Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Looming starkly dark
on lonely heath
hear death’s howling bark
with growling teeth
Warm colors faded to bleached
erstwhile joy jaded to sorrow
Voices chalk on blackboard screeched
as we cower from the morrow
Outlook cruel, bleak
no place for the weak
+)
heath = here: earthly life
When death by beheading
just the targets die
No bystander shredding
when children’s limbs fly
Nor any hospital wrecking
cultural desiccation
drone obliterated wedding
whole country devastation
Mass killings industrialized
by U.S. Exceptionalism
propagandized as ‘civilized’
though slaughter by Imperialism
Casualties mere ‘collateral’
when by Western Technology
While ‘war crime’ by Those Fanatical
of differing ethnology
Still each death an execution
under whatever delusion
In one by one retribution
or in conveyor profusion
No one may be a belittler
of the Evils brought by Hitler!
Still what is now holding sway
in ignorance fabled
to History’s sheer dismay
others are now labeled:
Like Hitler! Not like but worse
claim elites Americanized!
Unhinged, untenable curse
lie kept alive propagandized
You may ask what I’ll be doing today
of what is left for me to aspire?
If listlessly wiling the day away
why would anyone want to retire?
Gone now ‘prime of life’ energetic
barely just passably kinetic
But no, am not mired in an impasse
Boyle’s law explains it in this way:
Chores behave like decompressing gas
while few they fully fill each day
Now my life (on whose behest?)
is wantonly waning
am adrift, feeling bereft
of what joy remaining
On many days flatly harrowed
unmeritoriously
up paths steep & ever narrowed
shuffling laboriously
Led a life inglorious
deftly dissipative
Even found notorious
as opinionative
Scripted snappy talk ‘on the surface’
passes now for civility
like spouted in customer service
with breezy ease & certainty
While on screens placidly self absorbed
aloof from solidarity
is this where we think ourselves adored
embraced in popularity?
Shall (in a world harshly hackable)
head down texting keep us placable?
Indulge fantasy, discard reason!
Rich times in planet plundering
our Species’ finest fracking season:
Boundless bludgeoning, blundering
Greed brought upon us final defeat
raiding, rustling & ransacking
Soon no livable ground at our feet
as planet sending us packing!
Who but our own sweet Humankind
shall leave so much garbage behind?
In their owned world bright & novel
gallop swift equestrians
while in whirling dust we grovel
us plodding pedestrians!
While letting ourselves be kicked at
allowing us to be fooled
now under corporate diktat
we are all, profit fueled, ruled
Allow me state it to you straight:
Change now irreversibly late!
+)
-equestrians = here: the power elite, i.e. oligarchs, big corporations, wall street, military-industrial-surveillance, main stream media & their handmaiden politicians
(Written in 2014 after the US sponsored Maidan ‘regime change’ coup):
Now in Eastern Ukraine:
In Donetsk & Luhansk oblast
indiscriminate shellings
Western media not aghast
though hit hospitals, dwellings:
Local life & culture defaced
while thousands killed, millions displaced
Soon again in the Gaza Strip:
Time again. It is a
‘mowing of the lawn’
in defenseless Gaza
by IOF ‘brawn’
Like Freedom & Democracy inflicted on Iraq:
When phosphorus, uranium depleted
obliterated ancient Fallujah
by U.S. Empire in war crimes conceited:
Once again Freedom spreads, Hallelujah!
Industrial slaughters by design
while the world looks the other way
Failing help from Providence Divine
hapless civilians the main prey
+)
-Fallujah = dates from Babylonian times. White phosphorus bombs & depleted uranium shells were used by U.S., British & Iraqi forces under the command of General James Mattis in Nov 2004
-IOF = ‘IDF’ (Israel Defense Forces) a misnomer; rather the ‘IOF’ (Israel Occupying Forces)
-‘moving the lawn’ = Israeli policy phrase for the ‘degrading’ of Gaza every few years
Found too light when in action weighed
too many losing hands played?
Sheltering in verbiage’s shade
nerves shot & memory frayed?
Why do suffer ourselves talking
when from vital subjects strayed
avoiding, defending, balking
by flawed perspectives waylaid?
As well wise not to opine
on someone else’s hemline