Puppet Master Poem by David Lewis Paget

There’s always been something controlling me,
I knew, but I knew not what,
Something diverting and foiling me
Since the days that I lay in my cot,
I thought it was simply a parent thing
As they whispered their rules in my ear,
The things that were right and the things that were wrong
And the things I would most have to fear.

They sent me to school and the teachers, too,
Must have read from the very same book,
They always laid blame and they said it the same
And the cane lent a sting to their hook.
‘You’re coming to learn, not to think for yourself,
You’ll repeat everything that I say,
And maybe just some of these rules will stick
If you dwell on the rules every day! ’

Then once in the world my employers unfurled
All the rules and the regs I would keep,
I didn’t last long, I’d seen them before
And told them they put me to sleep.
The government fined and unlicensed me
From a book that they said was the law,
The magistrates sat on a heap of these books
As I shrugged and I said, ‘What for? ’

I sat in the jail for contempt of court,
Spent plenty of time in my cell,
The world was consumed with a million rules
Designed to consign you to hell.
I watched all the lawyers and prisoners, cops
As they danced to the rules of the cot,
And sensed they were puppets, and most of them fools
Who would baulk at the words, ‘I will not! ’

They’d hate to be questioned, they thought they were right,
If you disagreed you were canned,
They’d lock you away for a hospital stay
There was no going back, it was planned.
You had to be made to agree with their way
So they clamped electrodes on your head,
Then slide up the volts, and it wasn’t their fault
If it happened you ended up dead.

They called it Electro-therapy
And said it was doing you good,
But the thoughts in my brain they were never the same
When I came out from under that hood,
I saw the strings jerking from shoulders and heads
In a vision you couldn’t conceive,
And there were the hands that were pulling their strings
When I called out, ‘I don’t believe! ’

‘I’ve never believed and I’ll never believe, ’
I called, and they all moved away,
A thunderous cracking of mortar and ceiling,
It all fell apart on that day.
The strings fell away from my shoulders and hands
And I knew I was finally free,
And then I called up to the Puppet Master,
‘You won’t be controlling me! ’

People were falling all over the place
As he dropped all the strings from his hands,
The bearded Master could see the disaster,
‘You’ve ruined my world and my plans! ’
He paused for a moment and then he was gone
Leaving people to blink in the light,
The rules were the rules of the Puppet Master
Now we can decide what is right!

26 November 2013