“Why Should I Listen To You?”

“Why should I listen to you?” wise man said;
“You hatched that fool plan in the small of your head;
It has no more chance in the world to succeed;
Than does son of a horse and a donkey to breed.”

You say we should give for to all and for free;
And so shall we live to an equal degree;
But propose you not how we might pay for the feat;
For goods made for nothing do tend to deplete.

Nevertheless you insist with great vigor;
That mass social programs will make our hearts bigger;
“Let us try Gramsci” you preach from robbed wealth;
Though we remind, famine’s bad for your health.

“Or ‘haps tis through blood we will settle the score;
For to who and to what that a government’s for;
To race and to state we’ll surrender our young;
To the camps of creation where anthems are sung.”

But how many know that which runs through your blood?
And countries? their lines oft erased with a flood;
To spend days sorting skin is pathetic, morose;
And thinking with organs is often quite gross.

“No, none of that works!” insist those left behind;
“We’ve tried all those things, and they’ve rendered us blind;
To see, for the truth is in front of us fast;
So for sure to religion we must look at last.”

“The path for to justice is found in the book;
And ‘tis only there for to which we must look;
To end all the misery, right all the wrongs;
The rules are all set, and the punishments…?? strong.”

“Let us supervise”, your kind yet still invents;
“The world is complex, friends, and y’all are so dense;
We shall do the task, we shall cover the spreads”
And that while your fast jets fly over our heads.

Through cash printed long on machines that you own;
And managers working we stiffs to the bone;
With speed-bumps and ladders to keep us fools down;
Your clip-boarded nobles are knighted and crowned.

Yet all of these schemes, they are old, none are new;
And all of them benefit only the few;
We’ve seen them before and we fought them off all;
And each one itself led to quite bloody brawl.

So leave us alone, moral hazard we know;
And we won’t be acting again in your show;
Leave now, for to us those who shoulder the yolk;
Wish you would move on, before we’re all broke.

About Joel D. Hirst

Joel D. Hirst is a novelist and a playwright. His most recently released work is "Dreams of the Defeated: A Play in Two Acts" about a political prisoner in a dystopian regime. His novels include "I, Charles, From the Camps" about the life of a young man in the African camps and "Lords of Misrule" about the making and unmaking of a jihadist in the Sahara. "The Lieutenant of San Porfirio" and its sequel "The Burning of San Porfirio" are about the rise and fall of socialist Venezuela (with magic).
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