Status Quo – A Poem by Rowe Williams

On a school playground as educational 
as the previously inhabited classrooms, 
elementary students walk in loyal formation, 
repeating after the charismatic 

leader of the procession a chant 
of advertising victory, a company 
catchphrase that has captured their 
youthful imaginations. Exuberantly, 

vivaciously, they march across the 
playground, learning the war cry 
of capitalist crusade. But one 
villainous contrarian opposes the chant 

with its opposite, calling heretically, unknowingly 
for rebellion, sedition against the economy 
which has provided so abundantly
to everyone (who matters). 

This reprobate's opposition is
crushed, refuted as unfun and uncool,
and in his enforced isolation he learns
the sacredness of status quo.