Thank you for your encouraging words, your majesty. I am indeed enamored with wordplay in its many variations. Here's another vaguely related poem
What I've Learned From History, Pt. 1The only thing I know
is that I know nothing.
We all know next to nothing
about the last ten years
let alone the distant past.
History is a detective story,
of twisted plots, glib and gory.
Who got what? How much? And who got whom?
Who lived? Who died? And how many?
It's more guesswork than glory.
But it's my opinion that
the Neolithic Revolution
really messed us up as a species.
Under certain conditions we could
live happily as hunter gatherers,
if briefly and in stunted family trees -
but without any oppressive hierarchies,
no serfdom, no masters, no feudal levies,
just hunting, fishing, nuts and berries.
Then you throw farming into the mix:
food surpluses controlled by social elites;
specialization; sedentary populations
riddled with communicable diseases;
peasants bound from birth to do
whatever their master pleases.
Build me a wall!
And there are walls.
And all it takes is one guy
with nothing to do but look up at the sky;
he puts two and two together and, by god,
he can tell you when the Nile will flood.
He waits and watches so long, he can say
that the sun may vanish on this or that day,
and may not return, unless you act in this way,
and obey your elders, your priests, and your gods,
obey.
Build me a pyramid!
And there are pyramids.
Politics is about who gets what.
Property is nine tenths of the law.
But history is more than just past politics.
History is the memory of humanity, it belongs to us all.
We are historical actors! We are agents of change!
But so far the story has been one of control,
of one man owning another man as property,
of great men and vast impersonal forces,
intricate social structures supporting
the top of the pyramid.
History is about power:
haves and have-nots.
Those who have power
want you to have none, because
power corrupts. And absolute power
has the capacity to destroy human civilization.
Those in positions of power -
true power, mind you, not puppetry -
are generally not the sort of people
you'd want to see in those sorts of positions.
Power attracts a vicious circle of vampiric parasites,
born into their sickness, or groomed for it, or drawn to it,
who bid mankind domesticate itself for their profit,
and treat us little better than cattle -
graze the herd, cull the undesirables,
lead the lambs to slaughter,
sell the human chattel -
profit.
Napoleon was right,
history is a lie agreed upon,
written by the winners.
But history is more than just a tissue of lies,
some truths are self-evident to half-opened eyes.
History is a detective story,
of twisted plots, glib and gory.
Who got what? How much? And who got whom?
Who lived? Who died? And how many?
It's more guesswork than glory.
Yet embers of glory burn within us all.
Will tales of future generations tell
how we stood tall and demanded our liberty?
Or will history repeat ad nauseam our slavery?