Leaders Who Do Not Heed
 

Leaders who do not heed
can not lead
Leaders who can not lead
yet lead
And in their way succeed

Make up so much of our history
Of promises running to seed
Of fantasies soaking up the blood
We bleed

Of "acid in milk" and "ashes in honey"
Of the "chalk in bread" we feed
Our people in need

We move on
To another round
With our leaders
In insecure certitude
And anxious insouciance
And intractable creed
Inbreeding a breed
Of exhausted energies
Coursing through patterns
Of exhausting reveries, and making
Leaders who do not heed.

And the people? so wise and suffering who are they?
between choices anonymous
a mass of sacred potential united in irrelevance
The foil of our guilt and greed
And in seasons of choice they arise
lazarous like,
and divide into instruments of their tormentors' need

Which is why round after round
We have leaders who cannot lead
Leaders who do not heed

The useless questions, what is to be done?
Does it deserve an answer?
Except in banality and screed?
Wisdom lies in knowing what cannot be done
And praying and waiting for something just something,
to intercede
But Bonaparte had a point
While looking on a slumbering mass
And seeing a waking
And hearing a shaking
That wiped off the smiles of
Leaders who do not heed.