An(d)them

We’ve labored in your grand machines,

you corner office libertines,

we built your smoke and mirror screens

while burying your go-betweens;

with avarice, with arrogance

with no regard for consequence

your words will make no difference

when you collect your recompense

we’ll build a new economy

with music, paint and poetry -

when words become our currency

we’ll learn to use them carefully

the banker and the Bedouin

will stand and sing in unison -

as sentinels, as bastions

regardless of our origin

Doesn’t matter what you tell us

you have nothing new to sell us

peddle deference as rebellious

but your hoaxes won’t propel us

engineer some new afflictions

to endorse some new addictions

blur some facts to grease the fiction

flavor helps reduce the friction

we’ll build a new democracy

with music, paint and poetry -

when harmony is liberty

we’ll play it out responsibly

the grand duke and the destitute

will shrug their station and repute

to raise their voices, resolute

united in the same pursuit

although we’re bruised and bandaged

in a world fouled and damaged

by disasters you’ve repackaged

and the faith that you mismanaged

we’ll still tear down every rubric

of each populist and maverick;

let you choke on all your rhetoric

as thick and sweet as arsenic

we’ll build a new reality

with music, paint and poetry -

when art is made invisibly

we’ll learn to live life beautifully

the children and the elderly,

the indigent and pedigreed,

will slip the chains of enmity

and close the book on history.