Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
No help for victims civilian
by ‘defense’ budgets of a trillion
while The E.U.: crocodilian
NATO: East crawling reptilian
Ever darker clouds race
beyond Humanity’s whims:
letting our lives debase
hope for planet’s future dims
… as we indulge free reins
for hate filled hearts & brains
Sounds so demoralizing
her verbal ritual
Weighed down immobilizing
her yack perpetual
Her dear husband enlisted
for reasons simplistic
Their lives by Empire twisted
yet feel chauvinistic
They’re human raw material
to fill its hapless legions
on harsh campaigns Imperial
in to remotest regions
And so the War Machine
gobbles up recruits
Some eager to convene
to look sharp, salute
Empire’s goals & pursuits obscene
its glamor proves cosmetic:
To search out, destroy or demean
in violence frenetic
Carrying out command: ‘Fire!’
jingoistically
sets in motion outcome dire:
Blow back predictably
A Limerick on the occasion of Conner, a grandson, returning home to Sunset Hill in Seattle after serving as a paratrooper with the IDF.
There was a young man from Sunset Hill
with many talents & of strong will
As a paratrooper Conner
served IDF with honor
For now, I suspect, he’s had his fill
+)
IDF: Israeli Defense Forces
Urged on by (their voices shrill)
jingoistic sheeple
train Baby Faces to kill
die for other people
If instead us Middle Aged were called
many a war would surely have stalled
+)
sheeple = (derogatory, slang) people who unquestioningly accept as true whatever their political leaders say or who adopt popular opinion as their own without scrutiny
Are they being overwrought
in Military Paradise
those bemedaled Argonauts
who keep exhorting sacrifice:
for Freedom & Democracy
to flow out the barrel of the gun?
The life quenching hypocrisy
that the Argonauts shall never shun
Their faces don’t show pallor
while humming Te Deum
their proclaimed Christian Valor
contrary to Freedom
To secure empire Pentagon
handles wars of premeditation
It remains the sine qua non
to what’s needing annihilation
Leaving us to watch the Pentagon roll on
over the next small country it bears down on
The ‘peace dividend’
since fall of Mastodon
seemed a heaven-send
in 1991
But the Pentagon
please try to cotton on
can’t but carry on
needed to bear down on
Despite it’s vainly bloat
it just won’t concede
a single tank, plane, boat
or other war steed
seemed at time providential
turned out inconsequential
+)
-cotton on = understand, or begin to understand
-1991 = the collapse of the Soviet Union (here: Mastodon)
The careerist know-it-all
with elite tries to blend
with supercilious gall
determined to ascend
He knows how ingratiate
of superiors kiss their butts
flatter, his CV inflate
Of rivals kick them in their nuts
Taps into people’s envy & fear
telling them the lies they wanna hear
Others we hate or fear
and regard with derision
We carry guns & sneer
amidst growing division
Facing constant suspicion
we’re piling up the munition
Self-defense our sole mission
sensing no need for contrition
Under the law of ‘stand-your-ground’
go ahead, fire another round!
Process never mysterious:
Elite’s manners once imperious
power keeps them delirious
while turns deadly deleterious
Whatever injustices the People decry
the Elite shall then dismissively justify
In her chair she’d swivel
pontificating
with much inane drivel
alienating
But as she’s the boss
I make my eyes glisten
can’t handle job loss
that thought jolts in frisson
and so goes yet another day
in the cutthroat corporate fray