The Lies We Believe Poem by Carey Lenehan

Three monkeys sweat beneath the glare of studio lights.
See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil,
for the truth hurts and pain costs votes,
real honesty a road to obscurity.
Easier surely, to waffle and divert
than to ever truly confront reality.

Three wise men squirm in turn before judgemental eyes.
Gold, Frankincense and Myrh,
promise gifts of wealth, prosperity and order,
without saying where it will come from
or how it will be found
because illusion is everything.

Three practised artisans create castles of lies.
Generalise, spin, mislead,
for specifics can lead to admissions of guilt
or parade deep incapacity to care.
So to stay safe in their gilded palaces,
the lies must come thick and fast.

Three potential leaders scrabble for our approval.
Red, Blue, Yellow,
but the differences end there,
for politicking is an art and, as we all so well know,
Artists are a species apart
and do not mix with the mediocre masses.

And when the chips are down with two monkeys slain,
when the wise men's wisdom unravels
and the artisans creations have fallen apart,
what will our lives be like then?
Rich from the wealth of the promises they kept,
or poorer still from the lies we believed?