Who Are We?

We are the people of the world 

The collective, 

The masses, 

The capitalistic, communal fascists, 

We are you.

We are ready for action,
For tragedy,
Atrocity, hostility
And fashion.
We are the impersonal.

We love great films
But do not live great lives.
We create drama
But shy away from real life.
We are an army of sheep

We fight for causes
And stand up in the streets.
We fight for clauses,
Throw stones and bombs
And then build tombs with our feats.

We are an amorphous blob
We are a greedy fat man
Standing in a cue
Unnoticed, a nobody
A slob.

We are nameless
So that we can be shameless.
We are the mob,
The headless god.
We are blameless.

Debates, chat shows, votes of the public
And no opinion of our own
Online indulgence
Typing thoughts
Borrowed from a borrower
Selected, educated
And thoroughly plagiarised thoughts
Do’s and ought’s,
Typed, copied,
Copied, pasted,
Pasted, passed,
Passed in unprinted pages
Of a virtual web
Denser than the dark ages.
Thoughts we copy right,
Thoughts we own
And thoughts we’re not
thinking alone.

Everybody writes about it,
Thinks about it,
Talks about it,
But if somebody is actually doing it,
Nobody gives a shit.

The We.
The fancy lives of the We.
Making news out of lipstick
Travel and choice of ice cream,
All frivolous news
That comes out of our pockets
And leaves a nation starving.

We, the people
We, the classes
We, the businessman,
The poor man
And the ladies who pout with the fat off their arses.

Our self worth
Rests on the opinion of others,
On magazine covers,
On how many more overs,
On frequent lovers.

We, the masses,
The people,
The system,
The supporters,
The obedient payers of taxes.

We are to blame
And we should be ashamed.
We have neighbours,
We have money,
And we have poverty.
We have each other.

We are the problem,
And we are the solution.
We could know who we are,
We could go far,
If we just stopped being so wee.

Kalki Koechlin