June, 2020 – Hell in a Handbasket - 1. Part One: From a Time of Plague

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Summer 2020 –

Hell in a Handbasket

by AC Benus

Part One:

From a Time of Plague

I.

Only the ignorant proudly boast

of their ignorance.

The humble hurt to know

they don't know everything.

The former should “Shut up the

arrogance from their mouths.”

And the latter should speak up

more often than they do.

II.

Mortality courses through our life-blood,

For some, virus lurks there; for others, not;

as age, many feel it nipping the bud

of a lived-life waiting to be forgot.

These times of plague fuel up the haughty man

Preaching hubris to all like-minded souls,

blindly drawn to a death more quickly than

powers damning simple reason's controls.

So, bleak though it may be, calm is needed,

And ears attuned to their own best accord,

Listening to those who know mortality

courses within ourselves to be adored

by friends, spouses, and kids' vitality.

Love cannot save us, I'm afraid that's true,

But death seems short when love is all we knew.

III.

The human race has rushed toward one thing,

And blithely views its own destruction still,

For the plans others pick for us are staring

dead-eyed, turning upon extinction’s mill.

For now Avarice schemes how to abscond;

Inaction assures the worst conditions;

Billionous Consumption’s forced to be Donned;

Rage, Pride, Rape, Envy – are the new ambitions.

Fortuna turns her equalizing wheel

No more now than Justice wears her blindfold,

Because our fate’s there for the Rich to steal,

While we say, act or dream nothing uncontrolled.

Seven are the traits praised today as good,

Letting Death reap virtue’s final statehood.

IV.

The Four Horsemen now ride in on Hummers,

Guns blaring out a death knell randomly

making this spring hell, like icy summers

swamping all temperate seasons tandemly.

Seditions clothed in decades of lies come

forward to take down what has always been hope’s

best shot for their kids to wrest from The Some

a life better outside their parent-scopes.

So, War’s paved the way for wide starvation,

Winning at all Costs, Pandemic rampant,

While we of false innocent pervasion

watch, wond’ring how things got to this extent.

Look no further than your own heart, human;

From you have the Horsemen learned their acumen.

V.

616 – the real number of the Beast

To me, at last, the answer’s come

the age-old quandary now explained,

For I’ve understood at long last

the role granted to the dull-brained.

Seals were broken; public law smirched,

the wicked placed at the table

which world events would soon make quake

and moon-calve something horrible.

The butt-head Whore of Babylon

in his hands each a dirty bowl,

one with Iraqi oil and blood –

one, graven lucre filthy as coal.

But knowing this, what’s to be done?

How to re-cage the beast that's strode

with hate these twenty years since then,

where upon War's back, new Sluts rode.

Why preach about the snively Bush

that burned with dark, Satanic fire

for profit, death, rape and sin, when

current times his goals much admire.

VI.

How right were the parents of those children

Who warned their baby-boomer brood outright

They'd ruin all with egotism bidden –

Through their congenital lack of foresight.

Now the world sees the victors of Great War,

Depression, privation, needless death wrought,

purified by sweat and blood, are no more –

sacrificed to the greed their bastards sought.

So how right were their folks telling them straight

The Me-Generation would bring the fall

of all that was good, decent, in this State –

this Land's soul decimated by their gall.

Green is the callousness for Me’s own kids,

Made to swim in their folks' bile-like acids.

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