The Paradox Of Selective Democracy Poem by Emeka GOC

The Paradox of Selective Democracy

I. The Architecture of the Shadow
They kept two ledgers for the human soul:
One bound in leather, read in gentle salons,
Where rights of man were chanted like a psalm,
And freedom crowned the apex of the whole.

The other lay hidden in the belly of ships
A dark, unspoken, iron‑fisted code,
Where liberty was bartered on the road,
And democracy was silenced by the whip.

A strange machinery of the dual mind:
To preach the ballot to the home‑born son,
Yet rule the empire by the Maxim gun,
Leaving the true republic far behind.

They built a house of glass upon the Thames,
While burying the world in heavy chains,
Washing the bloodstains from their stolen gains,
And crowning tyrants with their royal gems.


II. The Myth of the Waiting Room
They brought their books to teach the alphabet
A curated deceit, a polished school,
A washed‑down learning crafted as a tool
To make the conquered love the cage they met,
And bind them debtors to a phantom debt.

"Not yet, " the master whispered from his throne,
"You are not ready for the weight of law."
Yet through the open classroom door, they saw
The wealth of empires stripped and overthrown.

They gave the colony a wooden stage,
A puppet council with a rubber stamp,
Where local elites, by the fading lamp,
Rehearsed the lines of an engineered cage.

The governor sat high, a foreign god,
Accountable to none but ocean tides,
While deep within the brush, the anger hides
Beneath the pressure of the iron rod.


III. The Divided Bride
They drew the lines across the ancient maps,
And whispered rumours in the chieftain's ear.
They fed the poison of a manufactured fear,
Planting the seeds of sudden, dark collapse.

They split the house to better hold the key
A wedding where the bride is torn in two,
Ensuring old alliances never grew,
And independence bled before the sea.

And when the clock struck midnight on the reign,
And freedom's banner could no longer fade,
They built a hurried, fragile barricade
A paper parliament to mask the pain.

They left the keys within a shaking hand,
A gift of glass designed to crack and break,
So they could profit from the grand mistake,
And watch the chaos flood the bleeding land.