June, 2020 – Hell in a Handbasket - 7. Part Seven: A Less Perfect Union

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Part Seven: A Less Perfect Union

From a Time of Plague III

XLII.

Those Sitting on Thorns

Profound of harm is Cyber’s deep Spy State,

Network-casting an indiscriminate

Phishing sweep o’er those who can’t concentrate,

And thus, know not what fate is imminent.

Each of us is made criminal when they

Are allowed to police down our ideas

Entrapped illicitly, yet made parley

Felony charges as panaceas.

They watch our every move online, and wait

Till we can be censored with their baton,

For now they’ve passed so many laws, we’re all

Dollar signs to the Private Police State

Leeching public funds for its magic wand

To pay for “law & order’s” crystal ball.

XLIII.

“After this I witnessed another angel

Descending from the heavens on high.

So glorious appeared his authority,

The entire Earth became enlightened

When the command of his voice

Sang out its woe:

‘Fallen, fallen is the Nation Once Great!

She’s become but a crash-house for fiends.

She’s but safe harbor for the greedy and uncaring soul;

A refuge for every jackdaw, dripping with carrion gore.

For she has forced all Peoples drink

The toxic liquor distilled from

The profanity of material lust.

The leaders of the earth have been coerced

To engage in venereal commercial

Intercourse with her,

And the Wall-Street elite of the world

Screw her to sink in more depravity luxious

From her lack of moral integrity.’”

— Book of Revelations 14:6-8

XLIV.

Stupidity swings the loudest sledgehammer

Mobs far drunk on Destruction’s lust might employ

To uproot masonry’s work, while they clamor

Slogans that don’t consider what they destroy.

For they’d condemn two Presidents’ lives in bronze

Who jointly worked a pure, single sheet of gold

Ensuring that Good could break slavery bonds

And spell out no one’s soul can be bought and sold.

Assassinate Lincoln then a second time;

Throw ropes ‘round Grant’s and his neck in ignorance

That Abe gave his life to pay for the South’s crime

And write ‘Black Lives Matter’ in drops his blood imprints.

So pause your Movement in your passion’s fire;

Build, don’t wreck monuments there to inspire!

XLV.

June Rollcall at the Supreme Court

Is there a right lyrical form

To sing of a court that avows

‘Equal Justice Under the Law’

And hints at what those words espouse?

For Rights, five justices made clear

Party loyalty is a crime

If it asks to deprive freedom

At this dangerous point in time.

For, see how the Gops reacted? –

Immigrant kids allowed to stay;

Equal rights for Gays, at long last;

A woman’s control over her

Reproductive health reinforced.

For the Dreamers specifically,

These innocent kids of migrants,

The Republican Admin acts

As dumb as water-boards,

Saying the law passed by Congress,

Affirmed by courts, top to bottom,

Is still “unconstitutional.”

They either slept through their high school

Civics 101 classes, OR

Have no idea how our nation’s

Establishment makes it all work….

OR…or, this Administration

Is the one unconstitutional

Enemy of The People here.

Knowing this explains the brown pants

Republicans are seen wearing

As they go ‘bout their daily lies

With a Court their shit now airing.

Next on the justices’ docket?

Demanding Trump show his Russian ties –

Putin’s thrall must show his taxes

And with it, the Gop party dies.

XLVI.

After three-plus years

There’s a bitter taste lingering

In the former phrase

Of a “more perfect union.”

From sore Gop misuse

It’s sat festering shallow,

Like some bad strep throat

After laying neglected –

Stagnant water stuck

As if in a plumbing trap –

Bitter on the tongue

Barfed up from Republican

Gullets of disease.

XLVII.

This election year, I stumbled upon

The first candidate speeches recorded

More than a hundred years dead and long gone

Off’ring us what 1912 afforded.

Wilson, Taft and Roosevelt each had goals

That make today’s Progressives seem backward;

And Gops, cowardly extremists, sold-souls.

We’ve lost so much since those speeches were heard.

In less than thirty, the Gops have taken

Values back a hundred and fifty years –

Poof – progress gone in the vapor of hate.

They’ve convinced forward movement’s mistaken,

Replaced with poverty, too many tears

And internal conflicts that now seal our fate.

XLVIII.

Divide & Conquer

It’s the only way bad guys can win,

But just pause a moment and think

What if things had gone right?

– No Ronnie Recession;

No King Bush the First.

– No King Bush the First;

No blubbering Butt-Head Criminal

Slut-Brained The Second.

– No blubbering Butt-Head Criminal

Slut-Brained The Second;

No Dumpster-Diving in a nation

Starved for social, immigration,

Economic, LGBT, medical, racial – etc., etc.,

etc. – Justice and leadership right now.

– And because of Trump,

No new president ever again?

But, what if things had gone the right way?

Just pause a moment and think before you vote

Because Divide-n-Conquer is the ONLY way they can win.

XIL.

The Heavy Toll of “Leadership”

Ron:

“Clean up Berkeley,” 1966, “a haven for communist sympathizers, protestors, and sex deviants [meaning F**s].”

Toll: 1 dead, 1 blinded, 32 in intensive care after police open fire with assault rifles on college students.

Dick:

“Listen, the boys on college campuses today,” 1970, “are the luckiest people in the world.”

Toll: Ohio militia guns down 9 victims, and sends another to the morgue. Mississippi cops beat 14 college kids; 2 fatally.

Don:

“They’re my people,” 2017.

Toll: Charlottesville hate-riot. Local police stone and mace peaceful counter-protestors, letting Neo-Nazis mow them down with cars – killing at least 1 and sending 10 more to the ER. In the Summer of 2020, this has become Trump’s “My People’s” way of terrorizing anti-hate demonstrators.

L.

What if; what if

Advancement had not evaporated

In the vapors of their hate.

What if

Hate-mongers hadn’t weaponized fear

To assault the very notion of progress?

LI.

Malachi might warn of Nature’s viral fire

Refining mankind; making the high, low:

Exalting through valleys like a death-fed pyre –

Declaiming no difference in ashes though.

Consider COVID the Environment’s rage –

A social distancing before the curtain

Falls on our brief moment upon the Earth’ stage,

And we’re heckled to the sidelines for our sin.

Cowled Death waits in the wings for us with its

Once benevolent sweep of a shepherd’s crook

That keeps us away from harm while it still permits

A taste of the freedom from all it might brook.

But now that gentle curve is iron scythe

To mow down and extinguish human life.

LII.

Division, mayhem,

Un-American behavior and morals

Total debasement

Of optimistic morale, started with

Amoral toad, Gingrich.

So it’s nat’ral Gop politicizing

Of ‘entitled’ rage

Rots the flesh of American Decency

Like frostbitten hearts

Locked in the chest of Repub depravity.

LIII.

This summer, Death unchecked across the land,

Political vendetta makes The Trump

Now of all times insist the Supreme Court dump

The Rights to insurance already in hand.

What’s Donnie’s obsession to countermand

Obama’s laws like a dog in mid-hump,

Mad in his mind, foaming, doddering grump,

Who doesn’t care he’s Custer at his last Stand.

Real people with real jobs are dying out there,

When the affordable health act is all they have

To save their children’s lives with Obamacare,

And this cheese-puff dictator, crackpot of salve

Demand this last bastion of decency “fall”

To slay a higher percentage of us all.

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