<<<<<<<<< the chorus of unsung multitudes >>>>>>>>> (a psalm for swaying palms)

preserved on
coloured slips,
identities crumple
as fragile
memories fade.

yet the parchment
renders
its tendering of ghosts.

for Muhanad Shawki
(entreating his genie "i want to get out
of the hospital")

and Faiza Amir
(in a final portrait by her brother),

shorn of
ragged flesh
and unrequited dreams

have taken their
required, expiring places

in the chorus of
unsung multitudes

that burdens
the bitter wind

where cumulus echoes
of the briefest
of sojourns

surfing fraught waves
of arrogant indifference,

coalesce in
swelling knells
of a contra crescendo,

convening
a collateral choir;

delving the dissonance
of discarded
discordance

from the unseen victims
of America's
abhorrence

for other people's children.

*

the Iraqi section alone
boasts
half a million

falsetto voce
silences

sanctioned by
sanctimonious glee.

a worthy
shoring up
of those
numbing,
numberless legions

the previous
administration
decided to
stop counting.

for shaded
and graded
unexceptional folk,

clearly unintended
for voting booths,

have all been
redistricted

by protection racket dockets,

broken headlights
and itty-bitty rockets,

and regime-change's
jingling,
misappropriated pockets

to eternal
global
battlefields,

custom-fitted
for evisceration

in Hollywood's
patriotic arias
of popcorn pimping
pyro-technique

where Luke and Leia's
film-at-eleven
laser lynchings,
freedom fireworks,
and flimflam glam

are eked out
by the silencers'
boundless rounds
of derivative
racist recitative

in aid
of skulking raids
haunting
the nightingale's
woebegone night,

riddled as it is
by curious beams,

bed-wetting tykes
and their
terrified screams,

and special forced heroics

from the tricked out
baggage
of civilizing themes;

all part and parcel
of our
all consuming,
profit blooming,
humanity entombing

hell on earth arsenal

with which we level

the bridled
margins

of right-sidled
history.

*

in a surreal twist
to the relentless
plaguing

of Babylon's
hounded for centuries
progeny,

stretching the
industrial,
iron clad
scope creep

of proportionless
pride
in the progress
of pilgrims
in a pirate's parade

and Christendom's
reflectionless
crimson crusade

comes the gift that
keeps on giving,

the especial reward
for effective independence,

left by an
unprecedented,
preternatural pounding

snuffing out
whole neighborhoods'
courageous resistance,

flattening
the unfolding
city of Fallujah

where depleted uranium
and white phosphorus
have raised infant mortality,
cancer,
leukemia,
and birth defects

to rates far exceeding
anything ever seen,

even in the fallout
from that other
exotic Asian
littlest angel
recruitment scheme

radiating from
the good old days
of glory's gory yore

that turned out
hundreds of thousands of lights

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

drowning our
collective
unconscious karma

in the self-extolling,
binary-poling,
dearth of the
desert-doling,

myopic and priapic
god of destruction's,

insurmountable
and unapproachable,

unmentionable
and unquenchable,

unimpeachable
and unbeseechable,

undented,
unrepented,
and barely even vented,

utterly irredeemable debt.

* ***** * ******* * ******* * ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 26^th of March, 2018

(another posting hosting Mr. Fish)

and just when i thought he couldn't possibly
make me laugh harder
or admire his muse more,

Mr. Fish gives us this:

Jack the Ripper's broken mirror * (a dreamtime meme from the Cheshire Cat's other brother) *

how perfectly
their bent pretense

conforms with that
rugged,
law deriding
legacy

consistently evinced
by America's perverse
terminally rehearsed

incessantly tensed,
prehensile fenced
nonsensical sense of "Defense".

the exact trajectory
Malice in Plunderland's
vainglorious looking glass
would seem to suggest

works best

for aiming cameras
and tailoring verse,

focusing illusion
on outcome's inverse;

the artful deflection
at profit's behest

unpinning the hearse
from the tax vipers' nest

of the vested interests'
incorporated purse.

'tis but the Mad Hatter's
Freudian infection

of reverse-vectored
charnel,
and funhouse
projection,

the diversionary
formulary
of the Times and the Post

recommended by
17 of 17
proliferating,
mushrooming,
eavesdropping squads

of tinkers, assassins,
and body snatching pods

so endearing to
gullible 'resisters',
McCarthy's inquisitors,
and the 'liberal' Masters of War

as featured
in the premiere issue
of the Queen of Hearts'
Stolen Tarts
mother of distraction
fact redacting handbook,

the regime-change quarterly
for the planners and fanners
of Debilitating Duopoly,
"Homeland" Monopoly,
and all the other

fakers and stakers
in that border hoarding,
independence-thwarting,
culpability-distorting,
apple pie in a pig's eye
do unto others
industry

shining from its gentrified,
coloured-coded
dungheap
on that lesser-ogled
and sickly
off-green hill.

*

this directional
deception
intercepting
perception

is discernible in every facet

the myopia-manacled,
maniacal-monocled,
machocidal beacon's
buffed and cuffed,
karma-curdled culture produces

like a cancerous
omnicidal DNA
rotting all the
whitewashed structures
that normalize gore

to their privilege-glossed,
fear-embossed,
exception-ridden core;

from the March Hare's
errant blaring
on arrogated airwaves

that eveready terror
perpetually mounting
its remunerating wares

to those fan-faired,
intelligence impaired
feel good affairs

scaring up
werebears
and copycat scares;

from that obsessive
idée fixe of "foreign relations"

a whack-a-mole
high tech hammer
from Felix's self-absorbing
patriotic bag
of stick waving pricks

to the endless regurgitation
of superfluous 'crime' dramas,
exterminating
demonized extras
till the next commercial break;

from genocidal idols
in Western bromance bromides
evaporating vinyl indians
in the venerated vintage
vaults of assault

to Superpower wowers
of pitiless and posable, 
cookie cutter Heroes
in those monochrome fixations
and "fantasy" flicks;

from the pentagon paragon
persecution complex
where United Nations notions
get nullified and nixed

to those alzheimer-riddling
"history" books,
discovery coquetries,
and pbs pampering pimps

where propaganda potions
for good-intentioned
conventions and convictions
are mixed;

from its suicidal lineup
of sacrificial soldiers

and We the People holdup
of Commons-snuffing budgets

hooked through
banked and planked,
plaqued and flacked
bipartisan arteries
and m(isl)edia IVs

to the protection racket's
expanding scaffolding
of erectile enhancement,
"full spectrum dominance",

and all the other
fictionalized trappings
and blowback bric-a-brac
of proportional dysfunction.

all fashionable and actionable,
recognisable ramblings
of the same psychotic,
life-extincting
unravelling thread

that ripples warping nightmares
in the weave of spreading dread

smothering the future
in the beacon's unmade bed

where zombies in shackles
arrive in freedom's stead

shunted like rats
in the sleepwalking ruts
of coercion's undead tread.

*

alas! Jack the Ripper!

if only vulnerability
didn't float your boat

and wee willy syndrome
wasn't yanking on your goat

you could finally stop seeing
those limitless
helpless victims

bobbing in
your trademarked
'protecting freedom' nets

as bottom bleeding

weeding
embarrassments,

resurfacing as threats.

* ***** * ******* * ******* * ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 7^th of March, 2018

the lethal ism of the founding fathers (a psalm in search of comprehension)

 "our policies will never be based on claims to exceptionalism.  we protect our interests

  and respect the interests of other countries.  we observe international law and believe

  in the inviolable central role of the UN."

          - Vladimir Putin (from his recent speech, so at odds with the State of the Union

             precedent set by America's pantheon of exception pandering presidents.)

*

i wonder

if those proud primates

clothed in the rumoured,

pleated conceit

of the emperor's Americans

will ever be able to see

that it's their
very own

homegrown protectorate,

invested with the sacred

defining narrative

of threatened escalation

and proliferating myth

(the incorporated owners

of obliquely reeking,

cancerous cliques,

those emanations of irresponsibility

supremely deemed

to exclusively matter,

with their tank-cranking 'think' tanks

and vetted, indebted,

manicured batches

of distractfully bickering

racketeering bitches,

that lavishly remunerated

rotting lot

of identity framing,

flame retarding,

blame projecting,

binary blindering,

memory weeding,

screed feeding misleaders;

mainstreamed and laymansplained

by the deigning of dukes

and vicarious viscounts

at the Times & the Post;

those savvy automatic, self-censoring satraps

with seats on every hoarding board

that reaps reward

from whoring high-tech swords,

and all the other

knighted abettors,

pruning speeches,

grooming leeches

and listening at doors),

far better than any

of their

pitched and stitched,

cast and plastered monsters,

who insist on consistently

emulating Nazis.

*

for without their bullying,
preeminent example

of lesser, blessed,

and protectively dressed

vengeful,

'necessary' evil,

their Saudi, Israeli, & Al Qaeda allies;

(that myopic camel-lodged tryclops

of Abraham's extremist bedfellows)

and the g [for grasping] seven,

(the sunset sibling sorority

of paling colonial collaborators)

might slip from their

corralling,

corroborating sway,

putting those haunted

blatantly racist,

exceptional horns away.

for 'tis only

We-the-Mesmerized,

Insecured-People;

the squatters of distraction

on compassion's

stinted dearth

of stolen homeland,

with their divinely minted denial,

patrolling injustice,

and hallucinations of envy;

lulled by the

unreflecting

imprisoned prism

of freedom's

vain illusions;

at the trickling and teaming,

red, white & blue

tribal beck & call

of Profit's preying demons

who must

rouse ourselves

to find

all of

ourselves

and,

finally discover

in the freeing

forgiveness

such newfound contact

with inclusiveness

would naturally incur

our very first inkling

of civilizing,

humanity-valuing,

liberated

by its own

illuminating

borderlessness,

actually factual,

functioning

Democracy.

*

(for without that

hypothetical

link with
longed for sanity

and berth for living worth,

of thee i cannot

honestly

bring myself to sing.)

* * ******* * ******* * ******* * ******* * ******* * *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 2^nd of March, 2018

a setting of colours

though i always knew
how the white made the blue

'twas blinded, me
but now i see

from whence the red still runs.