What Government Is

by Anthony Gregory 

Wasteful, distasteful, unjust, dishonest, greedy, growing, and scary,

Repressive, oppressive, neurotic, despotic, an evil unnecessary,
It takes half your wealth, threatens your health, and kills all those deemed worth expending,

It’s frightening and dooming, an enterprise booming to make hell on earth unending.

It’s murderous, thieving, and simply believing it will one day improve is misguided,

Its nature to grow alone should well show that its defenders will always be slighted.

It’s bungling, inane, and quite inhumane in dealing in human affairs,

You might trust that today you can keep it at bay but tomorrow you’ll be caught unawares.

It’s intrusive, outdated, insufficiently hated for the pain it inflicts on our lives,

It’s that most naïve hope, that we all must cope with its sins, which allows it to thrive.

It’s fantasy, some say, to toss it away; to rid of it is unrealistic–

It survives on that lie still swallowed by those it considers statistics.

A number. A bug. A taxpaying lug is the way each is seen by the state,

To be molded like clay, to be shaped every day, to be robbed of his dreams and his fate,

It holds no illusions, no mass delusions, on its relation to the people it rules,

Just send them to jail, or to war if that fails, when they forget what they learned in the schools.

Offensive, expensive, a burden to all, the state is the root of our troubles,

And the irony is that it depends on mere thoughts that have no more concreteness than bubbles.

Invincible? No. Inevitable? No. It’s disposable as a leaf pile,

But until we all see what government is, all we’ll see is the gang of thieves smile.