unholy daze (an observance)

nigh on twenty years ago, the capital of capital's "freedom" fiefdom

unleashed an unlawful aggression avalanche

in a cruel and unprovoked war-for-profit

against the human beings in Iraq.

and still, rogue "democracy's"

distracted and distressed,

memory hole digressed,

"self" obsessed,

denial rivalled,

tribal bibled

red & blue enablers

crown thine

arrogant and unrepentant

international crime ridden

SuperPower addicted

domination afflicted

profit syphoned

nation hooded

warfare sanctioned

(election immune)

rampant and relentless

cult of control

enfolded

predilections "good."

hundreds of thousands dead,

some two million disabled,

nine million displaced,

countless people tortured,

traumatized,

or otherwise harmed

in ways unseen,

environmental devastation,

thievery, occupation,

and embrace of torture as policy

in a whole cloth pride plied

"exceptional" belied

War FOR and OF Terror;

an entire generation raised solely in only war.

(and thanks to punishing

the brave defenders of Fallujah

with depleted uranium,

a greater proportion

of birth defects seeded

in spreading freedom's

forsaken wake

than the lesser degeneration

of we-make-the-"rules based" disorder

managed to plant

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

combined.)

*

do you honestly believe the stolen "homeland" has values?

(we could grade on a curve, say,

obviously leaving out

the capacity for loving

others as ourselves...)

*

why look, that fellow,

second from the right

in an Abu Ghraib

lineup.

he's had a recent haircut,

i expect.

but,

saints preserve us,

isn't he

the

Son of Man?

*

- Evan Hawthorn, a day after the ides of March, twenty years on