The Messages We Preach

The Messages We Preach

Nightly, the rhymes we chant and the visions we plant in innocent heads, as we lovingly tuck

Our little ones into bed, singing the story of Insy Winsy, tenaciously placing

One spindly leg after the other, heroically climbing up the spout.

An ill fate is dealt to the spider as rapaciously rushing water washes poor Insy out.

In a world where floods are named by date and hurricanes are called Laura or Catrina.

As our most vulnerable peacefully drift to the land of nod,

Do we allude to a true dystopia?

Nightly, as our tamariki settle to sleep, the tales we recite so frightfully deep,

Like Ladybug, Ladybug fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children are all alone.

Sadly, not a word the Lady hears as with her peers, she cavorts with unsavoury sorts, thoughtlessly

Embarking on a night of revelry, tomfoolery, debauchery; behaviour so despicably dire.

Forgotten by their rotten mother, her abandoned brood are screwed,

Condemned to smother, to fry and die in that horrific fire.

What fears do we ignite?

Nightly, coaxing our young ones to the land of slumber, do we stop to wonder how the cow,

Serenaded by a fiddle-playing cat, egged-on by a laughing dog, and a mischievous spoon

Could jump over the moon; a feat the cow would’ve failed if not for the cocktail of illicit drugs inhaled.

And oh, the plight of Old Mother Hubbard discovering her cupboard to be bare, nothing there

For the dog, not a bone has she got. To the food bank, she trots, adding to the rapidly rising poverty

Rate in this compassionate welfare state – a shameful indictment in this supposed land of plenty.

Is this lying by omission?

Nightly, the falsehoods we cement in innocent heads, parroting platitudes, whilst

Fleecing Baa Baa Black Sheep of his wool, proving that black lives really don’t matter.

Jack breaks his crown in a tumble and rather than grumble, in his wisdom,

He self medicates with vinegar and brown paper – a woeful reflection of a failing health system.

Fat, round Humpty Dumpty, victimised, ostracised, traumatised, sits alone upon the wall:

What caused him to fall? a push or suicide? Splattered on the ground, poor Humpty died.

What truths are we hiding?

The nightmarish images we hide in the minds of little ones before they drift to sleep.

What messages do we preach?