Cut out of the womb
and lined up,
lying down in the newborn baby
nursery room,
the sobbing infants
sing the sardine tin song
in the sniffling sniveling
cot,
crib
and cradle throngs.

From crawling to walking
to filling jam-packed classrooms
with desks of crisscrossed legs
overflowing with limbs
and too many copies of the same book -
dare not doodle, or cop a look outside.
During eight and five
your time and undivided attention
should abide by the blackboard gospel
pushed from the pulpit by an automatic robotic
preacher teacher -
confined inside while the sun shines.  
On-by-one in single-file
creative,
artistic minds come to die
before the uniform mashed potato brains
are regurgitated, and fertilized
with a dumb dimmed 'no-one home' light.

Mind the gap at the crack-head crammed
bus stops and subways
bursting at the seams
like toothpaste tubes of people
who are rushing on glass pipe smoke
and glass-ceiling pipe dreams.
Low self-esteem herds
brimful with defeat,
sporting weakened-knees
from back-breaking work
in service delivery for minimum wages
who run through endless,
endless mazes
powered by prescribed amphetamines.

From the hamster-wheel buses
the programmed people limp
to their red-brick beehive buildings;
broken
like the cracked, smashed windows
and dangled fire escapes
of their council estate cold water flats,
which spark and zap
from fishy duct-taped
misaligned electric lines -
too blind to see in the stacked
dim-lit,
racked and ruined flatlets;
they tune out to monkey-see,
monkey-do reality TV.

From the manger cages
and through the turnstiles
of military-ready schoolyard security,
into captivity of cubicle confinement -
rapscallion rogue rats with curious thinking;
problematic to jail chain-gang linking -
scratch, gnaw and nibble
with latched paws, so feeble
at the cracks
in the classified class system experiment.
Those stratification cracks cementing
the ratification of immobility,
painted and filled with rat-poison blended pills,
mixed and pushed
by lab-coat fat-cat aristocrats.
Who would stamp insanity
between the twitching, curious ears
of any visionary vermin -
who are shunned by the obedient no-trick pony,
mischief of rodents,
and exiled from the community,
with labels of being possessed,
insane
and crazy.

Is the happiness found
in ignorant-coloured blinding bliss
for better or worse,
in this death-trap mapped
faceless rat-race?
Where individuality and originality is a curse
deemed deserving of a solitary,
outcast castaway alley existence
not worthy of a penny
for any free thoughts.

I pray for the Pied Piper's song
to lead the righteous, rebellious rats
along a new yellow brick road;
to a slavery-free,
cruelty-free
Eden -
built on unshackled foundations
for tomorrow's emancipated generation.