%) Seeking shiny ribbons
The consistently failing but still not changing U.S. foreign policy: Why don’t they ever learn?!
On the contrary! The Power Elite has learned only too well from their ‘mistakes’ & remain ever so determined to repeat them. These ‘mistakes’ feed their heady hubris and float their depraved delusions while amply providing notoriety, power, profits, careers, ribbons, pensions.
Steeped in inequality & iniquity, the Elite cannot be much bothered about the dire & deadly consequences to other people at home or abroad.
Before the tales of Gibbon
humans swung like gibbons
off to war, way quickly gone
seeking shiny ribbons
Since our Species’ dawn
man pounded chest
with taunt, flexing brawn:
“Who’s the bravest?”
The Elite gets People excited
about foreign machinations
to trust propaganda benighted:
We’re upholding laws of nations!
Though the Elite doesn’t have People’s welfare in mind
it can carry on – as we’re a cowardly kind
My subjectivity is true objectivity
While open to critique
I’m of course quite unique
You must let me bespeak
with responses oblique
And I do declare
let me ensnare
I do not forswear
being unfair
For my subjectivity
is surely, I declare,
the true objectivity
Beyond that should I care?
… despite that we cheer in the bleachers!?
The Elite’s claims spout spurious
its logic & facts futile
Outcomes to us injurious
their domination brutal
By their jingoistic ways stirred
we ignore injustice rife
while succumbing in lives absurd
filled with suffering & strife
So why do we listen to their speeches
even cheering them on from the bleachers?!
In hapless hearts darkling, war machines keep sparkling
Here they go to war again
to make up for policy flawed
The pretext this time Ukraine
sending in military awed!
Narrative but forlorn fiction
with handy excuses mostly thin
Reaction same old addiction
to militaries who rarely win
Empires’ machines sparkling
in patriots’ eyes callow
their fickle hearts darkling
while peace fades ever sallow
Steeped in deep ignorance
hooked on obsession
Haughty the arrogance
of blind aggression
Still on victimhood they’re insisting
in mulish denial persisting
Scam & sham of COP 21
The scam & sham of COP 21
where delegates flocked as vermin
ain’t of climate change a coping one
or healing a planet squirming
A mere shirking ‘pretend solution’
of verbiage infused delusion
+)
COP 21 = the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris
Don’t even a degree from Poetdunk U
Did I at Poetdunk learn verse?
At no university
but since child enjoyed verses terse
which Mom found perversity
Am, it seems, an autodidact
lost in our culture’s group think
Who knows, perhaps to counteract
consumer culture’s hoodwink?
Hence never enrolled in class
just tapping my inner sass
+)
-Podunk = any small and insignificant town
-Poetdunk U = (taking license) any liberal arts college in such town
They wave, smile & shake hands
With their careers at stake
our ‘leaders’ lie & fake
Feeling all entitled
why would they concede?
The elite unbridled
in atrocious deed
They’re hawking ‘give & take’
means ‘they take, we give’
Gladly devour our cake
grimly combative
When faced with our demands
they wave, smile & shake hands
From the vapid repartee deliver me!
From those vapid repartees
please do deliver me!
None of them Life’s apogees
just annoying whoopee
So let’s not suffer such banter:
The ruckus & raves of the ranter
The meddling of the supplanter
trying out-cantillate the cantor
Those jarring voices just lessen & lambast
when I’d rather see quietude be amassed
Change shall not somehow just happen ‘out there’!
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
Twisted like acrobatic acts
to engineer outcomes perverted
opinions offered up as facts
then glibly, haughtily asserted
On recklessness binged
in forward pose
pours on claims unhinged
anything goes!
These days seem veracity
as well as morality
eclipsed by mendacity
in foam bath banality
In times erstwhile weren’t we restrained
by facts as being impregnable?
Perhaps too old to be retrained
for when few norms are detectable
Now floating away dazzled
from Reality’s shores
we’re too creaky & frazzled
to keep pulling the oars
Thus on waves of distraction we’re drifting
when did we last do something uplifting?
+)
facts = “Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished” – Chris Hedges
edited 08/15/24 1730