June, 2020 – Hell in a Handbasket - 10. Part Ten: Handbasket

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Part Ten: Handbasket

Finale, True Colors

LXVII.

“For even now, the ax has been laid bare

Before the root of the trees, so that

Each failing to bring forth an honest harvest

Might be taken down and fed to the flames.”

— Book of Matthew 3:10

LXVIII.

Our checkout baskets ever fuller groan

For what items we think we’ve packed away

The cost racks the sum we’ll have to pay

To unpack one by one as a hot stone.

With no means to avoid now, or postpone,

The Reckoning’s total stands in our way

Before we move another foot today

And vast is our bill to the final Unknown.

The environment falls about our ears,

While plagues pandemic – political and

Blood-red sick like corona virus tears –

Fell every human hope bludgeoned by fears

From a Police State’s bigoted command,

Spelling doom in our fast-come End-of-Years.

LXIX.

i.

Shells

Across German forests the fires now rage

As they do all around the globe,

But among the hard-wood roots are bombs

Sown in war, the blind xenophobe,

To kill, to maim, to hurt those yet unborn,

To lay in wait for the right time,

Wreaking paused revenge on the innocent,

And make son pay for father-crime.

As metaphor, the fact is very apt,

For much of what’s buried today

Will naturally not have impact until

Future first-responders must stray

Upon the malice we’ve let go to seed

And explode on the innocent

Who’ll have to deal with the mess we’re making

And bury more dead in lament.

ii.

Economic Rain Forests

Biodiversity’s concept model

Speaks to more than ecology,

For as forests need plants both large and small,

Small business now dies in a spree

From government interfering, cyber

Spying from abroad, and Covid –

Four horsemen poised to shutter every door

And take neighborhoods off the grid.

Let the small plants die, and nothing survives –

This emergency is poised, rife

To extinguish the economy as

We’ve known it in modern life.

Let the economic undergrowth fade

And trunks of billion-dollar firms

Will be starved of all they need to make jobs

And will topple, fodder for worms.

iii.

Virulent Buffoons

Swinging in the Treetops

The political plague we’ve suffered through

Can be traced back to a “Bonzo”

Sent to Washington on a tide of lies –

A coot called Reagan, and new low –

One now revealed on tape to have referred

To Black diplomats as “monkeys”;

In the White House, in the Oval Office,

Getting “Yeah”s from Gop flunkies.

From that horrible ‘man’ with no ideals

We’ve been on a soapbox derby

Heading downhill at breakneck speed, till now

We see, the road to Hell’s swervy

With every possible sin, even treason

Enough to scare Benedict Arnold

From ever having a bad thought again,

Lest his name be slurred with this Ronald.

iv.

“Please forgive me”

And so our powder-keg moment ignites

With the clueless panicked, afraid

Once Humpty Dumpty’s shell is cracked open

All their privileges will be unmade

Exclusive, designed to shield powers that be,

But for all that’s gone and to come,

If we hold one spark to guide us through the night

It is we’re greater than our sum.

America is hope, and one man showed

Us what great power can discern –

Appearing at a BLM protest,

Holding an honest sign of tact;

“I’m sorry I’m late. I had a lot to learn.”

Hope, contrition, both are needed

As we look around, try to start healing,

And see where Good has been seeded.

~

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