will spring ever come? *~*<<<<*>*<<<*~*>>>*<*>>>>*~* (a flight of observance, told in a raven's scolding)

as sure as April rains,

as the sewed in,
power obsessed owners
of patriot trademarked
stalking freedom

tax for lavished war
their wealth possessed,
obscenely weaned quorum
of
denial besotted flocks,

the stumped,
wedged and pumped
round the clock bubbling
is again dredging up

from the seemingly endless
well meaning well,
in its dim lit chamber of echoes,

another ladling of liberal lament

bewailing the fall
of the
U.S Empire.

for apparently,
it's not what it used to be.

yet a concentrically eccentric,
next door to a hermit,
unbanded unAmerican,
treasonous bereasoned,

"radical" and Kremlin
usefully tooled,

neigh braying and fay,
rare bird confidant

feels compelled by the nature
propelling him to ask

how could a "civilised country"

ever become an empire
in
the
bloody
first
place?

how can the pored in chorus
of flag styed, smug plugged,
essential congratulence
fail to notice
the scads of scoreless nations

(Mozambique for instance,
Vietnam or Bolivia,
Haiti or Cuba,
Lesotho or Iran)

that left off bullying
nigh on centuries past
or,
secured by the
hundredth monkey
of
universe quilted,
astonished maturity,

never sought to subjugate
the children of earth's
mirth embarked,
malarkey quarked playground;

that somehow manage
to get along,
levelling with their neighbors

without ever attacking
any of those other
ailing simian societies
afflicted with
seaming
nationhooded parasites;

without once stringing up
Bill Clinton's
skull and crossbones,

claiming now and forever
the right to weaponize
their adhering interference
in other peoples' pocket books;

that somehow failed to build
comparable parables
to the capital of capitals'
flanked, embanked cathedrals,

enshrining the consigned,
lucre lording shining sees
ruthlessly canonized
by never sated
emptiness,

erected with the most
inhuman form of slavery
despise ever devised

on those freedom zoned,
unmarked mass graves
of their
"decorous and praiseworthy"

welcoming hosts?

*

resigning ourselves
to a mandatory
early retirement
of
America's
greatest degeneration
in that Bonnie and Clyde
sidewinding Century
of internationally organised,
staggering, flagrant crime;

resolving to not merely
stand by and watch
its inevitable collapse
in a karma coalesced,
stone age cratering,
unprovoked transgression
upon itself

but to actively abet
a final calling off
of the relentlessly revolving,
remorselessly absolving
freeing of conscience
spreeing of mass murder;

dissolving the appalling
grim reign of terror
of what our holy soulful
dream caller called

"the greatest purveyor
of violence in the world"

(just before the CIA
arranged his crucifixion)

sounds like an untrammelling;

a celestial unravelling;

like a manna from some
undisclosed heaven,

ineffably leavening idea to me.

it would open the floodgates,
diverging the splurging coffers
from the devil's hymnalled anvil

of Congressional relishing,
Commonwealth impoverishing,
coveted conqueror's playthings,

and pay all the bills
barring our future;

resetting the end times energy grid,

cascading over the firewalls
turreting health care,

weighing anchor to sever
that clever insurance
of the sinked in sync
rusted links

yoking knowledge
to servitude's vassalage

thrice times over

as
rebellious winged angels
desert their
angry jealous god,

laying down their mufflers,
their buffers
and their arms

to suffer the study

(and rote moated vote)

of war no more.

it would leave us all free
to discover how democracy
might actually function

(if it had aught to do
with meaning or context
and wasn't just a matter
of affirming or denying

the hard wired casting
of fandom's tandem,
augmenting
and lamenting,
laminated roles.)

it would mean
stepping out
of the shadows

of
exception's
cruel winter
of blinds drawn,
self focus cloaked,

insecurity stoking,
independence bejoked,

tender mercy shied,

sided pride deified,

gun slinging
and
freedom wringing,

unconscionable
national insanity

for multitudes
of par for the voiceless
(per force of course)
recourseless,

uncounted,
unentitled
and
unrecognised

human brothers and sisters

all around a profit searing,
insect clearing,
conquest weary world.

that same oarless ark
the elephants and asses
joined lockstep 
trunks and hooves

(like an unhinged pair
of palm rubbing,
pussy stroking,
chortling Bond villains)

to maniacally expropriate
as their
"eternal global battlefield";

that same fragile
nurturing orb
an arch, rogue,
brazenly lawless,
presumptive paranoiac,
self appointed "policeman"

has run roughshod over
for scored and increasingly
tearful fear fulfilling years,

deciding who can do
what where when;

sanctifying the gangland
lingering starvation
of our mother's other children
with a Herod embarrassing
venomous aplomb

until whatever representative
of whichever monied gaggle
currently pulling the strings
of their struggling parents'
nationhooded
stretched neck of the woods

knuckles under,
forks over,
or falls in line;

until the CIA contrives
a convincing way
to con the consumers
of the grand white sway

that it's time for yet another
security fomented,
media stabled,
benevolent freedom round
of
dead in the womb spreading,
despair embedding,
independence shredding,

dropping of bombs
on
factories and weddings,

on playgrounds and schools,

in bloodspilling pools
of depleted uranium
and bystanding animals,

on those imaginary battlefields
heliotropic goldfish
and
patriotic people
persist in pretending still exist,

all crowning
that railed and sainted
deranged manger
of compartmentalised,
euthanised,
brotherhooding good.

*

or maybe i've misread
the springing forward
of
bejesus's daylights clock

and it's only time
to jump the gun,

for a splinter of discontent
competition scolding,
silk road trolling,
flinging of Asian "pivots";

or a golden oldie stroll
through an eerily similar
simmering
of indian summer,

those flogging dog days
rolling round again,

bludgeoning
and
dungeoning

a nightly raided,
crusade waded
"interest"
laden Middle East

or a self reliance styled,
diplomacy reviled,
law and liberty exiled,
Wild Wild West

what could possibly be the difference?

and yet, mayhaps,
on the other fist,
impatience is a' wastin'
for a fly by night
fortnight

of the always in season
though never advertised,
elemental "developing"
of mined and dejewelled,
betrayed and raped Africa;

or departing that station,
an exporting distortion
field day
holiday from geography
in
auld lang syne's
entrenched fencing pageant
with that entire hemisphere
stylishly beliberalled
Camelot itself

was convinced
must be somewhere
in its stoned
and boned
backyard.

but most likely, though,

(least like like of all),

they'll stumble into
the next rescheduled
routine observance
of those timed, warned,
horned and scorned
"threatening" places

where brave "protection"
bristles its progressively
suicidal troops
in comparative worth dangling,
smartly strangling nooses

strung along other peoples'
disrespected borders

(which telling projection,

bracketed in distraction,

given Hollywood's
entertaining containments
of munificent confection,

blithely, good guyly,
red hate and blue plate,
morally divided subjects
are apparently
incapable of noticing.)

*

and lo!

all these ritually ignored,
religiously abhorred,
collaterally stored

fellow human beings
in the SuperPower's
colonial courted,
NATO bowered,
right indicted
hunting grounds

afraid to seek out
their own forms
of government;

afraid not to trickle
their profits to that sickle;

afraid to not obey
the "consensus" dictates
of freedom's celebrated owners;

and even the people
of colour amoungst us,
forced to subsist
as hyphenated
(almost)-Americans
in their own home

(the same defaming,
tamed for framing,
limited edition "homeland"
that refuses to
recognise them);

terrified lest a tail light go out,
bringing on their children's
law abided murder,

knowing, after all this time,
there's still no proven way
to defend their darlings'
precious life

from America's
beknighted,
incited freedomed rites.

and yet, presumably,
in that Caesar rendering
rugged and tugged party line
unacquaintance with irony,

the wall street
regime exchange
less is more practical
democracy sabbatical
assassin and spy
faith based fretwork

with its manacled press
of "liberal Americans"

find time to peer
under wiretapped rocks
for
disruptive lurking
"foreigners",

apparently jealous
of the versified rivalries
serving the establishments'
competing ministries
of exclusive intrusive
of thee we sing truth;

exponentially fanning
the censor's aimed flames
of a Freudian and Faustian
McCarthy revival
and zombie clambake,

Super Power
and
Super Suspicious,

ravenously attritious,

angst over undo influence.

*

and then commenced
a plume grooming,
flea exhuming,
ponderously
gossamer pause

in that diaphanous
and timeless,
place without space

the graces always fill
with
reflective silence.

then
the rare bird
bespoke
me again,

in James the Queenly
King's English,

(for,
as he patiently
explained

from that unflinching,
beseeching,
tree clinging perch

betwixt the barked
and creaking leaks
of a crook
benooked rookery;

a crowded shroudery
of breached birches,
preaching larches
and
scorched and torturous,
swinging doored porches,

fixing me all the while
with a cocked and quirky tilt
to his light glanced eye,

confidingly sliding
his grasp

for a clasp of the conscience
proffered on my shoulder,

he's quite gone off
his erstwhile repertoire;
that sharp
and then melodious,
delicate shuffling
of intuitive and rasping
enigmatic tweets

since the advent
of a stage strutting,
consummate incarnate
manifestly destined
profit driven Frankenstein

slurped up the chirping airwaves

in a spired, conspired,
breathlessly attended,
lurching besmirching,

wham damned,
slammed
and trunked,

looming curtained
and oligarch starched

fixed bid to redefine them.)

verily, verily,

(he suggested unto me)

for all of the myriad
connected, unprotected,

overlooked
and
uninspected

hopeful living things

that wouldst actually matter
hadst thy plundering ancestors
providentially pioneered
a benevolence seeking beacon

to shelter and husband
the faintest glint
of an unstintingly
cherished,

"civilised" world,

the falling of this
besting, vested,
racist, placist,
elitest,
indiscreetest,

(at its birth,
already
out of its tree)

forever preening
the teeming
of its meaning,

unheeding
the seeding
of its own
defeat,

utterly psychotic empire,

locked in its eternal
binary refinery
of a trillion dollar
identity politics

(policy off limits)

contest of polarity,
patriot belligerence,
popular impairity
and
privileged semantics

decanting antics
shell game;

drowning out
sane empathy's
last frantic chances

with an endless charade
of twenty four seven
blaring nonsense;

all that din
about winning,

about the tinned spin of sinning,

about nothing that feels,

or is actually real

on those left and right speakered,
choreographed and blinkered,
redacted or regurgitated
ghost ridden reels

save the slimly trimmed
tightly reined spectrum
of
emotionally baited,
loudly divisive
internal social issues

the powers that own
allow their hoard
of boarded broadcasters
to float on their
stolen from the Commons air

(tinselled and tarted out
as yet more competitive fare);

teaming into ferocious
taken sides
about
who left the oven on
down the street

whilst the rambling,
shambling,
cobbled and hobbled,
rammed and shackled,
primate house divided

burns down around them;

as whiling and fiddling
their bereft pinioned wing,
those lavishly funded,
liberal minded,
skillfully lightened,
tooth brightened heroes
pretend to "resist"

the unremitting evil
their dumbed and thumbed,
war drums
under the gums,
pandered and praised,
ante raised

unanimous animosity
perennially spews...

(at this point,
sputtering and croaking
with all his mighted sight,

fluttering my heart
with his
heart thumped breast,

preparing to return
to a context
still remembered,
disconnection
unencumbered,
blessed bliss caressing,

amber glazed
azure sky,

in a filiblustered
fluster,

determined to untether

all his ruffled
blocked flockings
of a druthered
whethered feather,

the wise old bird
delivered his
vexed summation.)

why,
the fall of the U.S Empire

would be a reason to ring
the practically atrophied,
cracked and rusted,
rarely dusted bells

of humanity's
long dreamed of
yet never expected,

disordered,
unbordered,

uplifted,
freely gifted,
and
radically drifted,

living blossomed spring.

it might even stop
the race to extinction
in the nick
of
humankind's

apparently random
yet
preternaturally lethal
for every other
species on the planet,

deftly shafting,
daftly wafting,

almost left
too late
to be rafting,

progressively receding,
rebel flower weeding,
separation creeding,

forever rebeading
the stringing
of its needing,

dandelion bleeding,

next door to fell abandonment,

sand branding time.

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the tithings of April, 2019

spring dusting

so Tomb Sweeping Day in China came and went.

and there was me,
flitting betwixt
gleaned glimmers
of my muse

in the prose throes
of our latest creation.

so it slipped altogether
from the tethers of my minding.

and now all these
questionable,
indigestible,
archly contestable,
persuasively digressive,
obsessively possessive critters
from a spare Dickensian nightmare,

who waited all year
in a virtual vestibule
just for a chance
to adorn a spring clinging,

are ever so miffed at me.

*>sigh<*

such are the spirited exigencies
of the hapless crusty fluff
of restless,
rutless
dust to dust,

frequenting the ineffable margins
of timelessness unplaced,

attempting to tickle ones passing fancy.

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the 6^th of April, 2019

justice (what it is and isn't); a psalm to plight requited love

and the lord
their
god of justice
said

let there be punishment.

let there be floods.

let there be
the
severing
of
wisely apportioned offspring;

chosen people

and
horror flicks,

the
suspense
of
pornography

accumulating
its
plagues.

let there be "goodness"
and
let there be "badness",

and the cold dead hands
of 
rigor mortis Moses.

let there be projection,
simplistically splicing
its binary

aligning of lightless slight,

and the repeated
beatings in

of the tear
fulfilling prospect

of fearful respect.

let there be

missing eyes
for
missing eyes.

and
above all,

ringing
in my
throne-exalting,
glory-bolted
heaven

let there be payments

for blood.

*

for did i not create
the arbiters?

did i not spoon in
the
Leviticus
and
Judges
channellings,

pimping fresh hewn widows
and
slitting children's throats
by
the
thousands?

did i shirk from Caesar's due?

did 'exception'
not
stem
from divine designs
to
thine?

and is that not
how
ye judges
of
worth

find purchase?

for what doth it profit
that
little brown boys
walk
on
paved, staved earth

in a world i bequeathed
(right from the start)
to
my
likened
usurpers?

(this, and all things in it

as far as
log jammed camels

and race-tracing,
alpha-basing
jockeys

can possibly think to see.)

*

and she said,
but
my son is dead.

and it will
never
be
better.

never.

no,
not ever.

yet the talking heads
and
wagging tongues,

the matinee idols
and
reaming streams,

and the
teaming,
seaming,

seeming of memes

are all of them thronging

for the thing
they call
justice.

for someone has to pay.

the contagion of violence
must have its sway,

begetting
replication;

carrying the day.

how else could one
justify

all that doing unto others?

Hollywood's
fanned contrivance
for
blandly empirical,

crowd pleasing
and
dependable

endings of expendables;

the itching
of ire's rash;

the
Snidely Whiplash
satisfactory
bash.

served cold or not
it's how
the
trap inlaid,
game's been played

since the fable's
first caveman
picked up a stick
and
disabled Abel.

since scarcity's
impaired cudgel
dredged the abyss,

rewinding
the entwining
of
man-unkind's
minding

inward upon itself.

since the fell tutorial
of
terror's territorial

by the sword "nations"

began
to
carve their holes

in
the
fabric
of
spirit,

in that Alzheimered,
unrecognised
warp

of universal

relative

denial.

for we must have
our
bounds

for the trolls'
tolls and mounds,

for the scrolls'
patrolling
hounds,

for the pounding
of
recalcitrant flesh.

the cult of control's
crucial hallucinogen;

its never quite
realisible goal
for
the "power"
its stole
extols;

forever enmeshed
in fission's competition;

in the endless repetition
of a curse.

the need to be right
asserting
might's plighted

"right" to coerce.

twice one
undoing its sum.

force overcome,

then force reinforced.

the aping of apes'
pursuant course.

for the scales
must have their balance.

tit must equal tat.

a slip,
then a slap.

there must
be
wrongdoers

rotting somewhere,

behind bars that can be felt

to make us feel better.

to make us feel

"us",

the designated good guys

(residers in right),

whose families
expectantly matter,

whose heroes 'off' bad guys

(or 'get them'
or
'take them out',

any entombing
euphemism will do
to distract
from the
murderers' pact.)

for as surely
as
"bad" children
are
punished

"bad guys" die.

(that's what they're there for.)

how else believe
this
"world of ours"

(the world we said he gave us)

is just?

it's in the charter.

it rights the sides of history.

dots
the
missing eyes
for
the
missing eyes.

but no one harbours
all the ghosts.

and no one hears
their cries.

*

still, crime must pay.

so the virtuous
wouldst have
their prey.

since the dawning
of self-righteous
homicidal extortion;

that forged engorging
of Christendom's
fabricated kingdoms,

(the collared peasants
firmly ditched in their
partisan rows
by a well fed inbred,
parasitic elite)

when,
in league with
the black robed religion's
"goodness"
defining henchmen,

the pale pirates
swarmed out of Europe
and
took the world
by (that perfected) storm,

someone
always
pays.

where else
did all that
"treasure"
come from?

the "developed" envelopment
"advancing" the West?

and yet,
the hauntings

never seem to set.

never.

no,
not ever.

(that's what she said.)

for now,
there's not

(can never be)

an
after.

*

and i wanted to tell her

water returns
to its source.

rising up
its
bubbles again,

holding to its course;

if you cradle
those empty arms

just so

and let your promise breathe.

not better,
no.

and never the same.

but still,
it will seed you,

find you and knead you.

for it never fails
to recognise
a grasp,

to ferret out
a foundling

that fits
within
a clasp.

for love has no name,

space
is
made of room,

and only empathy's
astonishing

sweet giftings
of
chance

can ever comfort pain.

*

yet the clamour's always there

for the slick
sickly fix.

here it comes again.
like waves
and
amber grain.

like
wicked double features
spouting heroes' bane,

staining minds
and fingers,

choking up the drain.

make those miscreants pay
(the ones not
pretty enough
to
idealize delusion.)

and while we're at it

make the authentic
"Americans" pay

(for the shadows
surrounding
"our homeland",

reminding us
of
who and what we are,

and
what we never
stop taking from them.)

make those fenced out,
belaboured,

unsavoured neighbors pay

(for painting living dreams
in
the shuttering beacon's
redistricted "backyard".)

make our Haitian cousins
eternally pay

(for that uppity
first burst
of
colourful
independence.)

make the Japanese pay

(for responding
to a taunting noose,

for attempting
to sample
the
preordained
whitewash
shining colonial tides.)

make the Greeks
and Italians pay

(for letting
care for their
neighbours'
welfare
survive their
fight with Hitler.)

make the stateless
Palestinians pay

(for refusing to die,
quietly;

the sleeping
silenced dogs
in
goodly religion's
presumptive,
misappropriated
manger.)

make the Koreans pay

(for allowing
freedom's buzz cut,
haloed and siloed flyboys
to run out of targets;

for planting all those
ghosted, drowning villages
downwind of tempting dams.)

make Southeast Asians pay

(for imagining
they could think for themselves.)

make Ho Chi Minh pay

(for believing
the declaration of independence
was
a thing.)

make the Persians pay

(for letting their
budding democracy
budge the swollen
British sunset's
stolen bottom line.)

make the Cubans pay

(for saving Angola
single-handedly
from apartheid's
grand ole'
ganged up gang;

for openhanded health care
shared so freely
with an unenveloped,
"underdeveloped" world.)

make the Nicaraguans pay

(for that
unforgivable example
of
popular leaders
improving the lives
of peasants.)

make the Afghans pay

(for befriending
Boris Bogeyman,
and letting
down
their sisters' hair.)

make the Libyans pay

(for protecting Africa
from grasping French banks
and the Obama installed
Africom death knell
of incorporated throttling.)

make the Arab republics pay

(for clogging
the baited gatings
of
World Monopoly's profit.)

and thanks to our
successive leaders' penchant
for embedding
lubricating monarchies,

supplying that
writ larger than life,
once for all time
everlasting proof
that America
doesn't actually believe
in the replete conceit
of just revenge

(when other
self appointed "defenders",
in a grim homage
to the masters,
have a go at meting it out)

make everyone on earth
pay for 9/11.

(anyway, our Saudi paramours
failed to sign that damning receipt.)

and, lest the
abdicated illiberal media
(strobing its acrobatic,
homophobic currents)
would ever let us forget,

make the latest
Russian lightning rod
for all things demonic,
Vladimir the Impaler
Putin pay

(for the rumoured
yet pointless informing
of
a deaf and dumb "democracy",

and for failing
to meekly succumb
to an unindicted,
unrequited century
of blatant intervention.)

and,
along with all his other
unwitting bitches,
treasonous toads,
and dissent spreading stooges
in our hordes of Igor spores,

in a nod to McCarthy's
Rambo-Robo resurrection
in the
Night of the Unliving Resistance
that's more a Persistence,

make my fellow
unherded electors pay

(for our distinctly
unAmerican immunity
to patriotic bullies,

and
for rattling
the
cages of myth.)

and before leaving off
this haunted jaunt
through
the unsettling unaccountings
of the ghost of historic
abandonment past,

make the fraught
independence
of womankind pay

(for the crime of turning
those worth uncertained
doughy men that matter on.)

make the uncloseted gays pay

(for baring
the scared impairment
of
cookie cuttered rutters.)

and make the
forcibly imported,
yet never made at home,
hyphenated 'they' pay

(for,
in the midst of slavery's
rabid rebranding
and unabashed
rehashing thatchery,

lighting up stars
in that starless midnight
those CIA darlings
of the 'progressive'ly repressive
mainlining misledia

killed
Martin Luther King
for
pointing out.)

*

for spangled right, dangled left,
or mangled angled mocking of "center",

broken headlights must be splattered.

drones must be timed
to
vaporize the rescue.

our wrath must bury entire cities.

and
un-beholden nations
filled with
off-white children

must sanctimoniously starve.

for sole 'SuperPowers'
cast
omnipotent glowers.

(so above and so below.)

and might
is
the "right"
that
conquers everything.

(god blessed the "news" that tells us so.)

insecurity's tottering playgrounds
are infested with fractured primates

all still trying
to
be right.

and the terror cloaked global battlefield
invests
in the deity
of
manifest destiny's

"right" to wage unbridled blight,

stoking
for
the stroke

of its plighted midnight.

*

it's not as if
anyone believes
in
redemption anymore.

locked up
(in their millions)
for
mandatory stretches,

disenfranchising ends,
and
skyrocketing dividends;

families punished
and
kept apart;

track lighted,
and
hemmed in
forever,

whilst
the righted slide
of alarmingly armed law

sends out
those prurient,
amber warnings.

it's not the black hats
or scorecards
that
single them out.

it's that no one seems to think
they've a right to justice.

(that is, it's not their "right"
to shoot at "us".)

the difference
is obvious.

bad guys
are proscribed
by
establishment scribes.

and
wrongs
are opposed
by
rights.

thus,
ne'er the twain
shall buck the train

that first came up with "white".

but
don't distract us.

don't make us wait.

for
someone has to pay.

(go ahead,
make our day.)

a surfeit of surmises,

revenge in all its guises.

make the wrong guy pay.

make him writhe in agony.

so the columns tot up.

so the stoic heroic hitman
wins the pretty
deadpan assassin
and
we can all clap.

so judgement can sit
in his
black and white heaven

and all's right
in
heart silenced night's

with us
or
against us,

flag waving,
caveman caving,
extinction paving world.

*

unflinching dark eyes
must be slashed;

unbrightened teeth
tamed or gnashed.

reflection,
without question,
hopelessly dashed.

for we
are the righteous folk.

the self-upholstered good guys.

the shallowing of days
topping
'freedom hating' nights;

a contrast of projection
for vectoring our sights.

and it's written
in neon floodlights,

we are our elders' boasts.

the god fearing hosts.

(feed us.)

we are the lord's
"essential" policemen.

his chosen enforcers,

dragging brass knuckles,

fisting nuclear arms.

(fear us.)

the commander
and chief,
sheriffs
and deputies

of wrath's angriest god.

(dare us.)

we are the just.

we are the dust
of
must.

just us.

just us.

just us.

*

one day, it is said
the son of man
will be born
in a shack

and give up his life
without any
"payment"

whatsoever

just
because
he
loves.

then,
perhaps

humanity

will
come
at
long last

through the charred,
tarring veils
of
likened smoky ardour

swirling round
a self proclaiming,
identity framing,
justifying tangle
of
fossilized,
hierarchical,
angelic armoured,
obsessively possessive,
twice blinded tribal bias
and
glorification of dominance

in
its jealous
flaming
bush

to
pour forth
wholly unexpected,

unsifted gifts

upon
this
barren
dearth.

* ***** ***** * ******* * ***** ***** *
- Evan Hawthorn, the 23^rd of February, 2019