Poem by martinantonsmith@gmail.com
I Say To You This
My Freedom Loving Friend
That Dissenting Views Are Required
For A Properly Functioning Democracy
The Stupid And Intellectually Lazy Don’t Get This.
Those People Are Your Quintessential Gulag Prison Guards
Who When Finally Held To Task
Plead Innocence As They Cry:
“We Where Only Taking Orders Your Honour”
How Many More Times
Must Humanity Be Squeezed
By The Same Vice
Of The Power Mad
Every Third or Fourth Generation
Like Clockwork?
Are We Destined To Relive
This Dastardly Pendulum Forever?
This Saeculum Of Insincerity
I Dare Say So Yes
But To Counter My Own Argument
As A Wise Man Will Tend To Do
I Now Say Now To You Surely
That This Pendulum Also Has A Good Side
That The Orb Always Swings Towards
In Time & Away From The Bad
For As While Local Despots Have Always Grown
In Blackened Fields
So Have Foreign Harvesters
Who Invade Reap & Discard
But Also Plant Their New Seeds Next To The Old
That Has Been The Way Of The World
From Antiquity To The Now
‘Quarter Filled’ 21st Century Chalice
But Have The Winds Of Change Blown?
Have The Rains of Revision Descended?
Has A Mighty Chasm Ripped Earths Social Rubric?
Can Local & Foreign Dissenters Still Win?
As First & Second Lines Of Defence?
With A Future Global Government
Having Flown Past Right Past Our Horizons
And Now Is Rapping
Its Bleeding Knuckles On Our Doors
Powered By those Electronic Ghouls
The Perfectly Souless AI Goose-Stepped Algorithms
With Ubiquitous Surveillance & Control
And Sometime Soon To Wear Exoskeletons
Alas My Freedom-Loving Friend!
If There Are No Longer
Any Competing Empires
Who Sincerely Disagree
And Are Not Afraid
To Be The Bad Guys
To Beat The Bad Guys
As Has Always Worked Well
Who Will Function As
The Last Line Of Dissent?
Will We All Soon Be Crossing Our Fingers?
And Looking Into Space?
And If The Answer Is ‘Yes’
What If Nothing’s Really Out There?
Except For Swirls Of Inanimate Galactic Dust
& Screeds of Slowly Bending Light Rays
Alas My Freedom-Loving Friend
I Truly Say To You
Who Will Save Us Then?
Anton Martin Smith Writer 