Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Elites stir up the howling storm
amidst mellow middling calm
as their interest in us lukewarm
causes them not slightest qualm
Drawn in to empire’s slipstream
amidst paralyzing suction
Another gut-wrenching scheme
inescapable the ruction
As long as the elites aspire
us common people shall expire
The violence that the empire inflicts on the far reaches of the realm keeps returning home in ever fiercer vengeance, here a.k.a. ‘blowback’:
Empire forcing itself afar
implacably & scheming
Generals lust for that next star
Dark killing machines gleaming
Poor cultures obliterated
through mechanized pure evil
millions get ‘depopulated’
Now brings home the upheaval:
Empire has begun coming apart in whimper
Long overdue that its breezy smile turns simper!
Ending endless wars the sine qua non
for the reining in of the Pentagon
Still we’ll perish in climate collapse
part of the Sixth Mass Extinction
Even if changing as in time-lapse
won’t forestall Species’ eviction
We warred & consumed at our best
clinched Oblivion for the rest!
+)
-sine qua non = a prerequisite
-Sixth (Great) Mass Extinction = In the last half-billion years, life on Earth has been nearly wiped out five times. The planet is now entering the Sixth. Let’s give ourselves a strong hand!
-time-lapse = done by means of time-lapse photography
We keep suffering iniquity
by greedy ‘power elite’ blithe
Brutish plight predates antiquity
scythed powerless humans still writhe
Implacably each ‘people’s savior’
shall feel uniquely appointed
But let’s assess our own behavior:
We allow being exploited!
True change doesn’t somehow happen out there
but through risk filled action by ‘us’ here
The palace of Versailles:
Earthly power gone awry
The monarchy absolute
of the people heedless
Then the plebs got resolute
and royals died headless
An action that ought to inspire
in any empire gone haywire
+)
royals = here: In 1793 Louis XVI, and his spouse Marie Antoinette were, among others, executed during the French Revolution
Aren’t facts just too complicated, taking too much time & effort to uncover & verify? Do I need anyone to tell me what MY facts should be? Surely, fairer & easier for each of us just to make them up as we need them:
Read about them in the tabloids
plied by ‘anything goes’ hacks
Elsewhere commonly called factoids
dressed up as we need them ‘facts’
The Net thrills in profligacy
of excitement refulgent
Be it doubtful efficacy
enabling those indulgent
Who’s got guts to be resolute
sort out all that’s annoying
in these our sweet times dissolute
brimmed with the innate, cloying?
Hence we spill what pops into mind
as insight of reflected kind!
On the election of Donald Trump:
Why not a Prez buffoonish
for this Nation Exceptional
where politics cartoonish
discourse rarely conceptional?
Weary World, do save your breath
Trump shall keep up wreaking death
In 2016 Hillary Clinton treated voters like neglected dogs, which even so should somehow be expected to happily wave their tails at her. After all one of her slogans mightily presumed: “It’s her turn!’. Some of these long suffering dogs bit her instead.
While low were voter expectations
So what? Been so for generations
Bleak, tawdry that election
discourse stuck inchoate
while she was the selection
of Israel, Kuwait
Worn people like soggy dogs
tails tween legs, buzzed by fleas
on muddy slippery slogs
shook off Hillary’s bees
Campaign’s debates were largely disingenuous
the candidate’s grip on Reality tenuous
Written originally just after the 2016 Trump & Pence election:
A Nation deeply embroiled
directionless & despoiled
Prez-elect narcissistic:
a bully chauvinistic
His VP pietistic:
prim, clean cut, jingoistic
In tawdry turmoil
they’re each other’s foil
In historic campaign brashest
nation’s figurehead now vile gargoyle
premonition neo-fascist
to which in cowardice we recoil
Entering frayed fantasy
we’re dragged into anomie!
+)
-anomie = a state characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values
-foil = a person or thing that makes another seem better by contrast (although how could it work in this case?)
-gargoyle = an ornament consisting of a grotesquely carved figure of a person (though here perhaps a carved figure of a grotesque person?)
After having captured Government
Big Business criminogenic
in stealthy coup of empowerment
ethics withered cryogenic
Erstwhile Earnest Citizen
turned Craven Consumer
Now Fantasy’s Denizen
selfish in ill humor
So now we’ve been trumped
back to Poor Serfs bumped
+)
-serf = here: a person doing undignified work at a callous corporation paid far less than his or her contribution to productivity