if seasonings were dishes (and greetings meet)

in miniature:

a children's version

of

the birth of actual news.

yes, Virginia,

there is
a

reality out there.

"America" has just
never been introduced.

a cricket at time's hearth; ~ *>* ~*~ *~* ~*~ *<* ~ grasshopper Jiminy's soulful soliloquy

going by the mainstream's

liberally hacked,

culpability weaned,

divisive spliced,

splained and spleened,

reality hijacked,

context smithereened,

protection racket plaqued,

teaming of seeming,

nostalgia gleamed

narrative shellacking

of

understanding's lack

as seen in a theatre near you,

say, in the apps

enveloping

the tap

of

developing

stories and trappings

sorting and stamping

rampant conformity

on tapestried "happenings"

framed in

famed taming's

toxic proxies' box,

or aligned in the shrill

reassuring sidelines

of social media's

authority sororitied

Rapunzel

tunnelled funnellings

individual awakenings

(which is to say, our only hope)

tend to sound like

grains of sand

in a fire cracked

hourglass

rolling off a

nuclear optioned

fable stabled

table top.

for it's always been the case

that our relative,

time

more than likely

a second cousin

of

the focus choking

devotional

notion

of

self,

is,

naturally enough,

our enemy

like the one

we met

in

Pogo's gentle mirror.

and no one can define

when unbridled fleecing's

relentlessly unheeded

feed back loops,

of earthen respiration

and societal desperation,

all those industrial

self-righteous

piloted,

mythically predisposed

infections of projection,

swirling their inevitable

karma armed

banded and binding

denial drugged

under the rug

out of mind

stackings of traction

in man-unkind's

landmined

nightmare panoply,

will snatch from our

as yet helpless,

unrecognised hands

the fragile opportunity

sparked by

the increasingly

"intelligence" monitored,

"full spectrum dominance" adhered,

fear peered

and

ceiling waxed

all too human

connection of the internet,

that greatest of all threats

perceived

by the

powers that own,

reflexively censored

for its radical tendency

to

undermine

consumptive presumption's

white god goaded

complacency bloated

winningest finned

reflectionless gloated

divinely anointed

self-appointed

policing greased

crowning of thy good

(which is to say,

the seal of assumption

of the independence billed

bootstrap scooted

Hollywood rooted

in piracy looted

progressively

possessive pilgrim's

will silled

freedom to kill.)

*

here's to a rash

of nationhood chucking,

i-magi-nation plucking,

tribal bible demagnitising,

divided conquering

skewed news imbibing

rivalries unprising,

offensive defenses untriggering,

disordered

and

borderless

wake up calls

before the unforeseen

consequences

already quilting at full tilt

past every elective circus,

ringing in the searing

roar of scoring profits

toted in the good guys'

inviolable dividends

Gollummed column

of precious,

plague ridden externalities

forecast amidst the

bloodless rocks,

mothering of bombs,

sanctified starvation

and genocidal tidings

of the lesser evil

otherings of collateral

snagging first place

in the concerted

revolving

selfishness absolving

change blurting

flirting skirting

bipartisan escorted

hoard boarded,

railed

and ushered in

labour belaboured

Christ unsavoured

phased in tasered

We the

wee People

incorporated

race

to

the

bottom,

tied with pride's umbilical cord

to a competition drummed,

Nature thumbed,

scientifically progressed,

invested paranoia blessed,

racist placist

indigenous erasist

psychopathic insistence

on

ruling the unfurled world

tucks in

the slipped

through

our

senseless fingers

singed

remains

of

life on earth's

humanity strained dust.

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the 24^th of November, 2020

embrance

and now for something completely different, in honour of yet another

focus hewing day, designed to misremember what America's relentless

beaconing does unto others, Marcella Giulia Pace offers us her winsome

colourings of the moon.  for the brown tinged grey of that mysterious

sauntering companion, hovering beyond our breathy atmosphere,

strained through a screening of framed sheenings over ten years'

devotion to perspective hoppings amidst votive Italian perches,

illumined through the varying blue light scattering and dust accruing

ruddy earthen sway, provides an almost giddying display.

repeated, defeated,
brittle skirted
and shatter shuttered;

infecting projection,

its gloom foredoomed

on obliteration's
self possessive loom;

felicitations on the remembrance of all things cast.

*

- Evan Hawthorn, 11 11 2020

on the trail of a manticore's spore (on the day before another oarless or)

so Alfonso just bumped into the knob
that tunes up the tv,
as an anxious voice admonished us
to not turn "our nation"
over to the "crazy radical left."

as if anything approaching a left
could possibly exist
in reality's homeland.

as if a different humanitied wind
could even quiver
the relentless mainstreamed sway

of consumptive presumption's
patriot plated racist placist
indigenous erasist
rooted dismal failure
to comprehend a worldly view,

blared by the duelling
propaganda outlets,

mined by the right and whiter
firmamenting parties.

they may as well be warning us
about kindness taking hold.

or that snowball's chance in hell
we'll ever stop interfering
in other peoples' governments.

me, i'm worried about
bendy plowshares
dulling our freedom,

letting the bottom fall out
of the trillion dollar weapons industry.

and what about the scarcity of manticores?

who's gonna' save us from those
ubiquitous unicorns,

poking holes in our tightly reined
nationhooded projection,

focusing its profitable dearth
of selfless connection's
universal reflection

on the starless midnight,

so bleakly oblique,

of barking's darkling matter?

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the last day of severing's nethered ever

(it being Hallowe'en and all...)

 

enriched by
dimensional differences,
dear Linus and i
go on hatching our patches.

he burns a temporal candle,
howling praises for greatness,
whilst i,
on another, timorous hand,
yearn for an Illuminated Pumpkin.

the framing that tamed the naming of fascism <*>><<*> (the trumping of a bump in the lumpen night)

and so,
fallowed in the narrows
and barrel heralded,

the ringed siding
runged from the right
progressively possessive

hallowed liberal lights

would have us believe,

loosed upon
the bravely staved
liberty plowing
"homeland"
of the disconsolate

banders of sand,

loomed in the lurid headlights
of the electively untuned,

that art in heaven,
praetorian Pentagon's
shock of ages
coronation usurping
bull in a china chopping block
dives of the rich and famous,
glommed aplomb
for pluming
the duking of the Klan,
bomb mothering,
presidentially perfumed,
compassion entombing
unprecedented beast

fascism

rears again its ugly head.

and yet,

(bearing in mind
the many ways
there doubtless are

of skinning the blindered,
Wee the mindered,
blithely abiding People)

what is so convincingly
being defined here,

shorn of its floodlighting
comparison garrisoned
lobotomy by dichotomy,
revile compiling
ism calling card,

is surely the very
selfsame thing

that all the most promising
practical politicians,
the very best cropping up
sopping up,
rusted us or thrusted bust
dusted crust of leaders

in the netting of vetting's
trendset abetting,
patriot bait ladening,
vesting of editors
and nesting screenwriters,

and the called in authoritied,
evidence free jamboree
of commentator sororitied

(and now a word from our
weaponized sponsors)

well spoken spokespersons,

thronging along
with that vintage singsonged
unfulfilled longing
by
the winningest heroes,
patriot preachers
and paid to yea slay sayers

in the seamless teaming
of unindicted war criminals
and broken toy generals
in armchairs and consoles,

seventeen proliferating
unaccountable agencies
of unconstitutional
coup plotters,
turbulence allotters and spies,

the rearing of fearing's
overriding
careening careering
boxes of cheered
steerings of fearleaders,

the bipopular demanders
of me too's fire on the pyre
exempt white feminist
richly peremptory
trials by headline,

and last not least
in the inevitable yeast,
the trust embedding
voicings over
anchors of gravitas -

(indeed,
all that passes
the constructed obstructed ken
of
the designer IVs

with their carefully maimed
opposing flavours
and currented savours,
coming up roses hoses,
and divisive spurting
divertings

emotively poking
those red and blue
manicured
separately herded receptors

in faining's planing
vanely reining,
intelligence obstaining,
infection of projection

mainstreaming of media,

and throwing in
the whole canned and reserved
preserves of domination
at whatever the cost
kit and kaboodle

from Sunday school teachers,
and super hero action flicks
to sporting's vicarious
paraded testosterone windups
and manned up mythical

toasty hoaxed folksy
fireside chats) -

'tis the very same
exclusively appropriated
we decide whose freedom
gets invaded
god's grace pervaded
purely raced force debased thing

all these crowning thy good
blindering Americans
unable to see the genocidal
monopolised policing greased
seizure of shining seas

they've been swimming in

have been uniformly presenting
as the world's sole exceptional

reeled wheels of exemplary freedom

for all these starless, midnight years

since they managed
to securely isolate
the contagiously
courageous,
complicated
and disorderly
myriad forest
of untamed vision

lurking in the spontaneous
free association
of communes,

illegals,
Zapatistas,
indigenous holy persons,
recalcitrant love children,
Latin American

liberation theologists,
non-hierarchical
collectives,
and all those
Nazi squashing socialists
murdered in Greece and Italy
as the greatest degeneration
tidied up its post goodly war
saving the world theatre,

amidst an
insistently misted
unnamed host
of ghosted, silenced,
and sidelined thinkers,
the Black Panthers,
Robert F. Kennedy,
Ho Chi Minh,
Gamal `Abdul-Nasser,
Patrice Lumumba,

Kwame Nkrumah,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar,
Eugene V. Debs,

Che Guevara,
Crazy Horse,
Malcolm X,
Jesus Christ,
the Buddha,
and
Martin Luther King.

*

and then,
after the long expected arrival
of the manifestly destined,

connection to humanity scoffing,
silken glove doffing,
independence offing,
plague ridden blankets
handed out coughing,

overdue karma
of Custer disappointed,
cash register anointed,
obsessively pointed to
culpability disjointed,

avidly groomed by
"reality's" producers
and the abdicated press
to capture all attention
from those lever pulling,
extinction fueling,

fealty to cruelty
inequality accruing,
psychopathic jewellers
tucking Americana's
paranoia first
slushed prophets of war
behind their velvet curtains,

the slithering con man
self possessed par excellence,

pride's genocide lionist
capitalist piranha prima donna
xenophobic Zionist messiah,

the keeps on spieling
make my day
what's in it for me shtick
carrying the biggest
bullying dick,

that complete and perfect
personification
of belief naif
in the state's own

(inked by George Washington
synced by Andrew Jackson
gushing since John Wayne)

racist placist propaganda

at long last
was able to bring

the tattered and bartered,
sapped battery
of railed empaling's
privilege tillaged,
memory hole trolled,
eavesdrop treaded,
faith based followers
and
consumptive presumptive
infotained accomplices
of
the Masters of War's
profiteering party
that nonsensically
calls itself Democratic

to finally notice fascism's
eloped from history
quarantinable existence,

and the apparition
of opposition's

regency of specious
militant apparency
pops up on schedule,

closing all the doors
and arching all the windows,
garotting teamless eyes
with a kine boothed dome,

lugging out Hitler
for the zillionth consecutive
iteration
of identification reassigning
playstation demonisation,

issuing pointed definitions

(to sharpen the traction
of elusive either oring's
protraction of distraction),

increasing the warnings
from yellow to orange,

to head us nasty Russian bots
and Iranian bedwetting stooges
off at the treasonous pass

(because who the hell else
could possibly be on the left
of the self appointed good guys
whose fingerprints are on
the throats of starving children
and whose divinely mined
intervening protection
requires eight hundred
military bases
in other peoples' spaces?)

to tell us with their
trademarked
shrugged rug tugging,
purse string strung
diversitied slight of face
for the umpteenth time

we can vote against it

simply by voting for it.

*

'well, ain't that a relief?'

sighed Ahmed,

(a fragile brown eyed memory

of unrecognisable untethered skin
on that flattened little hill
left over from the second
surprise drone attack
to obliterate a cousin's wedding
and harvest all his sheep,

a year from Thursday last,

that nobody who's anybody
will ever talk about.)

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the 25^th of October, 2020

[and now we pause, here in alienation's supinely primed homeland, for a duplicitous message from the proud liberal sponsors of unrepentant nuclear aggression]: >*< "The Strung, Freedom Wrung, Unimpeded March of Chimes" *(an honest history of the lockstep trajectory of the last fifty years)*

you mean to tell me
that all the way back then
they'd already mastered
the reassuring art
of flipping creamed
and finessed
feel good phrases

wrought entirely
from
the specious "helpings"
of
empty narrative

meant to string along
their
starry-eyed,
ubiquitously blanketed,
unminded presumption
numbed,

projected infection
of
protracted redaction's
distracted inaction 

masquing the acute
destitute reality
that democracy's
undermining,
minority stifling,
photo op trifling,
independence siphoning,
absolved revolving half
of
the tinned sin prideful refining,
wince tinting, whiteness minting,
spin dinning, libertied rifling,
war "winning",
brotherhood knifing,
vicious circling status quo

in fact actually,
most assuredly and obtusely,
as an unalterable matter
of parring its course,

resolutely serve
the rote,
colour by number,
runnething asunder
lavishly funded "interests"
of oligarchical masters 

and that,

after all this time,

excepting a fragile hiccup

(from back in the dewy day when
they could still be made afraid of us)

shuddering its fractured opening
breath of freedom's
unconditional love
for our mother's othered children,

shakening the awakening sixties,

startling whole schools of fish
with the unexpected
reflection
of
the pooling of prevailing's
strident abiding
genocidal tides
they'd been swimming in

or,
as the Trilateral Commission
so tellingly put it in the seventies

(once the dust from the nick of time
CIA assassinations had settled
and the "presidential"
precedence
had been safely restored,
allowing an in depth focus
on the mere making of waves),

the "excess of democracy" crisis
in which the "wrong people"
thought they deserved a voice

compellingly silenced
by its promptly profited by
bud nipping recommendations,
thanks to the
monied establishment's
Black Panther stamping,
think tank ramp revamping
Me First regeneration
of the Star Wars and Alzheimer's
warlord trademark
unremarked,
zippity do dahed dippered Gipper,

after all these intervening decades,

(that is to say,
this otherwise unwavering trajectory
of well over half a century)

during which
the focus cloaked, whorily chorused,
offensively knotted, Overton slotted,
lockstep bipartisan march to the right

relentlessly moved us,

rocketing stock
and
querulous barrels,

almost off the dangling edge
of
humanitied earth,

*

turning "Democrats"
into far right Republicans

(indistinguishable
from the pander laced
complacent patrioptics
of law abiding Nazis
in the nineteen thirties)

and "Republicans"
into aluminum sided,
platinum blinded,
Christ eviscerated
baptising ostriches
ducked in dunes
with
pale insecurity's surety
of
merciless radical goons;

*

qualmlessly evolving
the trifecta'ed slurping up
of what were once
public funds
in the no child left
an independent mind
uniformly stormed
privatising of schools,

screening out even
uptight tradition's
next door to atrophied
remote possibility
of kindling and nurturing
responsive
and
questioning
humans to think;

*

at long last resolving
the always creased
and pocketed Congress
into a stasis entrenching
parasitic millionaires' club;

*

rendering the judicial branch
a militant withered shrub
of paranoia flaked,
industriously raked,
psychopathically staked,
"full spectrum dominance"
opaqued state secrecy;

*

harassing and starving
the remaining unflinching
independent nations

(who,
the unanimous animus
of the bullying empire's
ruled "consensus"
birthday suit institute
of dapper wrapped
stenographer clothiers
vehemently assures us
are
bad guys bar Sinister
haters of freedom, all)

despite bipartisan spite's
seamlessly indefatigable
unending molestation,
nonetheless engaged
in fine tuning
the mile in their own moccasins
burden of their own songs;

*

smugly presiding over
the united jingoistic fronted
"State Department"
turned de facto mafioso
compliance enforcers 

openly cohooting with
the IMF and World Bank
to twist the thumbscrews of austerity
on the obedient little minnows
anxious to avert
the disastrous
disfavour
of
the Mother of Bombs

(Mama's little helper "democracies")

that tow,
in escrow,
the profitable line;

*

religiously employing
woodwork crawling
zombie legions
of corporate operatives,
like so many evil monks,
their hatching pens never leaving off
those "free trade" agreements
Clinton and Obama obsessively pressed,

*

resulting in casting out
large numbers of our cousin
corn planters of intrepid subsistence,
nuestras familias Méxicanas,

unable to compete with
the beacon of
marketing subsidised floods,

suffering the little children
of lingering land theft's
bereft unrecognised neighbours
to grapple amidst
the piled refuse
of the world's most hopeless
sprawl of desperate density,

*

simultaneously forcing
precariously ensconced
indigenous farmers
throughout the
Gorgon of Globalisation's
hobbling gobbled South
to give up their grandmothers'
locally resilient seeds

as tax payer guilded megafarms
spread genetic engineering
to the utter ends of dearth

where single expansed crops
so vulnerable to climate change
(or the next biblical plague
of single minded locusts)
require oft as not
bankrupting fertilisation,

belching forth literally
hundreds of thousands
of (scrupulously unreported
in the wealth obsessed,
self possessed
press of the West)
ends unmet
family let down
fertiliser sluiced suicides,

*

and likewise making standard
the obscene right of corporations,

(like, say, Canadian mining outfits)

to sue ostensible states,

(as in rainforested Ecuador)

for exorbitant fortunes

(a brand new form
of the wiles of the West's
intrusive extortion),

successfully alleging
the unconscionable crime
of interfering with expectant profits
by trying to protect their environments,

(a taken to heart
attempted representation
all but unimaginable
here in alienation's
supinely primed homeland)

rendering their citizens
as voiceless over policy
as Americans themselves,

"free trade" thus liberating
independent sovereignty
of any meaning at all,

rather underscoring
the basic lie of nationhood

now that Western based,
piracy traced,
internationally faced corporations
buy and sell countries
like so many ruptured futures,

like powerless macrocosms
of the disregarded masses
they routinely prey upon

whilst patting the Kumbaya backs
of the Euro descent
pride goeth descant
of chosen "essential" people,

rippling with all those
Hollywood stipulated
benevolent intentions

that allow them to critique
other peoples' choices
and forms of government

in need of being
productively realigned
with their "good guy" inclined,
white god goaded,
blithely styed,
righted side of "history";

*

unleashing Pandora's
suicidal juggernaut
of outrageous inequality

(incidentally left out
in the red stained rains
at the stormed Bastille)

by steadily accruing
over several decades
the virtual dismantling
of all functioning oversight,

(long before the monopolied misledia's
Frankenstein flocking the paling kine
wee willy syndrome poster child,
strutting the ratings of distraction
before their velvet curtains,
bringing Christmas every day
to the Mammon gammoned elite,
was even groomed to stomp along)

clogging our tear ducts
with thousands
of untested chemicals,

(their unstudied interactions
predisposing maladies
in pre-bundled
laden blessings yet to come),

snuffing the oceans,
along with our bloodstreams,
with eternally infernal plastics,
sizzling the last living coral reefs,
summoning earthquakes
in frack attacks on the real
homelanded Americans'
remnant earthen berths,
replacing Brazilian rainforest
with soybeans for beef,
antibiotic stuffed,
ozoned miles racking up
flown half way round the world,

strangling every reined bit
of raving air wave caved,
quality of life waived,
veiled public thievery paved,
tailed minority jailed,
health care third railed,
white sale impaled Commons,

leaving ripped up roads,
poisoned water,
and the no longer necessary,
drawn and quartered,
misinformed in two flavours
aimed at rival receptors
ghosted citizen indebted "consumers"
in an uncertain and tremulous
pestilent wake;

*

persistently enabling
the pilgrims' progress
in aid of
intolerance
erasist crusade
of accustomed domination's
blatantly criminal
"regime change" agenda

(under the might privileging,
monopolised right to police,
empathy circumcised,
lorded, awed, and bordered,
competition mestastasised,
mesmerised guise of patriotism);

*

maintaining the tainting
of "exceptional" delusion's
careening equilibrium,
its unveering steering
taken in racist placist turns,

the protection racket's
stacked and bracketing
stockbroken asses
offsetting the vendettings
of lead weighted Republicans,

tilling facebook's
networked fretwork
authority sororitied hymnbook
of slicked specious flicks,
foreshadowing bloodied sands
and honing in drones
in the share if you agree
impairment apogee
of the volunteer stable
of fable enabled clicking cliques'
rigged emotive tugging sticks
for the game of throning stones,

and with their spare money is time
from sounding the silence
of a liberty shredded,
willingly treaded,
spied upon populace,

propping up the never letting up
funding of coups and terrorist gangs
and the violent proning of protests
tormenting the designated
noosed or rebranded
yet to be swallowed lands,

enhancing "stability's" instability
on half a demonised,
chaffed, or fêted calfed,
ours for the terrorising planet;

*

and to those entwining
action packed, high-tech pecked,
manned up, Risk® rearing,
righteous god spearing,
super hero justifying ends,

showering inconceivable trillions
on the rogue military beast

(each budget a broken record
regardless of party in power,
with one of the first feats
of the braying donkeys'
recent newfound majority 
upping Trump's bid
by nearly a hundred billion)

which naturally results
in stripping bare
the social programs
they pretend to be
(but couldn't possibly be) for, 

just like MLK
warned us they were doing
over fifty years ago

and yet,

one is tempted to
incredulously reiterate,

meanest thou to verily
imparteth
unto
me,

despite that overwhelming litany
of insistently overlooked,
totalitarian
evasion distorted,
projection of framings
falsely "reported",
conspiracy blearied
and
treasonous courted,

(Edward and Julian,
Chelsea and Noam's
crucifixions demanded
for the crime of making
unforgivably clear)

unteamed eyes to see

unselfied ears to hear

wholly observable truth,

here in the evidence free
sea of shining me
fear stoking lee
of
the CIA embedded,
super power unindicted,
ultimate doomsday embowered,
afflicting dominance addicted,
extinction fermenting
firmament's
change blocking party
of
the shock doctrine aristocracy's
choiceless shoved hypocrisy
starless midnight blight
attacking Trump from the right
hypnotic joke on democracy

the progressively conformist
faith based followers
clinging to their strings

are still latched on
to their entirely predictable,
context omitted,
presumption tightly knitted,
lesser evil retrofitted
hallucinogenic narrative?

surely you jest.

how depressing
can the predetermined unobservance
of
unattended reality get?

like roller coasters,
cinematic bloodbaths,
and the spilled, spitting thrills
of the alpha abetted misogyny
of propagandic pornography,

ever more horrific
heart stopping come acropping
inconceivably despicable
world destroying boogie men
preempting even a stray
quavering voice
of meaningful change,

forever forbidding
a single vote against
divinely anointed child starvation
and the resistance is futile
mass murder of parents

aren't half as scary
as the systematic void
that consistently creates them. 

Jiminy Cricket, Lucy,

i don't even PLAY f*cking football!

*

- Evan Hawthorn, the doggedly repetitive phased in daze of misbegotten summer,
                              in the supremely ironic year of our hoard directing overlords, 2020