Colin Mitchell Williams | + Follow Poet |
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T I G H T R O P E

As if there were a tightrope on which we walk
a perilous pathway strung down the middle of our lives
balanced by a blindfold
each footstep to be placed when and where we're told

Children with guns made of plastic
and plastic babies are fantastic
a futures generation of mothers
supplying soldiers for the armies
all fighting for their freedom
all defending their god given liberties

Either die in bloody uniforms
live their lives on medications
or join the unaffected ranks of the wealthy
to live in a ghetto
or party in a penthouse
still it's a struggle for survival
grab it while you can
but anyway don't forget me

The world is overflowing
but the children they are born
growing up within this scarcity
a thousand million distractions
won't buy them all the things 
they are told they are going to need
it's a thousand million children
addicted to their television screens

And somewhere in the third world
the same children know starvation
or spend their youth building little trinkets
in a sweatshop factory
plastic guns and plastic babies
death and birth for the fantasy of Western morality

So the movies keep on rolling
pumping out their messages in the papers and the magazines
the narrative and the stories
the future of humanity snapshot in a photograph
of its predicted destiny

The mothers keep on crying
as their children keep on dying
and the world is overflowing with insanity
little trinkets in a sweatshop factory
plastic guns and plastic babies
a hundred generations
still struggling for survival
without a question
is this way it should be

Sold the Kodak moments identity
numbered and bar coded
stamped and filed on the paperwork forms of property
constant media manipulation
and no one tells us the truth anymore
the lies are too important
in the conundrum of their investment
keeping us all fooled is the policy

The problem is our children
they must curtail their growing sense of freedom
and push them into the molded authority
fascism disguised as liberalism
and the purchased liberation
of seemingly innocuous possessions
to falsify a sense of individuality

Suck it up and drink it up
ignorance in our clever paper cup
when did we become so indolent
simply choosing to walk the tightrope
blindfold balanced down a narrow path
strung out between our death and birth
and all our thoughts for what they're worth
make no difference to the children's inheritance
the world remains the same
and maybe just a lot more worse
than the one they will leave behind

Copyright © Colin Mitchell Williams | Year Posted 2021

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