<<<<<<<<< the chorus of unsung multitudes >>>>>>>>> (a psalm for swaying palms)

preserved on
coloured slips,
identities crumple
as fragile
memories fade.

yet the parchment
renders
its tendering of ghosts.

for Muhanad Shawki
(entreating his genie "i want to get out
of the hospital")

and Faiza Amir
(in a final portrait by her brother),

shorn of
ragged flesh
and unrequited dreams

have taken their
required, expiring places

in the chorus of
unsung multitudes

that burdens
the bitter wind

where cumulus echoes
of the briefest
of sojourns

surfing fraught waves
of arrogant indifference,

coalesce in
swelling knells
of a contra crescendo,

convening
a collateral choir;

delving the dissonance
of discarded
discordance

from the unseen victims
of America's
abhorrence

for other people's children.

*

the Iraqi section alone
boasts
half a million

falsetto voce
silences

sanctioned by
sanctimonious glee.

a worthy
shoring up
of those
numbing,
numberless legions

the previous
administration
decided to
stop counting.

for shaded
and graded
unexceptional folk,

clearly unintended
for voting booths,

have all been
redistricted

by protection racket dockets,

broken headlights
and itty-bitty rockets,

and regime-change's
jingling,
misappropriated pockets

to eternal
global
battlefields,

custom-fitted
for evisceration

in Hollywood's
patriotic arias
of popcorn pimping
pyro-technique

where Luke and Leia's
film-at-eleven
laser lynchings,
freedom fireworks,
and flimflam glam

are eked out
by the silencers'
boundless rounds
of derivative
racist recitative

in aid
of skulking raids
haunting
the nightingale's
woebegone night,

riddled as it is
by curious beams,

bed-wetting tykes
and their
terrified screams,

and special forced heroics

from the tricked out
baggage
of civilizing themes;

all part and parcel
of our
all consuming,
profit blooming,
humanity entombing

hell on earth arsenal

with which we level

the bridled
margins

of right-sidled
history.

*

in a surreal twist
to the relentless
plaguing

of Babylon's
hounded for centuries
progeny,

stretching the
industrial,
iron clad
scope creep

of proportionless
pride
in the progress
of pilgrims
in a pirate's parade

and Christendom's
reflectionless
crimson crusade

comes the gift that
keeps on giving,

the especial reward
for effective independence,

left by an
unprecedented,
preternatural pounding

snuffing out
whole neighborhoods'
courageous resistance,

flattening
the unfolding
city of Fallujah

where depleted uranium
and white phosphorus
have raised infant mortality,
cancer,
leukemia,
and birth defects

to rates far exceeding
anything ever seen,

even in the fallout
from that other
exotic Asian
littlest angel
recruitment scheme

radiating from
the good old days
of glory's gory yore

that turned out
hundreds of thousands of lights

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

drowning our
collective
unconscious karma

in the self-extolling,
binary-poling,
dearth of the
desert-doling,

myopic and priapic
god of destruction's,

insurmountable
and unapproachable,

unmentionable
and unquenchable,

unimpeachable
and unbeseechable,

undented,
unrepented,
and barely even vented,

utterly irredeemable debt.

* ***** * ******* * ******* * ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 26^th of March, 2018

(another posting hosting Mr. Fish)

and just when i thought he couldn't possibly
make me laugh harder
or admire his muse more,

Mr. Fish gives us this:

Jack the Ripper's broken mirror * (a dreamtime meme from the Cheshire Cat's other brother) *

how perfectly
their bent pretense

conforms with that
rugged,
law deriding
legacy

consistently evinced
by America's perverse
terminally rehearsed

incessantly tensed,
prehensile fenced
nonsensical sense of "Defense".

the exact trajectory
Malice in Plunderland's
vainglorious looking glass
would seem to suggest

works best

for aiming cameras
and tailoring verse,

focusing illusion
on outcome's inverse;

the artful deflection
at profit's behest

unpinning the hearse
from the tax vipers' nest

of the vested interests'
incorporated purse.

'tis but the Mad Hatter's
Freudian infection

of reverse-vectored
charnel,
and funhouse
projection,

the diversionary
formulary
of the Times and the Post

recommended by
17 of 17
proliferating,
mushrooming,
eavesdropping squads

of tinkers, assassins,
and body snatching pods

so endearing to
gullible 'resisters',
McCarthy's inquisitors,
and the 'liberal' Masters of War

as featured
in the premiere issue
of the Queen of Hearts'
Stolen Tarts
mother of distraction
fact redacting handbook,

the regime-change quarterly
for the planners and fanners
of Debilitating Duopoly,
"Homeland" Monopoly,
and all the other

fakers and stakers
in that border hoarding,
independence-thwarting,
culpability-distorting,
apple pie in a pig's eye
do unto others
industry

shining from its gentrified,
coloured-coded
dungheap
on that lesser-ogled
and sickly
off-green hill.

*

this directional
deception
intercepting
perception

is discernible in every facet

the myopia-manacled,
maniacal-monocled,
machocidal beacon's
buffed and cuffed,
karma-curdled culture produces

like a cancerous
omnicidal DNA
rotting all the
whitewashed structures
that normalize gore

to their privilege-glossed,
fear-embossed,
exception-ridden core;

from the March Hare's
errant blaring
on arrogated airwaves

that eveready terror
perpetually mounting
its remunerating wares

to those fan-faired,
intelligence impaired
feel good affairs

scaring up
werebears
and copycat scares;

from that obsessive
idée fixe of "foreign relations"

a whack-a-mole
high tech hammer
from Felix's self-absorbing
patriotic bag
of stick waving pricks

to the endless regurgitation
of superfluous 'crime' dramas,
exterminating
demonized extras
till the next commercial break;

from genocidal idols
in Western bromance bromides
evaporating vinyl indians
in the venerated vintage
vaults of assault

to Superpower wowers
of pitiless and posable, 
cookie cutter Heroes
in those monochrome fixations
and "fantasy" flicks;

from the pentagon paragon
persecution complex
where United Nations notions
get nullified and nixed

to those alzheimer-riddling
"history" books,
discovery coquetries,
and pbs pampering pimps

where propaganda potions
for good-intentioned
conventions and convictions
are mixed;

from its suicidal lineup
of sacrificial soldiers

and We the People holdup
of Commons-snuffing budgets

hooked through
banked and planked,
plaqued and flacked
bipartisan arteries
and m(isl)edia IVs

to the protection racket's
expanding scaffolding
of erectile enhancement,
"full spectrum dominance",

and all the other
fictionalized trappings
and blowback bric-a-brac
of proportional dysfunction.

all fashionable and actionable,
recognisable ramblings
of the same psychotic,
life-extincting
unravelling thread

that ripples warping nightmares
in the weave of spreading dread

smothering the future
in the beacon's unmade bed

where zombies in shackles
arrive in freedom's stead

shunted like rats
in the sleepwalking ruts
of coercion's undead tread.

*

alas! Jack the Ripper!

if only vulnerability
didn't float your boat

and wee willy syndrome
wasn't yanking on your goat

you could finally stop seeing
those limitless
helpless victims

bobbing in
your trademarked
'protecting freedom' nets

as bottom bleeding

weeding
embarrassments,

resurfacing as threats.

* ***** * ******* * ******* * ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 7^th of March, 2018

the lethal ism of the founding fathers (a psalm in search of comprehension)

 "our policies will never be based on claims to exceptionalism.  we protect our interests

  and respect the interests of other countries.  we observe international law and believe

  in the inviolable central role of the UN."

          - Vladimir Putin (from his recent speech, so at odds with the State of the Union

             precedent set by America's pantheon of exception pandering presidents.)

*

i wonder

if those proud primates

clothed in the rumoured,

pleated conceit

of the emperor's Americans

will ever be able to see

that it's their
very own

homegrown protectorate,

invested with the sacred

defining narrative

of threatened escalation

and proliferating myth

(the incorporated owners

of obliquely reeking,

cancerous cliques,

those emanations of irresponsibility

supremely deemed

to exclusively matter,

with their tank-cranking 'think' tanks

and vetted, indebted,

manicured batches

of distractfully bickering

racketeering bitches,

that lavishly remunerated

rotting lot

of identity framing,

flame retarding,

blame projecting,

binary blindering,

memory weeding,

screed feeding misleaders;

mainstreamed and laymansplained

by the deigning of dukes

and vicarious viscounts

at the Times & the Post;

those savvy automatic, self-censoring satraps

with seats on every hoarding board

that reaps reward

from whoring high-tech swords,

and all the other

knighted abettors,

pruning speeches,

grooming leeches

and listening at doors),

far better than any

of their

pitched and stitched,

cast and plastered monsters,

who insist on consistently

emulating Nazis.

*

for without their bullying,
preeminent example

of lesser, blessed,

and protectively dressed

vengeful,

'necessary' evil,

their Saudi, Israeli, & Al Qaeda allies;

(that myopic camel-lodged tryclops

of Abraham's extremist bedfellows)

and the g [for grasping] seven,

(the sunset sibling sorority

of paling colonial collaborators)

might slip from their

corralling,

corroborating sway,

putting those haunted

blatantly racist,

exceptional horns away.

for 'tis only

We-the-Mesmerized,

Insecured-People;

the squatters of distraction

on compassion's

stinted dearth

of stolen homeland,

with their divinely minted denial,

patrolling injustice,

and hallucinations of envy;

lulled by the

unreflecting

imprisoned prism

of freedom's

vain illusions;

at the trickling and teaming,

red, white & blue

tribal beck & call

of Profit's preying demons

who must

rouse ourselves

to find

all of

ourselves

and,

finally discover

in the freeing

forgiveness

such newfound contact

with inclusiveness

would naturally incur

our very first inkling

of civilizing,

humanity-valuing,

liberated

by its own

illuminating

borderlessness,

actually factual,

functioning

Democracy.

*

(for without that

hypothetical

link with
longed for sanity

and berth for living worth,

of thee i cannot

honestly

bring myself to sing.)

* * ******* * ******* * ******* * ******* * ******* * *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 2^nd of March, 2018

a setting of colours

though i always knew
how the white made the blue

'twas blinded, me
but now i see

from whence the red still runs.

~>>>>> dictation gleaned from a secretary's bird <<<<<~ (the meaning convened in the seams of a meme)

"and verily likewise,"

said the word-berthing bird,
alighting in my window
with a curious gleam in his eye,

"we're all of us spirit;
an inseparable oneness,

impervious to fracture
or a divvying up,

lacking the point
of plottable components

in the here
and the there,

the now
and the then,

the woof
and the warp
of that myriad revolving,
scenically evolving,

micro-macro wonder
of concentrically
resurfaced
physical spheres."

*

with an oddly comforting tilt
alerting his visage,
tipping slightly forward
on the spindliest of legs,

projecting perspective
through the sun-glanced glass,

the curious bird
went on to say

"believing in the
solitary shutters
of identitied
entity

resolutely attached
to a scant
awkward glob
of animated matter,

or even conceding
a selective proximity
with a family
or tribe thereof,

(a genus or gender
or blindering bender)

is rather like spending
ones entire fleeting life

in the fraught isolation
of an anxious electron,

flitting about
in a self-focused cell."

and with that
this bird

convincingly appeared
to be gone.

* ***** * **** * ******* * **** * ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 25^th of February, 2018

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