ringing in the irony; (a tolling of the mould)

*

memory hulled,

haunted and nulled,

sawed off shotgun dulled,

beguiled by denials

piled,

sanded in a landfill

chillingly instilled.

and yet,

nonetheless,

the irony is overwhelming.

because of the convincing lies
told by this one man
to a held at bay

plundered world turned "global battlefield"

hundreds of thousands

of myriad gifted receivings of beings

are lost to the berefted ken stilled in the living,

disrupted families in uncountable millions

have been thrust from their unfathomed

unAmerican homes

into reliefless lives of unimaginable misery

(save for those silent driftings

asundered under

the lurid Mediterranean),

there are craters where there used to be towns,

and we have all the evidence

we can possibly ignore

that it's even more

harmful to future generations

to punish the intransigent independence

of a brimming with intrepid heroes

bombarded city like Fallujah

with massive quantities of white phosphorus

than were all the deformities

our pilgrims' progress of split nuclei

wreaked upon the innocent

bystanders in Japan.

and here's this vicious visage,

yet another coasted toasting

of an unwanted poster unindicted,

suited up in authoritied sorority

passing around partisan handouts

for the going rage of saged advice,

warning of the perils of "deranged people"

feeling "empowered"

by

avalanched lies.

would these dropped pearls

had sown a heeded crop

before Martin Luther King

had occasion

to courageously observe,

(sealing his own assassination)

that America,

(already then)

was the greatest purveyor

of violence in the world.

yet no one would dream

of arresting

a latter day Pinocchio

witness for the offense

like tightly screwed

upright thinking

weapon pimping

statesman Colin Powell,

because none of those victims,
as it turns out,

actually mattered to Americans,

who see themselves as good people.

(to say nothing of the

"news" carriers, themselves

who go on unaccountably

vending their wares

in the patriot baited

mindlessly regurgitated

drumming of saturation

guise of currented facts.) 

far from it, he's held up in the hold up

as a benevolent example

in comparison,

say,

with the obvious evil

of the obsessively observed

strutted abutting unsubtlety

of

a rapaciously grasping

tweet bleating

bump

in

the lumpen night.

which prompts the irreverent question,

if Jack the Ripper

had gone ahead and said

"love thy neighbour as thyself",

ought we be willing

to see him matted,

gleaming rapier glossed,

plastered on our

socially

distanced media,

so we can all

nod if we agree

to

irony's apogee

with those religiously

prodigious

Toontown'o'morphic icons

standing in for our

attenuated

unoffending

notion of emotions

in the newly normal

untouchable milieu?

the answer, of course,

is already written

in functioning

journalism's

disregarded shards.

as long as it can be used
to belittle the Frankenstein

of incorporated reality's

always on tap,

teed up and peed down

grand distraction

tractioning fealty

to racist placist realty

in a rift sifting gift

that keeps on giving;

the only evildoer

seen in every scene

preening in the sheen

of the rampart's bred glare

squinted by the empire's

partisan dueling

schoolings of unquestioning

tailoring and laundering

taken in

in the CIA embedded,

militantly wedded,

lavishly funded

morally shredded,

culpability redacted

inhumanity abetted,

"free press" tufted

liberally shafted,

photo opp'ed,

tunnel app'ed

and funhouse tilted,

twenty-four-

and-seven scored

screenings of apparency

all for the interest

accruing benefit

of infotaining

the profit splaining 

to the seamed and teaming

manicured and weeded,

polarised receptors

composed in interposed

progressively conformist

divisively spliced

faith based followings

of divine freedom's

entwined fixed agendas

less is more or less

blessed or digressed,

needs must digest

tuned in as "the news".

'tis compartmentalisation

that

diagnoses

this

hypnosis,

with an unhealthy dose
of prevailing assailing's

other perennial

all too human plague,

garden variety projection,

which allows it to be
presented in its

blithely abided way

skating amidst

the memory hole doused

self-focus blissed

status quo mist

of the greatest pillage

of this or any age,

admiring its piracy

and donning its rage,

in the always profitable

century in perfecting

somnolence injecting

presumption unabated

in genocide plated

boxes

of

tide

pridefully dyed,

consumptively styed,

in the slight

of plighted sight's

sleekly reeking

prospect

on the righted

slide

of

history

with arrogance allied;

the righting of might

in that starless midnight;

the tillaging of privilege;

the blinding of the blindered;

the mining of the mindered.

it's how we arrived
at the atrophy ringed

cloaked and daggered

scarred duggery

circus of the stars

exclusively intrusive

mockery

of

democracy

in which elections

are redundantly staged

with nary a resort

to meaningful choice;

(for the shadow

of a hinted suggestion

that alternatives exist

is in nefarious cahoots

with Simon bar Sinister's

foreigner duped

unspeakably evil

dissent simmering

potion of reflection,

outlawed out of hand

like independence itself,

and rumoured to be on the lam

somewhere in the demonised

dictatorial narrative sweep

of that backyard canard

where unbridled groping's

doped gringos

roped the peasants

of the rest of America)

and hence,

in the brave rampant staves

tensing all those fences

round other peoples'

appropriated sand,

in manned up standing

bandings

of a promissory land

wherein freedom is said to loom,

there's been no practical way
to vote against mass murder

since 1972.

a whole lifetime for some.

a precarious dearth

of havened berth

going on three

hounded generations

for a huge swathe

of unpeopled victims

(which is to say

our unrecognised relations

awaiting an American discovery

of that treasonous territory,

the terrorism christened,

Christ envisioned,

unbordered

and

disorderly

port of humanitied connection.)

it bogles the imagination

to conceive

what the world might be like now

if the red and blue shepherded flocks

of that purple bruise infusing

sole presiding Super Power bully

had along about then

come

to

value

honesty and equality,

and,

stretching the warped rafters

of unthinkable probability

almost beyond endurance,

the independence of others

with the same relentless

preoccupation

given over

to the trillion dollar,

bipartisan invested,

benevolence finessed

"full spectrum dominance"

Saint Obama declared

from the mountaintop

"the overriding purpose

of America's foreign policy"

or say,

just the smidgen less

wishful persistency

afforded that

good old fashioned civility

someone's always on about.

then, mayhaps,

there'd actually be

a completely unprecedented

American president

along about now

who,

presiding in some

dream world

yet to be unfurled 

where the beacon

of stolen homelands

is a law abiding

unhooded nation

that follows its own

instituted

Nuremberg laws,

wouldn't

have

to

be

summarily

hanged.

*

- Evan Hawthorn

the second day of a new year

that looks very much like the old beholden one