Contentious and false

+ contentious and false +
All these images
Contentious and false
Somewhere exists picture
Truthful and illuminated
Lighthouse of future
Alexandria library of knowledge
Myths made truth
Truth fashioned into folklore
To inspire ourselves
As real figures once did
Lady Godiva or King Arthur
An unrecalcitrent Robin Hood
Through history's pages
Throughout the Ages
Another popular rebel
Defier of the odds
Becomes a fixture of
The folklore or legends
How did they marry
Those words to myth attached
To their outward demeanour
Did such legend making
Drive them to greater success
Or in hubris great tragedy
And did they think they ever could
Meet the person
They were meant to be
Such a conjuring trick
To be real and insubstantial
To exist in your space
And greater space image possess
Which brings us back
Such tart taste in mouth
To commercial renderings of
The myths of manhood
Images of whom we should be
How free and ideals to possess
To never grow up for
It seems all the grown up things
Have already been performed
Coddled in the nanny state
Our role to consume and play
Games on Wii Playstation or XBox
Pursue illusions of friendship
Across cold reach of internet
To be cannon fodder for
Profits gargantuan of
The modern shopping complex
Which dwarfs the military
Makes sham of Haight Ashbury collective
The enemy was not the military
The enemy always was
Our own avarice and greed
And the image makers
Who skilfully play us
Create inside our desires
The wish to be as tribe
Conform by consuming
The greatest praise of all
In plagiaristic lounge rooms
Colour and style pervasive
No escaping the current fashion
Its insidious completeness
Drives you to accept
You are a corporate clone
Work to save to consume
A single cog operating
As producer and consumer
Supporting the chains
Which hold up your betters
Who need not to work
And even consumption is inadequate
Soak up their snowdrifts of capital
In this world of ours where
The image presented
May be ours or borrowed
And is always set
To be socially acceptable.