Who Pulls your Strings? [poem]
Who pulls your strings?
I’ll pause a moment while you work it out…
You might think that it’s you;
although the way you fawned before your boss
(ass-licked him, no matter what the cost)
and let some leechlike humans trample on you —
took that nasty slap upon your face
from that abuser dossing at your place,
brings into question “who’s the puppeteer?”
Who pulls your strings?
I saw the way you went to vote and let
your government grab you by the throat —
believe the shit you read in papers every day
or what your treasured TV idiot-boxes say
or trying to be all things to everyone
or always singing other people’s songs
(never found your own sweet-sounding voice).
Acquiring things is where your heart belongs;
so now your strings are pulled by all those toys.
Who pulls your strings?
I saw the way you need and crave that fag
(the desperate face you wear with every drag)
while searching for the nipple that you never knew
so then that sucking-longing took its hold and grew.
Paying through the nose to “take a contract out”
on your own lovely self. You might as well inject
your veins with H or snort some C in stealth;
pimping out your strings to all the frozen hands
which hate all those who dance the merry dance,
no strings attached, who leap and freely fly
with wings unclasped and face unmasked.
Who pulls your strings?
Are you held spellbound by the glitzy thrall
of any offal-loaded tripe which grabs your mind
or soothes your soul (where mindless is the goal)
or takes you for a ride in cloudy skies or panders
to the part of you which gawps at centrefolds
or mesmerised by filmstar narcistry
or longs to be in bed with Brad or George
or David B. or any other soppy fantasy?
Who pulls your strings?
If you’re addicted to some stuff (that’s anything),
my friend, you’ll never then be free enough
and all your strings will never be your own
for something/someone else is pulling them —
some influential puppeteers unknown:
state apparatchiks, control freak maniacs
illuminati ghosts with hands inside your back
turning round the pole which moves your head
clicks your teeth together as you mouth
their words and thoughts instead of those
which used to be your own to say. Though now
those thoughts have long since slunk away into
some shadows where you princely used to play.
Who pulls your strings?
Your lover? Husband? Wife or friend?
Pastor, father, sponsor, coach, or
boss or “partner”? Guru? Moneymen?
If so, then don’t pretend you’re sitting
in the driver’s seat — you’re not!
You’re just a passive passenger
a bunch of vacant atoms fake, ersatz
and secondhand, bereft and incomplete.
Who pulls your strings?
Maybe you have some mentor who is
calling all your pre-owned life-choice shots
while coolly charging you a fortune
for that weekly one-hour motivational slot.
Or, tinkering with pressure points upon your
head, they’ll tell you you’ll no more feel bad
but healthy and enlightened, ‘clear’, instead.
At one time such advice would come for free
through older, wiser folks who lived in your
community, or in your own extended family.
But now all that has gone and is no more.
Today it’s just a business and a quick way
to accrue some loot and wield some power
in the lives of naive, over-trusting dupes.
When coaches, gurus, therapists and other
get-rich shrinks of limited experience are paid
to tell you what to think, or how to meditate,
achieve your bliss, regurgitate their cant,
your strings have ceased to be your own.
With them you should now disenchanted be;
so cancel those appointments on the phone
& soon without such types you will have grown!
Who pulls your strings?
How many think they’re truly free
yet live now at reduced capacity,
enslaved to someone else’s “-isms”,
living in some ideological prison
according to another human’s mind,
waking up one snowy Winter’s day to find
they have no strings left of their own to pull.
The job’s then done —
the puppeteers have won.
Will that now give you confidence
to blast them all to kingdom come?
Who pulls your strings?
Forgive me but I’d really love to know.
For if we don’t control our minds ourselves,
how can we ever hope to meet for real —
you and me, our hearts aligned and healed?
One can’t relate to puppets, pawns or dolls
whose strings (and minds) are not their own,
or dummies with their heads on top of poles,
operated from behind by someone else,
whose hearts are made from wood,
who should have stood their ground before,
in someone else’s hands, their precious strings,
which once had been their own, were found.
Who pulls your strings?
That is a question we should ask ourselves
at dawn and dusk on every single day
and have to know for sure we pull our own.
Emancipation here must be our cornerstone
or someone (something) else is on the throne;
for everything we do has consequence.
I trust that you will not now take offence —
there’s none intended — only hope for us
to meet in spaces where we’re free; and that
after some reflection you will shout out loudly
to the searching question I above have asked,
10 times in all, the one-word answer: “Me!”
To say that word in answer to the question that
I posed (“Who pulls your strings?”) does not
mean I am advocating narcissism or asserting
that within this cosmos there’s no higher power!
For if a “me” is not being pulled (controlled) by
strings belonging to a human/worldly domination,
there is room for Godward influence to flower. 🌼
For God is not a puppet-master who manipulates
our strings as if we were robotic wooden dolls
without a soul; but He ensures that we (when we
have placed ourselves with willingness under His
sphere of influence) exert a measure of control.
[And here I now could gleeful write an epic text
outlining the true nature of freewill and how it
interfaces with our destiny as creatures on this
seeming random “peppermill” or people-pouring
theatre of burlesque in which one is surrounded
by so many marionettes and pawns, walk-ins,
zombies or some Dawn-of-Dead style film-set on
a bleak suburban lawn. But I must save that for
another day along with many dozen other things
I long to say! 🙂]. Thus, I will now take my place
as puppet-master of myself; content to know that
in my rocketship there is a fuel which over me
does rule but never clips my wings, dictates the
sounds my bell-tower rings, controls the songs
my spirit sings, nor tries to pull my ragged strings.
(However, I must add a postscript here; because
I know my strings have not been made by me
but are a gift from One who, though He may not
pull them wilfully, He owns them just the same.
And so, my strings, though pulled on earth by me,
[so giving me the requisite impression that I’m free],
belong in heaven & I dedicate them to His name).
© Alan Morrison, 2015
The Naked Troubadour 