the return of the ticking shtick, coupled with a ringing knell dispelling fell liberty's brokered bell (a triptych ecliptic)

welcome once again
to the inevitable return
of the rigged and planked,
gigged and cranked,

sinking thinktank tanked,

focus trickled,
spoked and pickled,

dividedly ladled,
proned and fickled,

foresaked
on the take,
shakily draped,

'we helped',
pride baked,
vampirically staked,

trimmed and tinselled,
tricked out pickings,

something wicked
this way drums,

preeminent ticking shtick;

the zoned twilight's

quadrennial circus
and stroked nightmare
perennial
joke on freedom;

that one-way slicked ticket,

forever gaining
a xanax rumbling,
reality tumbling,
panicking momentum

on the magic abiding
rightway slide, 

off the creeping reapers'
steeping
deepest end.

place your X
on the slotted line

where the sorted kine
cede blinder-assigned,
pre-aligned compliance.

you can choose your brand,

but policy is always

safely off limits.

two steps removed,
like a cousin from Kentucky.

given the fourth estate's
mainlined, lucre lined
and guilded,
arcaded abdication

passed off as "journalism",

this passes without comment

in the columned credit
of steadily refining
hallowed be our silos
airwave staved, dial piled wiles

all these loathsome decades

since the never cited
slight of purchased berth
hung out its awning

at public relations' dawning
of an all the time fooling,
bordering and ruling,
tool imbuing school

capping their capers
in published memoirs
of that oh! so clever
spellbound selling

to Mr. Wilson's shying,
flag styed sheep

the first of their external
sacrificial concessions
to world war lost;

the very last
plague pledged chalking
on Death stalked,
tech-extincted battlefields,

the final crop
of broken toy soldiers,
banked in their
crossed out and over
heart stopping ranks

in duty's recruited,
profit sopping,
tilled and silled
memorialised millions

before humankind's
second grand failure
opened up the cities

(and eventually,
a mind boggling litany
of destitute,
obliterated villages)

to swelling hell's
tolling for dollars
rolling incineration

where it's getting
so much easier
to lose track
of melted remnants

that recent administrations
gave up the post on ghosted hosts
and simply stopped counting.

hence it's all the rage,
in the heraldry
of decimation's
advancing modern age

to pat science and freedom's
bagged and medalled
desensitised heroes
of countrified "service"

on the blister risking
righted side of mystery's
uniformed back.

for now limitless Profit's
riddled well bred pool
of jingoistic killers,

that oil-sodden,
all mine mine,

that taxed and toxic blind

are olly olly oxen free

in the carelorn
distracted lee
of a stolen
mythical "homeland."

that astonishing
exceptionally
confined space

where an "essential" flocking stock

of "protected"
treason seasoned,
nation hooded patriots

can be persuaded to buy

elections without democracy

over and over
and over
again,

each time more averse,
more shockingly hearsed,
than the rhyme
that went before.

shut up, Tommy!

just keep strumming.

what's the matter?
aw, hell!
you don't have to hear.

just let your
fallen
out of step

functioning heart
feel
the
drone

for it rattles
even the ground,

that pod-seeded,
double headed,
firework treading,
slithery raking snake

feeding the heat's
extincting beat.

*

and lo!

looming through ominous
Orwellian foreshadows,

far ahead of its time,

what is this
recurrent fell beast?

salivating over
arched and
bloodied bosoms,

throttled throats
and
salacious tilted slits,

separated families
blown into bits
of bicentennial rust,

of othered flesh
and freedom dust

in grim Dickensian
Democrat culs-de-sac;

in the screened tv
spited light;

paving the lazing haze
of the besting West's
millennium long
crusading craze,

that moralizing daze
so nostalgically
blanketing
it's latest sanctioned
racist phase;

the progress blessed,
benevolence tressed,

gnawing
culpability redressed,

industrious obliteration
of vulnerable,

focus brokered,

made
meaningless victims.

'tis America's paraded,

fêted or fetid,

slated, faded or jaded,

pridefully anticipated,
relentlessly exacerbated,

wading and baited gateness;

never yet sated,

forever unabating;

lurking in the trappings,
the blue light specials
and dystopian gropings,

marked down
in the Trumped debasement
of the smirking and gloating
Freudian gloaming,

by those infotaining,
pleasure paining,
pretty boys and barbies,
ooh!ing and aah!ing
over beauteous sparks

(in blank and fawning
rights blinded sights)

laying in the pioneering
barbed wire ammo
round safe and soundly
twilight gleamed

foaming domed Christendom's
transplanted ramparts

on the veiled
spattered trail
of those upstart
stars and stripes.

'tis the once and future
inventor of whiteness,

the divisor

of 'preemptive' strikes.

"i, too,
was only defending
unassailable defensiveness;

protecting a perfected
reflectionless predilection

predisposed to my unfortunate
exponential addiction

to good intended fiction's

self medicating,
humanity abdicating,

devotional preventative foresight.

i, too,
was the faultless reactor

to a super powered,
super imposed
fount of mounted
threats from my victims"

quoth Jack the Ripper,

quoth Bonzo's jammied Gipper,

said every
demonized madman
or feticised fascist
you ever heard about;

each competing,
petered out conqueror,
panderer
and
chief
reprimander and thief

saving the world
for the obsessive
pure coupling
of imaginary races

(brave investors all
in unquestioning obedience,

sweeping out the margins
of regimental death

wherever it seeps,

even in those gruesome
warped air
twin Japanese showrooms
gainfully employed
by nuclear genocide's
uninspected trailblazers.)

surely reasoned thus
every "bad apple"
copycat thrust,

from that imaged
in homage

rotting besotted crop
of self-appointed
latent lone wolf
mass destructors

rooting about
the vested and yoked,
choked cherry poked,

searing,
god fearing,
rationed compassion,
chosen creeded,
need seeded,

stunting tree
of
shunned knowledge;

said those
law and order crooning,
colour pruning,
modern day lynching,
insecurity clinching,

haloed jostling posses
of
militarized police,

the fleecing grease
on the purposed lease
of pale faced freedom's
unrepentant law and order

taking stoic heroic cues
from ram 'em scam 'em
Uncle Sam's
humanity stealing,
crowd appealing,

entertained,
vanitied,
denial congealed reels;

laced in the traces
of eight hundred
state of the art
of
war's
inserted dart,
diplomatically pegged,
dynamite kegged
freebased insurrections;

confected in the media's
persuasively invasive,
reverse vectoring,
threat abetting
hectoring projection,

that exceptionally

virulent
"American" infection;

in cued up children's
emotion heeling,
senses sealing
video games,

the ever widening net
of automatic
dehumanisation's
sci-fi fantasies,

the unhinged,
defringing
and replenishing

virtual unlimiting supply
of
porno orgy "action" flicks;

the slicked ticking
of shot up stiffs,

friendly fire,
collateral cleansing,

and flippant sips
of
Texas tea.

coming to a crumbling
theatre near you
after cowardly
intermission's
fractured remission

(replete with
dancing popcorn,
John Wayne's
good dead indians,
Robocop's mop ups,
and the pitiless wince
of
Clint Eastwood punchlines)

filling in
the wasted
innocent space

betwixt the local minority
distorting perception
apportioning report

and their slurping
mountain majesties'

impacted redacted
'we own the world'
purchased views
nightly "news";

never forgetting
the kids at home,

delusion indulging,
hormone doping,
army farming,
graphically bulging
comically tragic super heroes

and identity clad,
tasked iron masked,
sporty sorting sorties
to keep Venus
and Mercury
lost in the retrograde
orbits of Mars;

and since nothing can bar
the empire's hardwired
rutting cookie cutter
premolded doldrums
from
scarring ajar,

hooking barren phonics
on gender ironics,

plunder's Wonder Woman
serving Captain America
a competition fission
of equality's razored curves;

forever on the
twentyfour seven,
one size fits all,
dead man strolling,
reality poling,
dialogue trolling,

piped in sniper ripening,
onward Christian soldiers'

wagered and vetted,
assuredly precedented,
muscling, hustling,
and righteously cowled,

honchoed macho prowl

to blow away
the penniless,
the godless,

the weak
and lamely blameless,

the aimless and the meeklings,

the possessors of inklings,

the unauthorised messengers
of rogue unbridled warcrimes,

the unfawning practitioners
of unAmerican independence,

the insistently merciful,

the unrich and unfamous,
inexplicably unambitious,

and all those
other than,
off-white,
or
otherwise un-right

authority plated 'bad guys'

wherever they're not
already expunged,

left outside
of
a progressively shameless,
amnesiac and frame-less,
soulless, starless midnight's

brighter than white
utterly useless
invention
of
history.

*

as another demoralising,
absurdity wallowing,
zillion dollar swallowing,

monstrously extended
autumn unfolds,

as the mind bending,
viral spiraled,
falling pall foretolls,

what is this repellent fell beast?

endlessly spewing up
the same coaxing hoax
again and again
and again?

'tis the latter day revivification
of hooded domi-nation's
indentured, far right
and dented centre

night of the unliving
emotive fractious teaming
of the already dead

in deposed liberty's split spitting image;

Rumpelstiltskin's eavesdropping
lavished plush donkeys
wiggling their photoshopped ears

cornering the militant markets
on unthinking foreigner fears;

evidence skimping, romancing assassins
pimping hard to get hardened spies;

closeted judges colluding security's
fitting of justice with Frankenstein's eyes;

parroting patrols of airbrushed carrots,
a generalised run on sadistic hunks,

and stone bled, well fed demeanours
in bellicose veins and oarless trunks;

a dash of psychopathic paranoia
slipped from isolation's shelf;

and a grandiose infatuation
focused on the self;

boards of directing predators
scoring their hoardings
of by the sword spores;

billionaire editors
directing the censors
and the journalistic fakery
of war enabling whores;

Bluebeard's zombie legions
of corporate operatives
eviscerating "liberal" cores,

and the secretive service
of swinging politicians
through profit's whispering doors;

yea,
this and all the flinged bling in it,

even unto Hollywood's
crowning of "good" itself;

the rosed, pedalled and posed
blithe writhing sides
in that multi-bedded, dread steading,
presumptive consumptive
revolving feast

(and the incessant
play by play
of
pleated,

patriot yeast)

turning inside out
on Mother Earth's

freedom paned
savagely ordained
infernal global firing range,

coming home to roost.

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the 25^th of July, 2019