no justice

there isn't really any justice, which in any case
only justifies the descent into madness,
unofficially known as revenge.

there is only more love.

offensive defense

when you proclaim the earth your eternal battlefield,
produce more weapons than any other commodity
(and sell more than any other nation),
rack up a consistent reputation for unprovoked invasions
enabled by blatant lies,
assassinate leaders you don't like,
incinerate tens of thousands of trapped, retreating soldiers,
smother cities in depleted uranium
causing cancers and deformed infants
dwarfing the rates in the teeming cities you nuked,
and are responsible for the deaths of at least
seven million human beings,

you don't have the right to say you're defending anyone from anything.

ever.

second coming

the second coming was over before it began.
he showed up at a Syrian wedding
to eke out the wine,
as was his wont.
though his suffering didn't linger
like the last time,
there weren't enough fragments
to stage a comeback,
and he didn't get the chance
to ask that we be forgiven.
on reflection,
i suppose it wouldn't have held water
for him to claim that
the "only essential",
endless "christian" warriors
still "know not what they do".

exceptionalism

whether blowing about on the opportunistic winds anointed for Hillary,
dripping like butter from Obama's folk-flattering, terror-laundering lips, or
spewing from the slime-prodding battering ram of the Great STrumpet himself,
Exceptionalism is always and forever a destructive, isolating, entitling tool,
as blinding as the amnesia it implies, as rife with genocide
as Netanyahu-cum-Hitler's Klu-Klux-Custer catechism.

back in the day

back in the day,
when there wasn't a reason
to fear the things
that fell from the Syrian sky

Sainthood

how ironic.  defending persecuted, innocent Muslims by pointing out that they
helped kill persecuted, innocent Muslims themselves.  tis an excellent strategy,
there's nothing America loves like its hired guns, "protecting" our "freedom"
[aka corporate "interests"] from our unoffending victims.  these hapless fellows
are candidates for the unwashed Sainthood of the Great STrumpet himself.

odyssey

the odyssey of observation having once begun
intelligence eternally alters,
experience spins as its spirals expand;
Great Mystery telling the same timeless story,
in the here and the there; the Universe, and the sparrow.

the gift (a psalm to summon peace)

behold i scatter tidings of sweet, resounding joy

for unto the dread midst of the looming Texas night

dawns innocent transcendence in its life-affirming seed:

a wayfaring Divinity, a child from the east

bearing in her loving hands her priceless, open heart

to rectify our scarcity and slake our aching need.

"and lo! thine is the rose e'er blooming"

spake the angel to those who might heed.

"the scent of heaven is caressing the earth

and this is its worthy deed:

smite thy bombing abominations,

forswear the stifling of the slightest, frail reed.

renounce thy ridiculous fences,

lay down forever thy exceptional creed."

then she summoned the wrath of Jesus

collapsing the temples of corporate greed,

admonishing disciples that the devil's only sin

was forcing his own brethren to bleed.

and she said: "bring down the military monster.

sever every branch of the blood-soaked weed.

keep its noxious roots away from thy children.

render no ground for the bitter beast to breed.

arise from the media's conscripted nightmare,

all that pounding of fear by a guilt-ridden steed.

shut out its conquering anthem.

laugh off its protection, don't suffer it to feed.

shatter the myth of good versus evil,

eschew that vengeful, self-righteous screed.

for under the sun there can be no other,

it's for thy very souls that i urgently plead.

and all of the harm that ye seek to inflict

turns thy cells into hollow, haunted shells, indeed."

then the wrath and the angel departed,

and the child once again was a slender, fragile reed.

my eyes had been opened by the gift she offered.

a piece of her heart, a bright, resplendent bead

that forever awakened my senses

to recognise our family by its common, aching need.

behold i scatter tidings of sweet, resounding joy

that shall be unto ye a life-affirming seed.

- Evan Hawthorn, the 4^th of December, 2015

"bad people"

i saw this stale, simple-minded slather from old 'Dead Hands Moses' himself and i had
to comment.  as if human beings can be sorted into simplistic, benign or malevolent,
all or nothing categories.  like gods or devils.  as if those who think they're "good guys"
don't inflict harm.  as if believing "we" are the good guys and "they" the bad ones
doesn't result in ample room for hate and zero tolerance for self evaluation, or
even honest observation, feeding the delusional exceptionalism and patriotism our
politicians pander to, as ugly when the nazis practiced it as it is coming out of Trump's
pie hole, or dripping from War Queen Hillary's polished, silver tongue.  as if this binary,
"us versus them" propaganda doesn't furnish wars with willing fodder, and can't be
aimed at any ethnic, or vaguely discernible, "different" group the corporate planners
of empire, their media mouthpieces, fatuous clowns or folksy presidents shake their
sticks at.  just ask one of the four million used-to-be Asians, those impoverished farmers
with their devalued families full of fragile toddlers, fractious teens, and frail elders
that we've "taken out" during the last fifty years.  or one of the guests at all those
wedding parties.  oh wait, you can't.  many of them couldn't even be identified.
well, you can take our "freedom protectors'" word for it – they were all bad people.
"gooks" and other, equally effective epithets, easily inserted in the "bad guy" slot.
of course, that's only a rough estimate.  we left off counting their corpses when our
journalists climbed into bed with our hired guns.  it's too much work identifying all those
fragments and charred remains, and why bother, when such unimportant lives from
Obama's "inessential" nations don't even merit inclusion in Washington's Community
of Subdued Colonies, or notches on Mr. Heston's gunbelt, a suitably phallic memento
of the non-stop propaganda he churned out all those years in his sterling and exemplary
service for the war industry, before the advent of video games rendered his inculcation
of impressionable, insecure youth redundant.  let's go kill us some more of them
"bad people" now.  (just tell me who they are).

- Evan Hawthorn, the 28^th of November, 2015

I Stand with France's Victims (rueful musings on the loss of humanity)

the failure of Americans to recognise their fellow human beings wears out my fondness

for them.  harmless innocents going about their business are incessantly killed in our
name.  hapless bystanders, patriots of 'other' nations, children playing on a beach,
entire wedding parties, rebellious souls who look their oppressors in the eye,
architects, musicians, dishwashers, and journalists.  even nurses and doctors.  it is
long-standing US policy to have drones return after a precise interval, so the rescue
workers can be killed.  27 out of every 28 drone victims just happened to be in the
vicinity, and virtually every intended victim has been reported killed on multiple
occasions, rendering a lethal math unfathomable even to the grim reaper.  our
'special forces' do their lightening raids in places we'll never even hear about,
since their activities are immune to oversight.  but you can rest assured that right
at this moment they are filling children's hearts with terror somewhere in the world,
as they knock down doors and round up family members in the middle of the night.
that is what they do.  when they're not training others to do it for them.  and
there's no dearth of oil-soaked, despotic deputies and sadistic acolytes, eager to
spread the reach of our torture techniques and nightmarish devices to the ends
of the earth.  indeed, since Columbus first bumped into Hispaniola, entire language
families have disappeared, thanks to the practiced brutality of the scions of Europe,
as they enslaved their hosts and righteously accumulated their ill-gotten gains,
repackaged as deserved, granted by god 'prosperity'.

now ten dozen people have been killed in Paris, and everyone in America is 'standing
with France'.  but who amoung us stands with the victims of France?  were none of
these darker skinned, "ethnic" relations precious beings with lessons to teach and
lives left to touch?  since we kill so many without even blinking, on and on, year
after year, speaking about it in terms of wasted expense, of political manoeuvrings,
of boots on the ground, and how many soldiers we lost in the act of killing them,
we must not believe they're actually human, must we?  what can be their worth if
millions of their deaths can go by uncounted, almost unnoticed, dwarfed by the
emotion stirred up by this single outbreak of violence?  if the senseless killing of
innocents is so upsetting to Americans, but only when it happens to ourselves or
our pale-skinned cohorts, in other words, one percent of the time, just what are

these vaunted values our leaders so brazenly claim to protect?  i'm visited by
visions of German citizens in the nineteen forties, mourning some calamity arranged
by the French resistance and i think, how could anyone feel solidarity for such a
heartless, self-focused people?

of course, French citizens are not responsible for the violence their ruling class,
seemingly unable to let go of its colonial 'interests', inflicts on North Africa and
the Middle East.  corporate-owned 'Democracy', as everyone knows, is too hollow
a shell to effect actual policy change.  but neither are the people residing in any
of the countries whose right to govern we have usurped responsible for the actions
of 19 Saudi bombers.  or the still bleeding tragedy in France.  if anything, they
are less responsible, given the fact that their rulers don't even pretend to be
democratic.  but terrorists, like western governments, hold citizens accountable

for the actions of a few, or even for a single individual.  thus entire villages of
native Americans were wiped out over the death of a white man's cow.   thus
went hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, and the Southeast Asians in their millions.
thus Afghanistan, and then Iraq, were bludgeoned into the stone age without
provocation.  yet we blithely support our storm troopers, and the pitiless
fundamentalists our war mongers arm and then disavow, as they "protect" our
fragile, neurotic "freedom" by presumptively and brutally invading destitute
nations that did us no harm, ringing up astronomical profits, destroying entire
societies, tearing up every last vestige of civility, every promise of improved
lives for their children, every remnant of lingering, latent hope.  damaging even
the air they breathe, and the genes they manage to pass on.

if you feel compelled to stand with France today, but can't find it in yourself
to rise up in unremitting fury against the ceaseless slaughter of the hapless
children of a lesser god, pigmented and unprofitable as she is doubtless likely
to be, if you can find it in yourself to feel for these few, stolen souls but
turn the page on the countless, irredeemable loss that relentlessly piles up
every day of our lives, please be up front about it and don a white sheet.

- Evan Hawthorn, the 14^th of November, 2015

.

Mock's Recovery (an excerpt from my novella-poem, "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons")

Sylvana was sewing Mock's severed shreds,

coaxing his wounds in the manner Guanyin taught her

with the wandering stitches she'd handed down

from the Man in the Moon's transvestite daughter.

sprinkling his skin with an elixir of herbs

she released the fever in sweltering streams,

and sealing her charms with susurration

dissolved the delirium reeling from his dreams.

"do you think he can travel?" inquired Sappy

peeping anxiously over her shoulder,

whilst wrapping ropes round ripped apart satchels

and piling them up in the lee of a boulder.

"he'll float with Chester.  and don't start fretting.

i give you my word he's entirely benign.

can you hand me my wriggling sack of stitches?

it's over there next to that creeping vine."

Sappy pursued her bobbing directions

to the spry, slinking tendrils of unattached greens.

it wasn't a vine but one of Mock's crutches

spurting like it sprouted from Jack's magic beans.

leaves were unfolding with unstilted grace

while his face was a study in consummate shock.

"Nate carved those out of dead, fallen branches.

they were properly staid when we gave them to Mock."

as they stared at the staves in wide-eyed wonder,

the furthest thrusting sprig arrived at Mock's toes,

and seeming to be pleased with this achievement

left off its flailing and acquired repose.

they stood transfixed in pools of stranded light,

sifting and slanting through the sloped, sunken barrow,

till Nate passed the portal of staggered stones

in the company of the catering sparrow.

"your friends have turned up with Rashful and the twins.

they're wanting to know when we're planning to leave.

if we start anon and stay out of trouble

we'll be at the spookhouse for Aethelwort's Eve."

Sappy was moved by this tender echo

of Pally’s spirited endearment for their home,

and deeming that Nate could do with distraction,

pointed at the lumber stemming through the loam.

the woodsman was baffled at what he beheld

for Mock was cocooned in a latticework bed,

cushioned on a bower of shuffling leaves

while stalks were entwining beneath his dozing head.

but cottoning on to what he’d been seeing

when his carpenter’s mark went sidling by,

he was seized by a sudden access of angst

and was quite at a loss to comprehend why.

the hedging awareness of a sun-drenched bench

lurked in the menace of a brandishing club.

yet the scent of a pipe and a keen sense of loss

nearly occluded the memory’s nub.

Sylvana flashed apprehension to Sappy,

suggesting that Nate be nudged from this muddle.

“let’s see how Chester’s getting on” she proposed,

then linked up their arms to hinder rebuttal.

but her efforts were bested by the sparrow

pivoting focus with imperative cheeps

to the transplanting plants tagging along,

their rummaging roots never tarrying for keeps.

"this is rather unsettling" said Sappy.

"though Mock's conveyance is seemingly decided.

they certainly are a determined lot.

when we stepped in their way, they simply divided."

Nate jumped as the sparrow twittered on his shoulder

and strained the frayed reins of temporal drift.

but tuned back in to tangible tangents,
he led his companions to the cleft in the cliff.

*******************************************
- Evan Hawthorn, the 29^th of October, 2015

Portal to a Senseless Dimension

in this rather extended excerpt from my novella-poem "Sludge White and the
Seven Curmudgeons", the friends gather for a holiday dinner at the spookhouse
in the woods, and join Guanyin's circle as the blind hedge witch (who raised
Sylvana) attempts to wrest Gramps, Lumpy, and Pally from the clutches of the
shape shifting shade in the senseless dimension.
********************************************

Mock was the last to reach the crowded table

thanks to the pace of his shuffling, rustling gate,
his organic crutches readily appending
to the well-drenched framework wedged next to Nate.

a hybrid species had come into being
a sardonic wit slinging slithering shoots,
an animated green man sprung from his scaffold
and rambling about on rummaging roots.
sensitive tendrils evolved into clothing,
a mossy fabric that covered awkward spots,
where extremities lived in memory
ensnaring tactless eyes and tying tongues in knots.

a place was reserved on the table for Squint
heaped with roasted chestnuts Rashful had prepared.
someone brought the otter a fishy saucer
for his motor skills were patently impaired.
Elsbeth coasted in through an open window
regally bristling and resplendently spruced,
the dinner guest of Sable and the sparrow
merrily ensconced on their mantelpiece roost.

Chester's slim detachment had taken a detour

which the glimrin had been loath to explain.

but Guanyin seemed to foresee this, saying

"the wind will tote them in, just prior to the rain."

from her seat by Weepy she pitched her voice

sailing past laughter and the minstrel's silver trill.

"i invite you all to join me by the fire

once thirsts are sated and you've had your fill.

the currents of change may adeptly be tapped

where blithe spirits and buoyant humours abound.

this feels like a night for opening windows,

for stretching out space so the lost can be found."

before her words had a chance to sink in

or Weepy and the bard could pry their eyes apart,

an ear-splitting squawk shattered the ambience

shredding the air like an atom-splicing dart.

Rashful had barely pulled open the door

when Mary made her entrance in a sizzling din,

funereal cowl eternally flapping

and sea-green visage rippling in a grin.

"why, the little gnomes are having dinner!

my, but time flies!  is it Aethelwort's already?

don't anyone get up on our account.

convivial mortals tend to be unsteady.

i see you’ve got guests.  Mercy! it's thou in the flesh!

i read your message.  naturally i'm here.

i thought that sparkling arbor had your touch.

such an apt setting for the shining one's bier."

she glanced through the doorway and rolled her stark eyes

as skeletal fingers curled around the jamb.

then a timorous skull abruptly appeared

shivering dread like a sacrificial lamb.

"pardon my presumption, but Solomon's in tow.

he didn't have anything on now.

i'll never forget how Anastasia dug him

back in her days as a commoner cow."

she let loose a lethal, piercing guffaw

and the monkey's paws covered his cowering head.

"the three of us are bound to stir up something.

perhaps, if we're lucky, we'll wake up the dead!"

Guanyin chuckled as she smoothed the monkey's fur,

and passing him to Weepy, rose to her feet.

"your presence is a great relief, my dear.

and Solomon's always an existential treat."

still on the prowl for his nimble nemesis

the skeleton hearkened to muffled squeals.

and then the watchrug weaved itself about him
wagging its tassels and tugging at his heels.

the birds dispersed as the mammals ambled in

like reticent mirrors of wakening grace,

their voices hushed and their heartbeats hastening

sensing a resonant, inhabited space.

the monkey made the rounds, handing out candles

dipped in deep amethyst and scented with sage.

then Guanyin invoked a blue-white brilliance,

a flaming intelligence of prodigious age.

cupped in her hands his countenance flickered

emitting tinted wisps of dancing, molten glass,

as the two of them murmured in rustling tones

like intimate breezes in a sea of grass.

everyone in turn was brushed by the flame

yielding to a summons they did not understand.

but seeing the tapers sparking around them

they knew they were links in a luminous stand.

the entity retired, ascending an arc

trailing falls of incandescent splashes

that lingered above their upturned faces

dampening cheeks with the blink of dewy lashes,

condensing in droplets of myriad colors

and drifting down like atmospheric tears,

diffusing the singular impression

that kernels of wisdom had whistled past their ears.

Guanyin raised an arm, divining the ceiling

proceeding to sketch a conjectural square,

a liquid light remnant tracing her motions

in pendent echoes igniting in the air,

etching a window of shimmering emerald

cutting a swath almost reaching the floor;

framing a sash for glimpsing dimension,

collapsing the hasp on a transcendental door.

billowing black shadows instantly emerged

obscuring the portal in an opaque haze,

like inky camouflage masking a mollusk

spewing smoke faster than a furious blaze;

a devouring darkness rarely observed

in cloudiest night or loneliest distance,

an emptiness scaling a restless abyss

to snuff out trust in external existence.

the Stygian substance swiftly blotted out

the last illumined specks that strayed in its way,

as if a black hole was trolling the window

voraciously searching for radiant prey.

the banshee glided into the chaos

screeching with abandon, making everyone duck,

puffing a stream of searing, seething steam

that shriveled up the margins of tenebrous muck.

Guanyin paused, apparently listening.

but her lips unravelled an inaudible spell.

the fluorescent green took on a pearly sheen

laying on the layers of a lacquered shell.

then fresh light filtered through her fanned out palms

as Mary popped out and the mantle divided.

the portal shuddered, flashing like a pulsar
and the ravenous thrust promptly subsided.
***************************************

- Evan Hawthorn, the 29^th of October, 2015