator
Aspen Marie
In love with life and all of its foibles.
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Comments (2)
A fierce poem exposing the toxic control of the powerful over the fearful, with vivid imagery
Puppets of powerful idiots, so much truth to that. Loved your poem!