Holders of the keys of power,

 

                         You sit in your fat offices

                         Sprinkle a mixture of God institutionalized

                         With the syrup of easy answers,

                         Barricade yourself behind a wall of platitudes

                         Intone the totem of the family.

                         Calcium propionate is your nostrum

                         Of plastic immortality

                         The Lord is a two dimensional portrait

                         In a five and dime store.

 

                         We, who are the followers

                         We, who must follow

                         Who live together in a room

                         Breath clouded by the frost

                         From thousands of heatless hours

                         Witness to our parents dissolution,

                         We, who are imprisoned in a compound of ignorance

                         The death camps of children’s minds,

                         Charge you with less than honor

                         Your feet are anchored in the wet cement

                         In the false piety

                         In the sewers of soft living.

 

                         Who can say,

                         Whether those who worshipped the sun

                         Were the less valid for it

                         Some thousands of years ago?

 

                                                            Jack Mashman

                                                            1982