Annunaki

 

“The Whore of Babylon” by William Blake

 

seven judges
alive in the sky
long before
Greece imagined
the sisters
of Pleiades
fluent astronomers
royal of blood
gods divine of
a fiery flesh
cosmogenic
inducement of
human endeavor
between sacred
rivers whose
waters gave rise to
beginnings

beginnings
of letters
of history
scribed into clay
a cuneiform
seminal literature
power manifest
sparked by a
language designed
for the eye
and it pleased them
those gods who
would scrutinize
men and their
use of the intellect
given with hushed
cosmic breath

cosmic breath
who pronounced
on the wind
these remarkable
people of Sumer
these builders
of ziggurats
masons of
civilization
should cast
fertile crescent
hegemony
fattened through
four thousand years
giving life
a new order of
progress

progress
in its many
manifestations
of change
seven judges
became several
hundreds
in light of new
unholy ways
of transgression
even Gilgamesh
torn and revised
by the claws of
of that dark
whore of Babylon
her evil sown in
distant modernity

 

Inhumanity

“Inhumanity” by Narayanan Ramachandran

 

surges of dangerous malice
rush into the voids
in a mind come estranged
from emotional traffic
in concepts of kindness

so utterly failed by a nasty
and brutish experience
leaving with ripening age
abject ethical ignorance
risen to moral confusion

in years that for most
bear the custom of certainty
even the innocent sin
of ambivalence caters
insensate indifference

is this then the crucible
pouring forth ignoble
hate into ingots of evil
that damned awful specie
that pays the apocalypse

fear and take guard of
this mind most unkind
for its visions of terror
its cold acquiescence to
the worst parts of man

*      *      *

“Man is capable of as much atrocity as he has imagination.”
                  – William Parcher: an imaginary character in “A Beautiful Mind”

Dégringolade

“Crawling Man” by Buen Calubayan

I need sleep
painless rest
sweet escape
a soft silent
cocoon shut
away from
sick noise of
a world come
to madness

I need some
dull moments
of deafness
to suffering
cries of my
kind caught
and gnashed by
the teeth of
perversion by
godless libidos
of violence
by gunmen
and gangsters
corrupt in
their creed
of rank hatred
irrational
soulless
deliberately
cruel

all the poor
bleeding voices
who scream
in the night
the uncountable
terrified
innocent
victims of
every base
instinct our
deeply flawed
species can
wreak on itself

moral mayhem
whose sounds
haunt my
elderly ears
fighting evil
requires a
stalwart a
younger and
healthier man

I have outlived
my bravery
leaving me
wallowing
achingly tired
and weak
and afraid
where was pride
now lives shame

I am wretched
and ruined
my warrior self
long since come
to his finish
my battleflags
shredded to
ribbons by
father time’s
merciless scythe
I need sleep
painless rest
sweet escape

Conscience Never Sleeps

“Conscience” by kharlamov

 

it happened in a dream
I became king of the world
but the world didn’t care

so I stepped from the throne
and a monster took my place
then the world was afraid

I painfully pondered
what my conscience commanded
while the whole world suffered

could I kill the monster
without becoming one too
thank God it was a dream

 

 

(originally posted March 2013)

Broken

“Remembering 9/11” by Justin Moore

red and raw
remain wounds
to the psyche

new hate
was invented
in the dust
and debris
of a morning

blue treason
of skies carried
deathliness
fooling the light
of a new risen sun
turning sweet
serene air into
maelstroms of
violent heresy

innocence buried
forever beneath
endless layers of
morbid gray ash
and no morning
no sense of a
civil safe haven
would ever again
be the same

I was broken that day
on the anvil of anguish
I clamor for vengeance
the scream in my soul
undiminished by time

there can be no just
reckoning short of
employing unhesitant
means to obliterate evil

I know I am broken
so spare me the sermons
for broken I’ll be
till I’m laid in my grave

Mindset

“Mad Bad Sad” by Paul Pulszartti

(Regarding the Orlando terrorism)

evil walks brazenly
freely among us
psychotic lone wolves
and fifth columnists
bred of the very same
sordid black seed
a fanatical cultural junta
adapting the bright
apparatus of freedom
to murderous weapons
of violent intolerance
free to kill freedom
assassinate innocents
making of open society
closeminded bastion of
deeply flawed conscience
malignant deforming
the blessings of liberty
into a morbid moiety

truth and lies
love and hate
friend and foe
look the same
to the credulous eye
sound the same
to the unworldly ear
feel the same to the
too-trusting touch
the societal mind
must be sternly reset
to root out their
deadly distinctions
there must be a
steadfastly rigorous
noetic reckoning
otherwise terror
will surely abscond
with our civilized soul

* * *

“All truth passes through three stage: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”      – Arthur Schopenhauer

Pandora

“Pandora” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

 

reckless of impulse

you loosed on an innocent world

grave forces of darkness

I don’t damn

your naïve

self-indulgence

but defiance of duty

is unforgivable

you were Eve

you were trusted

by Hesiod and all of humanity

with that ugly unopened jar

some mistook for a box

there’s just not enough

redemption

in your having attached feeble hope

to that terrible train

of bleak depredations

no matter what Zeus ever

said in his fatherly heart

your pardon will die and rot

in my silent anger

Psychotica

“Progress and Psychosis” by J Ethan Hopper

 

let’s dance
on the shoddy parquet
that maddening marquetry
inlaid by angry fingers
resurfacing
prefrontal cortex
for violent release
of uncontrolled impulse
devolving the limbic
paleomammalian
instinctive self

let’s dance
to the devil’s own beat
that maddening metronome
urged on by angry fingers
disarranging
chords of compunction
for vicious release
of unrestrained mayhem
subverting the conscience
morality pissed upon
flushed to the sewers

I don’t care
why we dance
broken brains or sheer badness
who gives a rat’s ass
just so long as they
lock us both up
and then melt down the keys
into molten revenge
or burnt reckoning
either way putting us
where we belong

Boomers

“Freedom Compromised”
Painting by Anne Theriault
From pinterest.com

the oldest of us
born while warsmoke
still hung in the air
smell of cordite
inhaled with our
very first breaths

we the children
of conflict grew into
our lives and prosperity
long under shadow
of missiles atomic
cold warriors

now the world chases
our septuagenarian
leisure and wealth
but wants nothing
to do with our
wisdom or values

we have lessons
to teach of how
evil abroad would
incinerate peace
but this new breed
of men has no ears

No Words

“Anguish”
Painting by Dena Cardwell
From fineartamerica.com

I have
no words
only hatred
for evil
no pity
no mercy
hot anger
eyes cry
burning tears
my violent
anguish
wants only
a sure stroke
of vengeance
from justice
one life
for nine
nothing less
and I’d do it
myself

I know
I must be a
poor Christian

but a man
who brings
racism’s
bullets to bibles
with vicious
intentions
who slaughters
the innocent
prayerful
at peace
in their
holiest
gentlest
expressions
of faith
such a man
is no man
but the vilest
of beasts

poor Christian
I must be
I know

but forgiveness
comes hard
to this sinner
who loves
and who hates
with what
I surely pray
is a moral
distinction