<<<<<<<<< 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