when guns are outlawed, the hardened criminals will still produce and induce the guns

here it comes again,

predictable as denial,
unexamined fear,
and the mainline training
of the reigning hypocrisy,

dependable as
that patriotic
spoonfed allegiance

to the heirs of aristocracy;

unleashed in a raging flood

of tidal outpourings,

unmoored manipulations,
and outbursting posts

another go round

of gated, baited weeping
and exacerbating angst.

here's a woman

screaming into the cameras

greedily glued
to this latest

volunteer windfall.

for two fell birds
thus plop amoungst
the baggage-growing bush

from a bleeding, rolling stone,

skating the ratings

with yet another
auto-replicating sound byte

of random distraction.

every shrill syllable

a staccato blast
of emotional shrapnel,

plowing over the

firmly rooted,
resolutely rebooted

absence of reason,

preempting even

the rattled addling chains

that saddle McCarthy's ghost

to the lesser evil faithful,

that johnny come lately bande

of borne again brethren

strangely embedded

with America's preeminent
assassins, liars, and spies,

the sworn eternal enemies

of Black Panthers,

peace,
We the People,

and Martin Luther King.

"keep the guns
out of our children's hands!"

tolling bellows unbottled
desperately bleat,

swinging from a bitter end

of atrophied rope.

"install metal detectors in every classroom!"

naturally i look around

for the pitchfork and sheet.

and i think,

how typically American

to fanatically fix

that narrowed, harrowed pinch

of scant, slanted focus

on trimming the monsters' claws.

it was then that i heard

the curious clicking echoes

of Facebook flipping

its proliferating

privileged profiles,

flapping in the

rancid breeze,

wafted from an
already forgotten autumn;

redolent of fraternal
flag-poling frogs,
yet no longer
packaged with fries;

a déjà vu of esprit de corps

from that veiled pale bromance

with the likely likes

of Africa-choking,
misery-stoking

colonial cohorts in France.

and once again

i'm impelled to point out

that the inevitable, impregnable

failure of Americans

to recognise their relations

wears out the tatters
of my fondness for them.

for suddenly, once again
they've decided en masse

(as if they'd felt this way all along)

that they find child murder

intolerably abhorrent.

too bad it's too late

for those abruptly interrupted

wakening Yemeni minds

buried in collapsed schoolrooms

where no child gets left behind;

wasted into wraiths

backed into the arms

of rampant disease

by the viciously ambitious
Coalition of the Winning;

ducking from the Profit's bombs

oil-laden, intransigent sheikhs

hurl from air show trophies

the 'world's policemen'

refuel in midair

so they needn't waste any

of Death's dismounting time.

too bad its too late

for the hundreds of thousands

of Libyan angels

begging the pieces
of their phantom parents

to make the noises stop.

too bad its too late

for the half a million
Iraqi toddlers

slowly starved to death,

a return investment

on Madeline Albright's

feminist laced
responsibility braced
bargain basement
price worthy dearth.

too bad its too late
to start a new mythology

by sewing back together
all that multitude of fragments;

daisy-cuttered,
mine-devined,

cluster-crusted

basted bits of roasted flesh

whose forgotten names

and 'inessential' dreams

still torment the anxious wind.

*

like the used,
abused, and defused
useless resistance

hooting at the buffoon of Oz,

(that bleached whale poster child

for Wealthoholics Anonymous

and Wee Willy Syndrome,

spitting out his double dares
and gutless, witless
pitilessicms,
splitting the pithy, steamy seams

of m(isl)edia coffers,
whilst drawing that rapt

bereft attention

away from the oligarchs' curtains)

they're manning the battlements

that binary blinders

always throw up

whenever it's possible

to ponder an actual cause.

were it my children

America's number one
economic entitlement

had to be 'kept from',

those fiendish devices

the right side of history's

technology devises,

hell's fresh advances

Congress
lavishly represents
and precedent presidents

are so obsessed with funding,

i'd find myself wondering

from whence my
inhuman offsprings'
psychotic cravings come.

but the answer is everywhere around us.

it's practically the raison d'être

for America itself.

for its cinema and laws

its the probable cause.

the mandible principle

that operates its jaws.

subliminal and otherwise
it never suffers pause,
this cultural mandate

that outs itself in flaws.

it feeds every frame
in video games
with a mesmerizing voltage
that breeds macho screeds
from awkward adolescence
and its self conscious seeds.

it's lapped up in comic books,
wrapped up in hormones
in the soft porny glory
of garish super heroes.

immortalized on every screen,
rationalized by talking heads,
their calculations so obscene
divvying the earth into six foot beds.

hammered into

protection racket plaster

to solder the platforms
of red and blue leeches.
imbibed by folksy firesides
with the pandering of speeches.

lined with good intentions

obligingly oblique,
the rituals at football games

sublimate its reek.
idolized by Hollywood
for bringing in the meek.
dazed into oblivion
with every bleeding week.

its gateway drug,
the surrender to hate

the Bible would
have us call "Justice",

and the one two punch,
drowning the imagination
of every spirited child

ground into dust
before it has the chance
to spread fitful wings;

the greatest of evil's justifications,

that enabling enfabling

that underlies it all,

the founding, impounding myth

of 'good guys' and 'bad guys';

(those whose motivation
can never be questioned,

and those they kill

without recourse
to consciousness
or apparent consequence);

for the real objection
to lone wolf psychopaths
has always been

the flaunting of authoritied priorities

when the prodigally deranged
appropriate for themselves
the right to decide
just who the bad guys are.

*

inhaled since birth,
coming from every direction
like cancerous airborne
DNA,

in preconflicted
unevictable layers
built on previous
interlocking distortions,

suffocating instinct
and contravening conscience
till all that's left
celebrates and inculcates
the exceptional American message

that mass murder is the
sacred and inviolate
one size fits all
solution to every problem.

from 'commander and chief'
of the 'armed' 'forces'

through the minority culling
and citizen quelling police

right down to "make my day"
and the brawling angry mob
round a runaway puck

it's at the very center of all things American,

like disposable people and plastic.

*

all those photo ops
and campaign stops,
dripping emotion
from unsoppable mops,

in the choreographed
rhetorical dance
of gun control's
annual
failure to advance.

but nary a
regurgitating
long suffering acolyte
is willing to consider

that the fractiously seasoned
statistically reasoned
studied paucity of rational laws

is not the only difference

between the blithe occupants
of "the greatest purveyor of terror

the world has ever known" (MLK),

and the children of

a lessor (less violent) god

who've managed to survive

America thus far.

most of them, of course,
are unpeople,
who simply don't count,

made official policy
when the military beast
stopped counting its victims
back in the sainted Obama's day.

(unwitnessed, of course
by the faithful's
dutifully averted eyes.)

made exponentially impossible
when our daredevil heroes,
running out of
targets to flatten
tumbled North Korea's dams,
erasing entire villages.

(yet our amnesiac telemodels
would have us believe
distrust of American intentions
makes one insane.)

made surreal
by mourning 58 thousand
marauding freedom crusaders
and democracy spreaders

who silenced forever
three million Southeast Asians,
(and almost all of their pack animals)

protecting "our democracy"
from "their internal aggression"

for having the audaciousness
(so frequently encountered
in bad guys)
that allowed them to believe
they had a right
to govern their own affairs.

but any student
of Cecil B. Demille
will tell you

spectacles of patriot pageantry
to venerate the fancies
of epic hypocrisy

always need extras.

fodder for the
ruggedly free

super sized and powered,
blessed no less
by their fearsome,
whitewashed god,

cash register ringing

from first sight
to seized sea,
bullish and brutish experiment

in self-focused,
self-righteous tyranny.

which brings us to the

hemorrhaging elephant

eclipsing the

blood-spattered room.

two centuries' blowback

from exported terror

and internal genocide

coming home to roost;

the karmic self-fulfillment
of manifesting
vested destiny,

rebounding on itself with its

characteristic vengeance.

*

you simply can't vanish
from the sinking lifeboat
you've claimed as your eternal,

borderless battlefield

somewhere in the vicinity

of thirty million living things
in just seventy five years

(and who knows how many before that)

and not expect some of your
hapless children

to up and kill themselves

perhaps in a hopeless dawning
of disillusioned shock,

or maybe from a
convoluted attempt

to mitigate their elders'
irredeemable
unapproachable shame,

or then again it might be
a form of far sighted
selflessness

subconsciously resolved
amoungst the better,
conscious-stricken part

of that willfully blinded stock

to thin the reflectionless herds
in the superpower's bowers
of groomed and preexhumed
future assassins

when they finally come to grasp
the unshakable,
demented refusal
of the American body politic

to come to grips
with Pogo's honest wisdom

and despairing of
any other
plausible option

since neither 'their father'
nor any other
adult in the room
appears willing to take away
this bitter cup

they follow the example
of everybody's heroes
sampled any moment
on their television screen

and light a suicidal
sacrificial fire

for the betterment

of the children

of the earth.

** ***** * **** * ******* * **** * ***** **
- Evan Hawthorn, the 20^th of February, 2018