Democracy, Where Are You?
By Tom Somah
Democracy, where are you?
This land, a serpent's den,
where corrupt cronies coil and creep,
and morals lie shackled, mired deep.
Injustice wears an iron crown, a thorny tiara,
while equality ebbs, a mirage in misery's desert.
In dark, dangerous corridors of power,
creatures cloaked in corruption ravage the realm,
draining it dry, leaving it listless.
Justice's scales, rusted and broken,
tip treacherously towards the tyrants,
while voiceless victims bend like brittle reeds.
The king's confidant, cunning as a fox,
suspended swiftly, like a leaf in the wind,
then restored by royal decree,
to pillage and plunder like ravenous locusts.
Petty thieves, driven by hunger,
face fierce punishment, cold as frost.
Squalid cells swallow them, sunless and stark,
while powerful predators feast on fortunes,
their transgressions hidden like snakes under stones.
A man, caught like a cornered bird,
for a lottery theft, born of desperation.
Another, poor as parched earth,
shackled for stealing a fowl to feed his family.
Yet the king's henchman, with velvet-covered hands,
slips away silently, smooth as spilled oil,
millions misappropriated, a river of riches.
Democracy, where is your voice?
In hushed whispers, we wonder:
Are our aspirations adrift, like storm-tossed ships?
How have we fallen, like Lucifer, from lofty heights?
Silenced and stifled, we stumble
through tyranny's tightening grip,
a suffocating hold of savage vampires
feasting feverishly off the fading state.
Yet hope's embers endure, eternally stubborn.
We taste time's tart fruit on our tongues.
One day, this ordeal will end like the night.
Justice will come back to life
with the force of a volcano.
Democracy will breathe again, beating for all,
like a mother's boundless, benevolent love.
Destiny, as certain as the tides,
assures us a fresh, new chapter,
where freedom's clarion call cleaves the crisp dawn air.