If you dare to tell him he can’t,
The monster starts his dancing rant.
The noise blasts an half-empty House
Where nothing stirs, not even a louse.
His legs lift just so high and pound
And pound the ground like myriad rounds
Aimed to shell the foundations
Of once allied loyal nations.
(He makes of enemies his friends
For obvious and evil ends.)
His confused shrieking grows louder,
Anger eloquent as gun powder.
When dance and rant become one,
The work of dictatorship’s begun.
Potus, a defeated devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of others' so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Potus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.
Is the word a tautology?
It seems to mean “if less, less.”
Or is it, as in theology,
Tinged, like faith is, with a guess?
What will happen is contingent
On (an unless) what might not be,
Should the past or future invent
Some unclear possibility.
We use the word every day.
Are we afraid to speak the truth,
To even believe what we say
(Old, we say it — less in our youth),
Nor mean to understand unless
We think unknowing to express?
It’s impossible, a contradiction
Of being, a false manipulation.
The mistake is in not knowing,
Like a child mimicking a curse,
Without any idea what it means.
At four I once told my brother,
“I wish you would go to hell,”
Then added, “no, don’t go to hell.”
Hell being no more than a word —
Yet I was vigorously punished
With a dozen stripes of a strap.
Some think we’re not born innocent,
Like the lion, the viper, or the lamb,
But by some withheld benediction
That can only be lost in the learning,
Which in itself taints the newly-wise.
The veins in a sick hand, febrile
And limp, are not guilty till lifted.
“The only truly innocent are dead,”
Some say. No greater lie ever said,
Because even they are burdened
By all that has come before. Not sin,
Not ignorance, but the spoken word,
The lie given breath willingly,
For no other purpose than to know.
“Some chose to run, many to hide
Inside their temples and rooms,
Where every one of them died
In incendiary tombs.
I walk in a mourning fog
Outside and inside my mind,
Hand in hand with Gog in Magog
And all the rest of my kind.”
“What are these floods and fires
And stupidity admirers
(Viruses in a cracked petri jar)?
How can I fight the coming war
We’re already losing day by day
As we run, slower and slower, away?”
The invention of the assembly line,
The conveyor belt, the repetition
Of a single simple task by one man,
Produces all that is useful and fine.
Let me push the button of ignition
On armor as heavy as a tin can.
No bullet can penetrate my new skin,
Sleek and silver and exquisitely thin.
I'm so perfect now a parade of me
Runs past the smokestacks of the factory.
I'm joined by a smart, lock-loaded army;
As we march, everyone behind his hood,
Goose-stepping, bright phalanx of right for good,
We stare down the decadent and swarthy.
