The Regime Instructs Its Newest Recruits About Appropriate Rebellion.

I am including this in a short story exploring the quote: “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” – Thucydides

“Ever the vain words spoken held no truth

For their regurgitation rots the tooth

That needs remain to bleed the vein

Below the hand that beats those who complain.

The words are these: 'The master has no soul,

The boot we lick is bought with stolen gold,

He cheated when he rubbed your eyes in sand,

You'll see once we have repossessed his land-

The spoiled dog he feeds beyond your sons

Will turn upon him, digging for the bones

Whose brittle natures have forgotten work,

His son we'll steal and his chains we'll shirk,

The people who belong upon his throne

Are us, the damned, for whom he must atone!'

So speaks the self-enslaved, for freedom's won

When all the world's transfigured from a gun

Into, this umpteenth time I stress, a pen-

Thereof in death one's voice may rise again.”