The Red Sunset

The Red Sunset
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The Red sun had set on the eastern fields
On the shoulders of the maimed and the dead.
The red revolution would leap forward no more
The harsh winds of change
were blowing through moribund dreams
Blowing through deserted alleyways, howling through.

The puppeteer prepared his illusions to stage
The show must go on, he screamed and waved
He held the strings
that made them dance
The wretched, the timid, the meek and the weak
Dance away or die for your miserable crumbs

Give them opium, give them sex
Give them some religion, perhaps some press
The puppets were happy in a world of pretence
They played to the script
Strung on a wire, plucked on strings
Life and power to the puppeteer’s duets

Polite conversation, talk of the weather
Genteel courtesies, form and good cheer
Life was sweet, life was lazy, behind the charade, life was easy.
Long live the party, long live the puppeteer
Long live manifestos, hail underlings
Long live dead Gods, Marx, Lenin, comrades on the brink

Puppets of the world unite, screamed a red banner
And another waved a gigantic flag in the wind
A gold hammer and sickle stuck on red
Lumpen multitudes swarming at a May day parade
Lemmings in shining uniforms, polished jackboots
Falling into line to hear red demagoguery from the divine

They smiled when they were angry
They knew comrades cheated and lied
They knew there was a new world out there
Bound in charades, with no hope to survive
So they sung the alien song of the Red brigade
Hoping to see the red sun set and rise once again

The communes had long gone
The iron curtain razed to the ground
The puppeteer and his party goons
did as they pleased; for these were mice and not men
Do as he says, the prompter screamed
The boss, they said, is forever right.

The puppeteer was rich and suave
and schooled in human grace and quality
Every puppet’s dream he was; that is what they wanted their kids to be
In guilt they believed in the great pretense
They dressed for the stage, swinging on the edge
Craving for the party’s applause

They were still dancing when the plague arrived.
The brightest songbirds had flown to other shores
Flying far away from this collective insanity.
The coffers were empty, factories closed
The vultures were waiting
In the charade, only the puppets didn’t know

Till the puppeteer took his final bow
To end the never ending the show
A single bullet as he pulled the trigger
Glazed eyes, a splash of red
Then an eerie silence that sent out a shiver
There would be no more red curtain calls

They found him in a magician’s red robe
A crown of diamond set in gold
Even in death the pretense was on
Delusions of grandeur and that was not all
Hands clutched tight holding the strings
A lunatic’s smile, on broken wings

The puppeteer was gone
Paradigms had changed, but the puppets danced on
to old ways, ostritch-like, unchanged
They couldn’t leap away and give up the pot of gold
They wanted to be, the great puppeteer and guide
Awkward in freedom, as caged animals they cried

Living on absurd pretenses, lies and regret
A vanishing breed blown by the sands of time, drifting
Fading into a lazy crazy hazy Red sunset