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.