SHOW TRIAL
Show Trial
I dream that I’m an actor
cast in a trite morality play
set in a prison
I try and act my part
and speak my character’s
stilted lines like
I believe them
but the Director
is angry with me
and tells me
I’m not going to be paid
for my work.
I try to be strong
but I am weak
my failure to act
becomes a cage
only my despair
rattles the bars
where is the key?
where the lock?
Both prisoner and torturer
I rack my brains
for a way to get out
it must be done
it has to be done
I could easily
succumb to the comforting
shadows but
there are those I love
outside the bars
held hostage to my fate.
if I surrender they
would only end up living
in this prison in my place.
for their sake
I survive
for their sake
I work for my parole
for their sake
I plot my escape
for their sake
I endure,
as they parade me
like a sideshow freak
before the gawping cameras.
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The Reverend Hellfire is a practising Performance Poet, an ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanists AND the Church of the Universe and still President of the Kurilpa Institute of Creativity.
Skates on thin ice.
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Reverend Hellfire's Sunday Sermon 
We don’t have ‘bread and circuses’ in the arena any more, so the media try to fill the void by sensational stuff about gaoled prisoners, who become ‘sideshow freaks’ for the mob.
You’re right my friend, it’s still “Panem et Ludii” the mob craves.
Still, at least they don’t do badger baiting anymore. There was a fine old sport for the working classes!
WOW! What a vivid dream and what an imagination you have. I loved it.
I think maybe most of us have felt like a prisoner at some time or other, even if there were no bars.
Food & entertainment at the coliseum for the masses keeps them voting for the upper classes…
and lets not forget the witch trials. Good, wholesoime, family entertainment.
Can’t miss those hangings…
It’s the stocks I miss
That’s the power of entertainment…