tidings abiding the wintry night

our soul betides the earthenhome and beats within the fray
whence sin's disconnecting breach wrought fear's begotten sway;
thus every spark can find the voice that truth puts in its way,
a facet of our harmony, bespoke from heaven's ray;
for hearts were born to sing of love on every blessed day.
*

<>>> "study terror no more" <<<> (the unbearable offense of that impenetrably dense fencing of defensive pretense)

every day it oozes
from the relentless fabric of profit

where mercy's fallen angels
are run through their phases

desensitized
to dehumanized faces

drained of recognition,
scraped of scruples,
and robbed of any context

all tidily effaced
by that pitiless masque

that pirouettes and plummets
in karma's
downhill race

where absence is construed
as courage.

and thus the Empire's
cropping of heroes

are unconsciously born.

and the stormtroopers
keep marching in.

and treason-deafened reason
regurgitates its din.

with each anxious moon
it submerges every tide
for it simply can't abide

the birds' revised apprising
of the rising of the sun.

*

pervasively invasive
as a sixties'
sitcom jingle

that distinctly American
fortification
of arrogant and ignorant
indolent spin

channels an alpha revision

of the pale tribe's
exceptional,
indispensable cannon

of indifference-dyed,
self-satisfied,
manifestly justified,
piracy-indemnified
genocidal lies

religiously scried
in the groundless impounding
of boundless
misappropriated skies.

*

that conscripting of addiction
never ceases

on every homing,
humming screen
and plugging in device,

a repackaged fix
of the sold-out resumption

of the "protection" racket's

reflexive consumption of racist presumption

conflicting the bruises
of that purple banded
binary branded
pandered pandemic of patriotism

through its rotary relay
of progressive-hued blues
and rouge colluding ruses

on blindered "good guy" eyes

distracted by the sties
the media supplies

redacting any knowledge
that history has died

leaving its accusing cries
in craters miles wide.

*

"those 800 military bases are protecting us."

"filled with good intentions, we're humanity's last hope."

"they hate us for our freedom."

inhaled since birth,
veiled and unassailed

as if it was
somebody's culture.

yet every fleeting hour
a living
conscience pries

the dawn's departing veteran

with staring, starless eyes

from the unlivable rupture of uninhabitable space

where grace has been displaced

unnoticed and unheeded

in the traces love had seeded

of humanity's chance
to embrace
its given stance

in its only trodden mother's
raceless and borderless future.

* ***** * **** * ******* * **** * ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 17^th of December, 2017

(that bright night in Guatemala)

'twas the brightest of nights in Guatemala
when El Volcán de Fuego finally lost his cool
over great grandpappy Saturn's
unrelenting insinuations,
erupting in a fiery retort,
peeking and leaking from his
piqued, oblique peak.

a passing posse of effusive water droplets,
resolved to chill the stressed out atmosphere
with a collective instilling of will,
huddled in a curdling, crayola corona,
wrought on the rays of
diffracted distraction
haunting the air round the reticent moon.

and all to entertain a spirited assembly of spinach.

amidst the pall of that stalling fall, another crack appears (to disconcert the wall)

the meme said his cousin
died in prison
for selling weed
within saturated folds;

a long-stemmed
blossoming
in a wrinkling, ebony rim.

and sorely dazed
by the absentia of justice
in the starless midnight
of America's dementia

he blazed his dismay
at the phased-in
heaped-on praise

for that recent craze
of pale-faced suppliers
haloed in the haze
of mushrooming
marijuana start-ups.

and though it barely dented
the blurting blurring
of venting invective din

that roles from droll scrolls
trolling the invention
of the virtual viral den

i thought i heard a crack

a hacking into
the shilling shellac

the faintest 
unravelling
of that
one size fits all,
indoor/outdoor
compartmentalized carpet

woven entirely
from the narrative figments
of magical thinking

the propellers of fiction
and compellers of friction

inject in their vested
collective clueless veil.

thus i took it
for an
existential haunting

curling the rarified parchment
of a phantasmagorical
allegorical wall

unfaithfully following
manifested destiny's
pratfalls and stalls

on that
humanity-impaling
objectivized path

of self-fulfilling
disconnection's

original sin

and its suicidal fall.

a poignant reminder
that the clown of distraction,

that Buffoon of Oz
tweeting from behind
his surface scraping
bellicose borders

is but the
fog-shrouding tip
of a stealthy and selective

divisive-delving,
compassion-shelving,
compulsively-selving,
calamity-calving iceberg;

a descending conceit
of time-honoured deceit
inheriting its
colonial
sewn-in discord

from the original pirates'
presumptuous
hoarding starry core

(that sainted society
of anti-social structures)

a multi-pained
patched-in patina
of myth-induced
internal palings

instilled by a
chilling
invention of whiteness,

obscured by the m(isl)edia's
blindered defractions,

forever lurking
in the name of the "security"
of the Powers
that Own

(since no other perspective
could possibly endure
such profit-honing vision)

eternally shoring up
their threat-doling,
demon-foaling,
petrol-patrolling,
democracy-extolling stolen homeland

lest (the spuriously secured,
pigmentially-dearthed,
well-nigh-unearthed,
pride of euro-birth
led to believe they're) We the People

should at long last trample

the dense
fenced
defense

of their
"sole indispensable"

"exceptional"

"us".

* **** * **** * ******* * **** * **** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 1st of December, 2017

outsightful sighting

sighted past the fray
the insightful Milky Way

sets that limiting devotion
to those nation-staking potions

and our stationary notions
all at naught.

*)(* the posing of a broken dish proffered by Mr. Fish *)(*)(* (a psalm for Thanksgiving's mourning)

and verily one asks
how such a
so long silenced
rebellious ringing dirge

tolling at last
for that unfathomed
righteous litany
of lost and shattered
unmattering worlds

inhabiting a channelling
collective keening voice,
indivisible of spirit

that hearkens
for the revenant
resonance
of unrequited truth

can ever again hold its weeping tongue

*

when even now
the coiffed and scripted,
vetted and indebted,
conscience-unembedded,
zombie army
of corporate operatives

manning
the right side of history's
embezzlement-bristled,
theocracy-thistled,
immaculate infrastructure
of Western impunity

with its lavish stable
of enabling fable;

that privilege-bedangled,
star-spangle-angled,
confirming firmament;

that regal dispensation
of honesty dispensement
and its knowing
recompense;

that black hole of redaction
spiraled by a binary
circus of distraction;

the denial-filed, guile-styled,
air wave-curbing,
verbiage-blurring,
proportion-interring,
wrath-of-god-incurring,
demon-inferring,
regime-murdering media

and those flippant
conning coins
twirling
in the Apparency
of Democracy's
brittle twilight

the incessant hurling spin
of the pleasant sounding
or simply astounding
pubescence abounding,

profoundly blind
to irony's drowning,

wholly-owned subsidiary
fracturing factions
of finagling,
fact-strangling,
stone-bleeding amnesiacs
and brokered, photo-op asses

are all of them
still marching
to the well-hung tune
of capital's
sole essential
Frankenstein monarchy
of bomb bursting
billionaire brigands

barfing brazen brands
with a barking braggadocio
in their pious
and pitiless
pirate's parade

decked out in America's
unquestioned tradition
of patriotic-opticked,
irretrievably racist,
scandalously panderous,

intelligence-proof
and election-immune,
invincible
lockstep conformity

(sewn from the same
remorseless garment
that early in its infancy
fabricated whiteness)

colour coding
expendable skulls
so the
lobbied embodiment
of profit assuring,
terror immuring,
independence obscuring
storm troopers;

the armed to the teeth
fell quelling shell
of the Empire's New Clothes;

that perfect protection racket
of mythos-dosed,
Hollywood-idolled,
export-import
heroes and cops

can add to their staggering pile.

*****

and so the bell tolls

for the untold millions
pooling in their
numberless,
overlooked fisheries;

for the collateral
colonial cattle
in that selective,
elective Father's

utterly forsaken folds;

unnamed and uncounted,
the fragmentary hosts
of our
temporary dust

resounding
and collecting
in those lonely
yearning harbours

that ache
within the
Commons of our Souls.

* **** * **** * ******* * **** * **** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 26^th of November, 2017

so the Cheshire Cat sent me a postcard

so the Cheshire Cat sent me a postcard, from Bursa, Turkey, where he's
gadding about in a cute, triangular formation with his peeps, Jupiter (top)
and Venus (bottom).  that's probably too much information about what puts
the twinkle in those peripatetic eyes, but it wasn't entirely unexpected.
besides, that lazy, phasey, way-crazy cat is nothing if not curious.
and, travelling light, he forgot to pack his blush.

a Comment on Cross Purposes to Usher In + + + + + + + the Left Side of History's Equivocal Day

Pope Francis says nuclear weapons

"exist in the service

of a mentality of fear

that affects

not only the parties in conflict

but the entire human race."

he goes on to suggest

"international relations

cannot be held

captive

to military force,

mutual intimidation,
and the parading of stockpiles of arms."

though that tidily stuffs

the Bombs R Us beacon
in its bipolar nutshell,

seventy two belligerent years
of relentless bullying
posed as foreign policy
would seem to prove that,

without a timorous shadow

of fleeting, bipartisan doubt

"yes, they can!"

me, i'm on pins and needles
just waiting to find out

which pair of

lavishly financed ghouls

will be vetted by the
court-upholstered
citizen oligarchs'
exponential obscenity

of leering and pitiless

legerdemain

(in light of farcical,
paranoid flights,
the independence-thwarting
of spiteful plights,
and the unrequited misery

those unreserved trillions are surely preserving.)

which unsparing paring
of divinely tragic masques

will go entirely, eye-poppingly,

preposterously unpondered

(in light of the abdicated media's

preternatural insistence

on tethering observance
to an absence of substance.)

which grifted drafts

of personality-craft

amidst that deftly gifted,

sifted savvy chaff
will shift the shtick
that sticks it to the stiffs

(in light of the

rigorous precedent

of a grafted and scripted

encrypting of shafts.)

which blithe proponents

of "exceptional" and "indispensable"

pandering pith
will win the honour
of dictating the myths
that dander up the patriotic
hapless masses

(in light of all the millions
of benighted, uncited corpses

that must abide our 'good intentions'.)

which practical acolytes
of thinking-cap-napping,
reason-ellipting,

alternative-eclipsing,
reflection-indicting

and possibility-blighting
will get to cloak
the oil-soaked wicks

(in light of that

greed-sanctioned man-date
consuming the earth

with its hemmed in dearth.)

in short,

which dutifully demonizing,
duopoly-propped duo
of pirate-inspiring,
privilege-pillaging,
ignorance-tilling,
division-instilling,

honesty-smiting,

denial-alighting,

vilely beguiling

lawless war criminals

will the cringless lords
of unhinged profit
arrange for our next

glossy concocting

of binary-blindered,

hocus-focused

one-way menus
in 2020

(which is destined to be
a humdinger of a year,

given that irony
already has its number.)
* **** * **** * **** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 11^th of November, 2017

that day that reminds us
there's never been an 'armistice' yet

that could quell the swelling
profit-splurging urges

of "humanity's last hope",

that last gasp morass

of moral-less leaders

long enough to filter

from freedom's choking air

the guilt-ridden silt
drifting in the ache

of misappropriated homelands

and mingling with
the soulful dirge
of disremembered hosts.

for America's saints
are its unnamed haints,
those holy
and uncounted,
unredusted ghosts.

and until we've heard their
silenced cries,

until we've wept for their
banished dreams
and vanished children,

until we've deciphered
the grains of trust
once tendered in the fragile cracks
of extended,
unrecognised hands

they can never abstain
from that tainted refrain
of unwaining
unspeakable pain

that stains
the abandonment
remembered by the rain

and forever drains
in our staked and quaking

torturous rivers

of promise-squandered blood.

it's a wonder that Americans
can bear to live with
the concept of
memory
at all.)

psalm to splinter the profit's stigmata

(a kneaded arising of spontaneous soliloquy;
an apostrophe salting an unrelenting, reasonless season)



and the wholly owned subsidiary donkeys sing,
braying that good old fashioned
rushin' "aggression"

the kind that ricochets on automatic
to bristle on its own
noose-encrusted,
ruse-rusted,
suicidal borders

yet, ever so adroitly,
in that distinctly American
inverse perfection
of deflecting projection

leaves the demented beacon's
denial-dented walls,
guilt-sluicing stalls,
and self-inflating halls
curiously bereft,

forced to resort
to their lore of distortions,
to borderless hoarding
and sporting and whoring,
and the mindless bore
of all that endless scoring

that seeps into pores
like a pornographic sore
from their piped-in
dreams of distraction.

and the chorus bleats on,
"everyone hates us
for the reek of our
freedom™."

tuning in that omnipresent
patriotic drip
with its alzheimer's refrain
that smooths haltered consciences
and smothers sodden souls

jingoist jingles mingle
on the Common's
stolen airwaves

dumbing the benumbed
bipartisan zombies
while turning their victims
into demons.

hence the "right side" of history's
rebranded legions
of channelled resisters

on finding themselves
strangely embedded
to blithe battalions
of perjurers, assassins, and spies,
redacters of record,
MakeOurDay groupies,
and trooping fallen angels

awaken into nightmares
and load their "freedom" guns.

i can't help hearing
in Moose and Squirrel's
binary-blindered
moldy-oldie
re-animation

the half-remembered ring
of independence-staining,
dissent-restraining,
proportion and motivation
abstaining and disdaining,
reason-drained,
gain-enchained strains

that familiar and delusional,
bullying echo
of the neo-persecuted
paleo-pale

hugging their threatened privilege
to persecute at will.

(that is,
at the preternaturally presumptuous
sole indiscretion

of that rare and
'indispensable'
incorporated will

wrought entirely
from the wreckage
of humanity's dearth

writhing in its profit-soaked cloak
of dominance-stroking,
defense-provoking,
treason-invoking,
equality-choking,
future-revoking,
bespoken,
brokered interests;

those quarterly compounding,
eternity confounding,
calamitous interests

betiding our undoing,
damning without recourse
to hand baskets or oars.)

by all means, Ms. Pelosi,
let's
"defend™
the "integrity"
of "our" country's
democracy™."

but oughtn't we try to find it first?

* * ******* * ******* * ******* * ******* * ******* * *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 2^nd of November, 2017