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.)