Sunday, July 31, 2016

Revolting

It seems my mind was never sold
on all the lies that we've been told
and now that I am getting old
I question everything I've known.

Have I ever seen the real
or is it just an endless spiel
designing how we think and feel
so we will mindlessly condone

the less-than-compensating wage
that keeps us in a stagnant age
too tired to express our rage
against the few that claim they own

the very world on which we feed
manipulating every need
that motivates our hapless breed
until, at last, they're overthrown.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done. Appreciate you sharing.

Lily Schreiber said...

I've wondered some of the same sometimes. I wonder what difference it would make to overthrow everything. Building up something else seems in our nature.

rch said...

One of my favorite poems of all time:

We Are The Music-Makers
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy