Dave Bonta's "Truisms" is built from four short lines that read like slogans, the kind of thing you might see on a poster or hear repeated until nobody questions it. Each one sounds confident and complete, but they don't quite add up. "Lock and own" links security with possession. "To lack is a sin" treats poverty as a moral failing. "A dull people are a content people" is the sharpest: it hints that keeping people uninterested keeps them quiet and easy to manage.
The final line, "at all the papers," trails off oddly, as if a headline or a sentence has been cut short. Judging by the wording, it might point to the media as the place where these ideas get spread, though the poem leaves that open.
The speaker never says what they feel, and that is the point. The tone is flat and deadpam, which makes the mood cold and quietly uneasy. By stacking these claims without comment, the poem lets us hear how hollow and manipulative such "common sense" can be.