Eager Leaders

Heed the freedom fighter that has grown
too fond of paying forward;
irony must not be given authorization
to nullify creation in its own image.

They cancel out their co-conspirators
so tactfully until the process of elimination
sells its soul to flame wars
of fan club sponsorship.

A kind of natural selection harnesses
the vulnerable through the chain
of eager leaders, stealthily accentuating
comfort zones along the way;
soon the evidence accrues and the tools
of depreciated purpose are exhumed, found
balled up and bagged with the stumps
of vestigial morals,
jutting from their weight like potato vines.

In the end the winners
are the ones who find enlightenment
in the darkest truth of humans
with a choice: in the biggest boardrooms
or the little booths where their seating plans
are drawn, people vote, not for who they like –
or even tolerate amid the context –
but against the ones they don’t.

The voices of a bellowing debate
are the sounds of fate obliterating faith.