0309 Eeyore's View Of The State Of The Nation Poem by Michael Shepherd

If you build a great nation
on the statement
‘In God we trust’
and then proceed
to deny that in your actions,
in your thinking,
you start to believe in
the primacy of materialism, physical substance
like, say, drugs

and subtly
minds adapt to the idea
that drugs solve all –
to aid backward children,
to quieten teenagers,
to make prisoners docile,
to make mad people docile,
to keep soldiers brave,
to bomb your enemies,
to stimulate sex life,
to keep people ‘happy’
or if not happy, then outasite,
and if they’re down,
get them up, and
if they’re up, get them down
and if they’re dying,
make it peaceful

well it works,
doesn’t it?
the only side-effects
which we don’t look into
very carefully
are to
humanity and stuff

but no-one asks me
said Eeyore