Holders Of The Keys Of Power, Poem by Jack Mashman

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?

1982