Is it democracy you fight for?

Does being herded on the roads, freezing and shivering in the cold, guarantee the fulfillment of empty promises?

In the biting, freezing, numbing cold

Men, women and children collect together

Fired up with the zeal, energy and adrenaline

Coursing through their veins

To support....

 

A vague thought, a very hazy concept.

Democracy? Ideals? Hope for a better future? Security?

Few know, understand or comprehend themselves

 

The reason

That makes them fervently chant the names

Or raise the collective voice

That they are chanting and raising.

Or the rationale behind why they have put

 

All their cards on the table, so blindly,

Yet again.

The leaders, however, merrily play

With human emotions, feelings and pride.

 

For sport, it seems.

They gleefully gamble with the frail hopes

And fragile confidence

That these masses have in these new sailors

Who vow with booming rhetoric

To steer the rotting, sinking civic ship

Out of the eye of the howling, raging storm.

 

So like all the last leaders,

So like all the last sailors.

The present days unfold

So like all past, similar historical days.

How will this gamble pay off?

 

No doubt just like all past gambles.

Where the emotions of the millions

Are up for grabs,

Are up for exploitation.

Where the trust of a nation,

 

Broken and pieced together so many times over the past decades,

Prepares to be broken yet another time.

 

In a third world nation

No hollow promises can heal the breach,

Nor cover the dark, abysmal distances

Between the haves and the have-nots.

The masses need

 

Education, awareness, security,

Basic human dignity, values and respect

To reduce the light years between

The ruler and the ruled.

 

Does being herded on the roads

Like dumb, mindless sheep

Freezing and shivering in the cold and the fog

 

Guarantee the fulfillment of empty promises

That have never been fulfilled?

 

Alas, history repeats itself..