The Theater of Politics

In the grand theater of politics, power and place,
Are players with faces masked in mercurial grace.
Their words weave tapestries of shimmering lies,
Spun in silvered speeches, beneath truth's disguise.

Upon the world's stage, beneath the proscenium arch,
Each plays their part in this never-ending march.
In corridors of power, where shadows are cast,
The future is but echoes of a forgotten past.

Democracy, the darling of our idealistic youth,
Bound by the chains of compromise, strays from truth.
In opaque chambers, liberty stands on trial,
As we trade our freedoms for security's guile.

In this ballet of words and wars, the innocent dance,
Held captive to the whims of political chance.
Silent tongues of the oppressed plead for a voice,
But in the grand theater, they are granted no choice.

The mighty currency of fear stirs the populist sea,
Sailing on waves of ignorance, craving to be free.
But freedom’s not a fortress, nor a shouting crowd,
It’s the quiet voice of reason, in silence standing proud.

Dissent, the drumbeat of democracy, rings out clear,
A song sung by the brave, who hold freedom dear.
Yet in halls where echoes of past greatness still dwell,
Dissent is drowned by the clamor of the tyrant's bell.

The ballot, our hope, once inked in honest creed,
Now drowns in a digital sea, sown with deceptive seed.
Truth, a precious commodity, now sold for a song,
In the marketplace of opinions, where facts do not belong.

Yet, the theater of politics, both cruel and kind,
Is but a mirror held up to the collective mind.
In each choice, each vote, each political decree,
The state of our world, in stark reflection, we see.

A promise to the future, a testament to the past,
In the theater of politics, may truth hold the cast.
For in the end, when the final curtain falls,
'Tis we, the audience, who hold the halls.