The Values We Hold

Sex appeal, money, power and gold
The only things valued, or so we've been told
By members of parliament, peasants and lords,
By businessmen, beggars and marauding hoards.

So much for ideals of commitment and friends
And the folks who would willingly go to the ends
Of the planet to aid other people they know
And on whom they had chosen their word to bestow.

Everything's changed proclaim pundits and scribes
We've unwisely appointed as leaders and guides;
From foundational truths we were taught long ago
To our basic ideals we're now taught to forgo.

From unchallenged truths we had always embraced
We have come to adopt a form sorely debased.
We have strayed from original precepts we've held;
Our claim to the high road's no longer upheld.

As a people we wander, we aimlessly drift
Direction less, lost in a sea now bereft
Of the clear moral compass we formally used;
And longitude, latitude now seem confused.

From where does our moral ineptitude come?
Is it Hollywood, Broadway, the standards of some
Governmental committees whose members decreed
That our outdated rules we no longer must heed?

And what can our future conceivably hold
As summarily we discard all we have sold
Of our most basic mores, our firm moral base,
And our hope in retaining our undeserved grace?

Poor fools who cry out in a bleak wilderness
To oblivious morons who couldn't care less
Like the prophets before them and those who come late
Those who dare to speak out now will all share their fate.

So what can be done now to deal with this tale
Of ephemeral loyalties, values for sale
And the narcissists caught in their self centered greed
While oblivious to any precepts or creed?

No matter what others decide or decree
I can and I must make decisions for me.
I'll try to choose wisely, ignoring the cost
And I'll not be a part of the multitudes lost!

This poem won second place for the March 2020 poetry contest