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Follow the leader!
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THE HERD
“No!”
The word echoes, faint from afar.
I am not alone.
Another voice from a different place, takes up the
cry.
Immense images, heads talking and smiling, and lying,
projected for all to see, talk so loud the air
vibrates.
Other voices utter those same cries, but we are too
few.
Our voices barely touch the thunderous rhetoric as we
tell them of the lies, the untruths, the omissions,
the deceptions.
Nodding like cattle marching to the slaughterhouse,
the people step forward.
We, like our voices, are pushed aside, but we do not
fall silent.
More nods, another step forward, ever nearer to the
end.
My throat hurts, but I will not give up, not when
there’s even the slightest hope.
Docile, unheeding, unthinking creatures they move
forward again.
I walk alongside them, their unseeing eyes glazed and
unblinking, their smiles fixed, their heads nod, nod,
nodding.
To the very last I scream my defiance into deaf ears
and catch a glimpse of what lies beyond.
The one next to me stops, nose to the door.
A scant heartbeat passes and the maw opens.
I try to prevent their passing, but fail as they tear
out of my tired grasp.
Tears well in my eyes as I witness the horror.
I turn away, vomiting then dry retching as another
one is consumed.
Consumed by the system that will ultimately betray
them, change them from what they are into the cattle
they represent.
I straighten and throw my arms around the neck of the
nearest one and scream.
“Tell them ‘no’. Tell them you
don’t want it to end like this. Tell them
there are better candidates outside of their
parties. Vote for freedom from the constraints of a
democracy that doesn’t work any more. Not for
you, or me…”
They turn their eyes to me. Their smile does not
fade, nor do their eyes blink, and they ask,
“What do you reckon? The blue party, or the red
party?”
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