justice (what it is and isn't); a psalm to plight requited love

and the lord
their
god of justice
said

let there be punishment.

let there be floods.

let there be
the
severing
of
wisely apportioned offspring;

chosen people

and
horror flicks,

the
suspense
of
pornography

accumulating
its
plagues.

let there be "goodness"
and
let there be "badness",

and the cold dead hands
of 
rigor mortis Moses.

let there be projection,
simplistically splicing
its binary

aligning of lightless slight,

and the repeated
beatings in

of the tear
fulfilling prospect

of fearful respect.

let there be

missing eyes
for
missing eyes.

and
above all,

ringing
in my
throne-exalting,
glory-bolted
heaven

let there be payments

for blood.

*

for did i not create
the arbiters?

did i not spoon in
the
Leviticus
and
Judges
channellings,

pimping fresh hewn widows
and
slitting children's throats
by
the
thousands?

did i shirk from Caesar's due?

did 'exception'
not
stem
from divine designs
to
thine?

and is that not
how
ye judges
of
worth

find purchase?

for what doth it profit
that
little brown boys
walk
on
paved, staved earth

in a world i bequeathed
(right from the start)
to
my
likened
usurpers?

(this, and all things in it

as far as
log jammed camels

and race-tracing,
alpha-basing
jockeys

can possibly think to see.)

*

and she said,
but
my son is dead.

and it will
never
be
better.

never.

no,
not ever.

yet the talking heads
and
wagging tongues,

the matinee idols
and
reaming streams,

and the
teaming,
seaming,

seeming of memes

are all of them thronging

for the thing
they call
justice.

for someone has to pay.

the contagion of violence
must have its sway,

begetting
replication;

carrying the day.

how else could one
justify

all that doing unto others?

Hollywood's
fanned contrivance
for
blandly empirical,

crowd pleasing
and
dependable

endings of expendables;

the itching
of ire's rash;

the
Snidely Whiplash
satisfactory
bash.

served cold or not
it's how
the
trap inlaid,
game's been played

since the fable's
first caveman
picked up a stick
and
disabled Abel.

since scarcity's
impaired cudgel
dredged the abyss,

rewinding
the entwining
of
man-unkind's
minding

inward upon itself.

since the fell tutorial
of
terror's territorial

by the sword "nations"

began
to
carve their holes

in
the
fabric
of
spirit,

in that Alzheimered,
unrecognised
warp

of universal

relative

denial.

for we must have
our
bounds

for the trolls'
tolls and mounds,

for the scrolls'
patrolling
hounds,

for the pounding
of
recalcitrant flesh.

the cult of control's
crucial hallucinogen;

its never quite
realisible goal
for
the "power"
its stole
extols;

forever enmeshed
in fission's competition;

in the endless repetition
of a curse.

the need to be right
asserting
might's plighted

"right" to coerce.

twice one
undoing its sum.

force overcome,

then force reinforced.

the aping of apes'
pursuant course.

for the scales
must have their balance.

tit must equal tat.

a slip,
then a slap.

there must
be
wrongdoers

rotting somewhere,

behind bars that can be felt

to make us feel better.

to make us feel

"us",

the designated good guys

(residers in right),

whose families
expectantly matter,

whose heroes 'off' bad guys

(or 'get them'
or
'take them out',

any entombing
euphemism will do
to distract
from the
murderers' pact.)

for as surely
as
"bad" children
are
punished

"bad guys" die.

(that's what they're there for.)

how else believe
this
"world of ours"

(the world we said he gave us)

is just?

it's in the charter.

it rights the sides of history.

dots
the
missing eyes
for
the
missing eyes.

but no one harbours
all the ghosts.

and no one hears
their cries.

*

still, crime must pay.

so the virtuous
wouldst have
their prey.

since the dawning
of self-righteous
homicidal extortion;

that forged engorging
of Christendom's
fabricated kingdoms,

(the collared peasants
firmly ditched in their
partisan rows
by a well fed inbred,
parasitic elite)

when,
in league with
the black robed religion's
"goodness"
defining henchmen,

the pale pirates
swarmed out of Europe
and
took the world
by (that perfected) storm,

someone
always
pays.

where else
did all that
"treasure"
come from?

the "developed" envelopment
"advancing" the West?

and yet,
the hauntings

never seem to set.

never.

no,
not ever.

(that's what she said.)

for now,
there's not

(can never be)

an
after.

*

and i wanted to tell her

water returns
to its source.

rising up
its
bubbles again,

holding to its course;

if you cradle
those empty arms

just so

and let your promise breathe.

not better,
no.

and never the same.

but still,
it will seed you,

find you and knead you.

for it never fails
to recognise
a grasp,

to ferret out
a foundling

that fits
within
a clasp.

for love has no name,

space
is
made of room,

and only empathy's
astonishing

sweet giftings
of
chance

can ever comfort pain.

*

yet the clamour's always there

for the slick
sickly fix.

here it comes again.
like waves
and
amber grain.

like
wicked double features
spouting heroes' bane,

staining minds
and fingers,

choking up the drain.

make those miscreants pay
(the ones not
pretty enough
to
idealize delusion.)

and while we're at it

make the authentic
"Americans" pay

(for the shadows
surrounding
"our homeland",

reminding us
of
who and what we are,

and
what we never
stop taking from them.)

make those fenced out,
belaboured,

unsavoured neighbors pay

(for painting living dreams
in
the shuttering beacon's
redistricted "backyard".)

make our Haitian cousins
eternally pay

(for that uppity
first burst
of
colourful
independence.)

make the Japanese pay

(for responding
to a taunting noose,

for attempting
to sample
the
preordained
whitewash
shining colonial tides.)

make the Greeks
and Italians pay

(for letting
care for their
neighbours'
welfare
survive their
fight with Hitler.)

make the stateless
Palestinians pay

(for refusing to die,
quietly;

the sleeping
silenced dogs
in
goodly religion's
presumptive,
misappropriated
manger.)

make the Koreans pay

(for allowing
freedom's buzz cut,
haloed and siloed flyboys
to run out of targets;

for planting all those
ghosted, drowning villages
downwind of tempting dams.)

make Southeast Asians pay

(for imagining
they could think for themselves.)

make Ho Chi Minh pay

(for believing
the declaration of independence
was
a thing.)

make the Persians pay

(for letting their
budding democracy
budge the swollen
British sunset's
stolen bottom line.)

make the Cubans pay

(for saving Angola
single-handedly
from apartheid's
grand ole'
ganged up gang;

for openhanded health care
shared so freely
with an unenveloped,
"underdeveloped" world.)

make the Nicaraguans pay

(for that
unforgivable example
of
popular leaders
improving the lives
of peasants.)

make the Afghans pay

(for befriending
Boris Bogeyman,
and letting
down
their sisters' hair.)

make the Libyans pay

(for protecting Africa
from grasping French banks
and the Obama installed
Africom death knell
of incorporated throttling.)

make the Arab republics pay

(for clogging
the baited gatings
of
World Monopoly's profit.)

and thanks to our
successive leaders' penchant
for embedding
lubricating monarchies,

supplying that
writ larger than life,
once for all time
everlasting proof
that America
doesn't actually believe
in the replete conceit
of just revenge

(when other
self appointed "defenders",
in a grim homage
to the masters,
have a go at meting it out)

make everyone on earth
pay for 9/11.

(anyway, our Saudi paramours
failed to sign that damning receipt.)

and, lest the
abdicated illiberal media
(strobing its acrobatic,
homophobic currents)
would ever let us forget,

make the latest
Russian lightning rod
for all things demonic,
Vladimir the Impaler
Putin pay

(for the rumoured
yet pointless informing
of
a deaf and dumb "democracy",

and for failing
to meekly succumb
to an unindicted,
unrequited century
of blatant intervention.)

and,
along with all his other
unwitting bitches,
treasonous toads,
and dissent spreading stooges
in our hordes of Igor spores,

in a nod to McCarthy's
Rambo-Robo resurrection
in the
Night of the Unliving Resistance
that's more a Persistence,

make my fellow
unherded electors pay

(for our distinctly
unAmerican immunity
to patriotic bullies,

and
for rattling
the
cages of myth.)

and before leaving off
this haunted jaunt
through
the unsettling unaccountings
of the ghost of historic
abandonment past,

make the fraught
independence
of womankind pay

(for the crime of turning
those worth uncertained
doughy men that matter on.)

make the uncloseted gays pay

(for baring
the scared impairment
of
cookie cuttered rutters.)

and make the
forcibly imported,
yet never made at home,
hyphenated 'they' pay

(for,
in the midst of slavery's
rabid rebranding
and unabashed
rehashing thatchery,

lighting up stars
in that starless midnight
those CIA darlings
of the 'progressive'ly repressive
mainlining misledia

killed
Martin Luther King
for
pointing out.)

*

for spangled right, dangled left,
or mangled angled mocking of "center",

broken headlights must be splattered.

drones must be timed
to
vaporize the rescue.

our wrath must bury entire cities.

and
un-beholden nations
filled with
off-white children

must sanctimoniously starve.

for sole 'SuperPowers'
cast
omnipotent glowers.

(so above and so below.)

and might
is
the "right"
that
conquers everything.

(god blessed the "news" that tells us so.)

insecurity's tottering playgrounds
are infested with fractured primates

all still trying
to
be right.

and the terror cloaked global battlefield
invests
in the deity
of
manifest destiny's

"right" to wage unbridled blight,

stoking
for
the stroke

of its plighted midnight.

*

it's not as if
anyone believes
in
redemption anymore.

locked up
(in their millions)
for
mandatory stretches,

disenfranchising ends,
and
skyrocketing dividends;

families punished
and
kept apart;

track lighted,
and
hemmed in
forever,

whilst
the righted slide
of alarmingly armed law

sends out
those prurient,
amber warnings.

it's not the black hats
or scorecards
that
single them out.

it's that no one seems to think
they've a right to justice.

(that is, it's not their "right"
to shoot at "us".)

the difference
is obvious.

bad guys
are proscribed
by
establishment scribes.

and
wrongs
are opposed
by
rights.

thus,
ne'er the twain
shall buck the train

that first came up with "white".

but
don't distract us.

don't make us wait.

for
someone has to pay.

(go ahead,
make our day.)

a surfeit of surmises,

revenge in all its guises.

make the wrong guy pay.

make him writhe in agony.

so the columns tot up.

so the stoic heroic hitman
wins the pretty
deadpan assassin
and
we can all clap.

so judgement can sit
in his
black and white heaven

and all's right
in
heart silenced night's

with us
or
against us,

flag waving,
caveman caving,
extinction paving world.

*

unflinching dark eyes
must be slashed;

unbrightened teeth
tamed or gnashed.

reflection,
without question,
hopelessly dashed.

for we
are the righteous folk.

the self-upholstered good guys.

the shallowing of days
topping
'freedom hating' nights;

a contrast of projection
for vectoring our sights.

and it's written
in neon floodlights,

we are our elders' boasts.

the god fearing hosts.

(feed us.)

we are the lord's
"essential" policemen.

his chosen enforcers,

dragging brass knuckles,

fisting nuclear arms.

(fear us.)

the commander
and chief,
sheriffs
and deputies

of wrath's angriest god.

(dare us.)

we are the just.

we are the dust
of
must.

just us.

just us.

just us.

*

one day, it is said
the son of man
will be born
in a shack

and give up his life
without any
"payment"

whatsoever

just
because
he
loves.

then,
perhaps

humanity

will
come
at
long last

through the charred,
tarring veils
of
likened smoky ardour

swirling round
a self proclaiming,
identity framing,
justifying tangle
of
fossilized,
hierarchical,
angelic armoured,
obsessively possessive,
twice blinded tribal bias
and
glorification of dominance

in
its jealous
flaming
bush

to
pour forth
wholly unexpected,

unsifted gifts

upon
this
barren
dearth.

* ***** ***** * ******* * ***** ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 23^rd of February, 2019