I’m sure they won’t be satisfied

until the day is forty-eight hours long

and still with only a few hours sleep

available between work and death;

they would find a way,

by shifting digits, by claiming

the Earth actually needs to go round

the Sun twice

to constitute a year, or just by simply

brow beating into the kids

that a day is twice as long as they think

by sending them too school for longer

and forgoing the activities

that make them become who they are;

it’s all in the name of efficiency

and profit chasing at the end of the day.

 

It’s all about making drones for those

who drone in the Westminster tent,

not allowing them to realise

that sometimes education is learned

not on the job, but in practice,

on the street, not getting into trouble

but by observing the ritual

of the world as it goes from slumbering dawn

to shuffling, tired and excused dusk,

there is always time to put them

into straight-jackets, to confirm

their conformity and get the sheep into their pen;

but then younger minds are more malleable

when surreptitiously manipulated

into believing that the day

is forty-eight hours long.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016