There were too many choices on the dessert tray.
“Each one take one” deserted us in the fray
to take more than our neighbor day after day.
Only those who had already eaten their full
were allowed into the dessert line’s pull.
They soon fearfully learned to guard their place,
that their rights to the line were not earned, but disgrace
to those deprived of sweet-takings
engaged in new nation-making;
not filled with days of Turkish delights,
but with hungry days turned into endless nights.
Where dreams dashed middle-class hope,
which died on buffet lines, the poor man’s trope.
The anger is real, if misdirected
believing The Big Lie that goes un-dissected
lest truth arise before their eyes
explaining they face their country’s demise.
We are the source of our own destruction
electing leaders who lie without compunction
and promise to allow us into the buffet line
where dessert is denied time after time.
Democracy dies with the death of the middle-class.
Without “each-one take one” our democracy cannot last.
The buffet lines of life are heavily taxed
while the dessert line where few stand tight go un-taxed.
They are bloated and full of themselves, supremacists all,
while the rest of us watch democracy fall