Fools Said, I.

Sometimes it takes the hit on the purse of peasants to awake them from their slumber. Tomatoes will rise in price by forty-percent. Fifty percent of the tomatoes used in the United States come from Mexico. The King today, puts a tariff on tomatoes from Mexico.

?2019 Ronnie Ray Jenkins

Fools said I, as the King walked by for they couldn’t throw tomatoes.

They cost too much, some peasants cried, we need them for the children.

My tariff plan is great you’ll see, the King said with false sincerity

The punished poor too blind to see clapped loud for their own stupidity

Fools said I, why can’t you see, past this growing fog of false prophecy

Where the lies are truth and the truth are lies beneath draped capes of hypocrisy

The peasants rallied when they heard his words of mockery and deception

Then when he spoke of refugees, someone yelled just shoot them.

They found those words spoken from the crowd comically amusing

They clapped and cheered to hear such words, their King was quite seducing.

Fools said I, toward empty eyes glazed over with seduction

But they answered not, and faced the King welcoming destruction

Of once what was, and shall not be, and once was said so eloquently

Words once spoke of happiness, and life, and the pursuit of liberty.

Across the river and in the fields tomatoes rot on withered vines

While the soulless King upon his silken sheets on a golden bed reclines.

Ronnie Ray Jenkins, a peasant writer.

.