No good moves left
No discussions
Worth having
No more lunches
With the brilliant
Or the famous
Only the final steps
Of the last cold trail.
The endgame
A Pale Horse
They dance with the idea
it consumes them wholly
wrought from ancient fear
of what they thought was holy
The rich move them like pawns
and laugh at their red deeds
then a fearsome day soon dawns
and their anger makes us bleed
Lies and hunger and a sense
of loss and falling down
the talking heads talk nonsense
about their stolen crown
They follow blindly and with glee
they chant and curse and sing
they smash and kill and plea
for praise from a would-be king
The center holds for one last stand
the guardians beat back the horde
they will return as they had planned
to commit what some abhorred
Some bolder hand will hold their reins
the broken veil falls from our face
the death’s head move for sordid gains
a triumph of a darker grace
So thus our city on a hill
shining for those with lifted eyes
crumbles into rubble still
just a shambles in disguise
Political Skepticism
Here we are in cold of midwinter
An election has passed
With misery and fanfare
A new government is sworn in
And we will joyously revel
That the State has come back from the brink
Yet the same crew
That have been running the fetid swamp
Continue to muck their way through
And the people of the “United” States
Wallowing in their misery
Hoping to see change
While keeping the same corrupted people in charge
Who have perpetuated the problems
The nation experienced for decades
There were lessons learned and missed
From the last four-year experiment in collective rule
A Republic cannot stand
If its leadership is dysfunctional
You cannot unify a nation
Through bully and insult
You do not build liberty
By silencing voices
Even those that make you uncomfortable
There is no wise demagogue
That can pull us all through
The real strength of governance is
When We the People make ourselves heard
The allegiance should not be to party or person
But to ideals- the ones from our founding
Even when we have struggled to execute them as intended
It is a pity that we continue to accept
A system with only two options
Making it so much easier to keep us divided
The people suffer for lack of options
And the same old networks
Ensure the game never changes
The United States is so much more varied
So much more diverse
Than the continual representation
By a handful who consider themselves elite
We deserve governance that reflects us-
The variated many
With all the chaos and conglomeration required
For multi-party rule
Without change we will continue
To toss back and forth in a bi-polar bipartisanship
As the pendulum swings
And we the fickled masses dance
Convictions
I collect, the withered soul-husk said,
my grievances, peeves, and spleen.
Some people yet live, others are dead,
but my dislikes are evergreen.
Are you never wrong, I asked hollow-eyes
for their mood I could not understand.
It is simple, they said, there is never surprise
for I make up my mind beforehand.
My collection of foes and adversaries
the dark-shadowed speaker opined,
is in lists and logs and cemetaries,
newer members are easy to find.
But what of your friends and relations,
I questioned the hard-hearted shell.
They said that folk’s feeble narrations
contradicted all they knew so so well.
There’s no need to excuse any whinery
from people or even hear them out.
If you have beliefs fully binary,
said the wraith-head, it removes any doubt.
I was going to ask about love,
and sympathy seasoned with trust.
To my horror, their eyes turned above,
and they thereupon fell into dust.
Immolation
This is a poem I never wanted to write.
Idiocy on display forces my hand.
This is how great nations die
Self-absorbed citizenry believing the hype
That their own person desires are more important than
The good of the nation as a whole
A failure of education
And of civility
The stupidity of wanting
Life without consequence
Talking heads spewing
And the gullible rolled up as fodder
by those taking and faking sides
The people act without knowing
Thermador, the Bonfire of the Vanities
Pray for a Phoenix rebirth