Children

You who surrender your children to the gods
Have you wondered about the repercussions?
Those that grow with heads bent to authorities
How will they conceive of unfettered revolutions?

When will the children question your scriptures
Of dangerous myths and needless sanctities?
When would they combat your unfounded claims
How to break the cycles of plutocratic doctrines?

You who gift your children to miseducation system
Have you wondered about lifelong consequences?
Those that shape up worldview with falsified histories
How will they challenge their status quo semblances?

When will the children demand empowering knowledge
Schools where seeds of resistance grow with purpose
If parents forbid the young to teach world new values –
Of godless society, where folks unite for communistic goals.

Send them to the churches, temples, synagogues or mosques
Or feed them to schools, colleges and university halls
Wearing uniforms, attending prayers and consuming TV news
Yet another cohort of obedient fools abiding by neo-Nazi rules

You who dream for better tomorrows for future generations
And yet inculcate in children values of selfish aspirations
Long to see your child leave others behind in the rat race
Must live to then perpetuate and strengthen it’s Fascist face! 

– Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples’ Poet