From Socrates to Chomsky

A man of ancient times

Known for his wisdom

From a time revered

Spoke with studied irreverence

Against what we hold to be true

A thing we fought for

A goal still caught in strife

A man, a common man, to determine his fate

Power to the people

Democracy.

This wise man

Broke the shining code

Of hallowed Athens

And posed the question

Who should we follow in a storm?

A ship on the cusp of sinking

Fathoms deep

The Captain, knowledge of the open seas

The vagaries of capricious waves

Or a selection of the crew

Vociferous, opinionated, unschooled?

The choice is straight; the course set.

Why then, in our madness

Should we choose

The masses

To elevate a leader from their number?

A representative

To set our destiny.

We are steering our vessel

Onto the jagged rocks

Exposing ourselves to narcotic balms and narcissistic self-interest.

Those we are in danger of elevating

Are but sweet shop owners

Sweetening our ears and our minds with sugar and honey

Their duplicitous tongues never tire

We listen to what we want to hear

Our fears addressed

This fallacy, our weakness.

Is this leadership or manipulation?

If you do not have the knife

Grasped in your hand

To cut through to the centre of the cake

How can you gauge its contents?

So heed the call!

Drop your tools and march!

Demand the full benefits

The right of real education

Not the brainwashing to fill the niche

Not the cages that define our mentality

Not the testing

The attainment of self-serving credentials.

Turn your backs on the targeted rewards meted out to keep us compliant.

Sedated, misguided

The falsity of a career

Enslavement.

Let’s demand instead, the tools to see through to a man’s heart, his intent and the contents of his soul.

Give us teachers, truth-sayers of worth and character.

Let us reclaim our humanity

For this indeed, is our greatest gift

And break out of the prison of neo-liberalism

The creed of the privileged few.

It is time for a new story

For the old is careening us on the path to perdition

We as a society must re-boot

To reclaim the parts that have promise

And put behind

What has failed

Before the very planet

That provided the womb

For us to survive

Rejects us, aborted

And dumps us into the darkness

Of eternity.

No one left to remember.

No one left, to care.