Those that fled to the realm, that we’ll simply call OZ
For the lack of a letter or two,
Found a place where their minds could take flight with their dreams
And officials whose motives were true.
Here they worked and they played and discovered themselves
And the tools that they’d need later on
In their lives as adults in the world of concrete
To whose betterment all had been sworn.
So the kingdom was held as a bright, shining star
To whose level the "Real" world should raise,
And the cold calculation of capitalism
Should accept creativity’s blaze.

Thus the tree that was OZ was well rooted and held
By the altruist wizard and co.
And the seeds from it fell into minds that sought nurture
And gorged as horizons did grow.
And as years passed the word of the wonders of OZ
Did spread to the lands far and wide,
And its membership grew to be vast and diverse
And its message was shouted and cried.
But as OZ became structured to hold all the weight,
A colossal bureaucracy formed,
And the small minds that thrive on destruction through structure
Saw vuln’rable corpus and swarmed.

They saw OZ as a thing and a game they could Win
And they wanted to win at all cost,
So they ruled and defined and restricted the kids
Until all the ideals were lost.
As this plague seeped and sullied the once-haven OZ
It left barren the land in its wake
And the scribes that wrote problems and judges that judged
Did their love for the children forsake.
‘Twas the System that now was the cause paramount
And priority first on the mind.
Thus the "real world" had won with its ideals stark
And had turned OZ into one of its kind.

For the few that saw truth of the death of the land
They tried hard to bring sight to the rest,
But the cries of the Knights in the night of inane
Couldn’t open the eyes tightly pressed.
So they mourned as fair OZ into darkness did slide
And they cried for the children that fell
Into limbo with no one to guide them or love them
And give them a haven to dwell.

- An omer who cares

please don't let OM die