Wait Your Turn

Photo by Fabian Heimann on Unsplash

Wait Your Turn

They bid us work, and strive, and strain,

They preach the gospel of grit and pain.

The virtue of patience, a long-held breath,

Wait your turn, they assure, until death.

With diligent toil within the system's fold,

Good things will come, a story often told.

They hail the high road of academic might,

Perfect grades, degrees, and the burning night

Of all-nighters, leading to institutions grand,

The path to success paved by a diploma in hand.

The central command, the mantra they impart:

Work hard, and success will fill your heart.

But the hollow sound their pronouncements make,

From a sheltered world, for goodnes’s sake.

A place sustained not by relentless effort's cost,

But by the legacy that was never lost,

By exclusive gates and a lineage long,

A privilege entrenched, where they belong.

They fail to grasp the truth that grinds us down,

The doubled effort just to keep the crown

From slipping, just to stay where we began,

Disconnected from the struggle's rigid plan,

That harsh existence which our lives define,

While they stand above, on heights divine.

What they possess, we desperately lack:

The insulating cushion on wealth's track,

Money that shields them from survival's fear.

They wield the power that holds the system dear,

Shaping the rules, not merely influence slight,

And connections unseen, a web of pure light.

A network of favors, a whispered invitation,

Opportunities passed through each generation,

A resource worth more than all the sweat we've spent,

Yet they command us to be more intent.

They stand on their platforms, elevated and cold,

"Work harder," they shout, a story getting old.

This directive is a self-serving slight,

A useful tool for a blinding light,

To justify their perch, so high and so neat,

To placate the masses, a narrative complete.

Keep us focused on the effort of one,

Ignoring the structures, the battle unwon.

But now we pierce the veil, we understand,

Too long we've labored at their harsh command.

Our youth and our fire poured into the drain,

For a system of diminishing, aching pain.

We know by the certitude of what we live,

That harder work will not be enough to give.

It cannot breach the walls that they have raised,

It cannot lift the life we've always praised,

Nor close the chasm wide that separates

Their world of ease from the heavy fates.

The meritocracy's promise, their comforting theme,

Is a fiction, a sermon, a vanishing dream.

It is a sham, a lie both vast and bold,

A hollow pretense, a story bought and sold.

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