Flag Waivers Must Burn

Last refuge of the scoundrel

First refuge of the fool

(So you fools are refugees- 

DEPORT! EXPEL!)

Excuses everything 

Is an excuse for anything

...But won't excuse your stupidity.


Patriotism is bigotry.

Always has been, always will be.

The only way to sear blind faith

Into tired, vacant, sheepish eyes

Is to define an other

To look down on

Spit down on

Kick down on

Load down on

And pin all blame on

When it all goes wrong.


There is not, and never was

Any unity. This may anger you.

And so you scream "DIVISION!"

- Of some thing that was never whole?

When were the parts ever summed, much less moored?

The numbers are neither here nor there.

The math doesn't work.

This end is up.

The pieces won't come together.

E pluribus, pluribus.

Fragility remains upended.


Feeble and febrile,

Nationalism stumbles, withers, dies

And lies

As all empty ideologies do.

Tell me please,

What IS the "eternal glory"

Of a few barely-understood artifacts

Mouldering in a museum?

The patrons surely can't see it.

Not with all that hastily-penned propaganda 

To capture their watery eyes.


Surrounded by grey and beige walls, 

Too high to scale, they observe only

Red - anger at every perceived fail

(Notably those that are true);

White - a dream of a sterile world,

Where only the pale and loaded matter;

And Blue - fading shadows of an age's past fall

Drawn with crumbling charcoal upon the savage Earth

The better to demarcate scraps of turf

To proclaim pissing contests over.

Always pathetic

Glorious the first time (by decree)

Laughable the next...

Until you die in a killing spree.

That makes it personal

To an immersible degree.


When the war is over (briefly)

Stride from your bomb shelter

(Courtesy of the welfare state!)

Plant your rag in the twisted wreckage

Declare the stinking leachate a sacred pool

Drop to your knees and embrace all that is cruel

Enjoining sundry to get their hands dirty-

For what's the use of boundaries,

When all the world's a junkyard?

Landfill: The great leveler.

With everything and everyone disposed of

The slate has been wiped clean...

Enough, to reflect the mountain of rubbish

That sooner or later will topple -

But at least you'll die surrounded by what you love(d)!


Standing beyond and above,

There will be a world

Where all flags are burned

As funeral shrouds, 

Wrapped 'round the wasted bodies

Of goose-stepping zombies

Who assailed the globe

Like an overbaked pie, blunting further

Drawn weapons as dull

As their overstretched

Overworked, underfed minds.

Fasces to ashes

"You MUST!" to dust.

Blowing in the dry wind

Past poles standing empty

In mute testament

To pointless vainglory. 

Sirius

 

Lounging above the horizon Blue-white, outshining All save Venus herself (Not bad for a dogstar!) Panting despite the cold The friendliest ball of plasma I've yet known  (And I've known a few) Flinging zingers with an ebullient twinkle At the speed of light, years away A very one-sided conversation Yet I can't help but agree With all that is said. Keep yipping into the darkness Until the ecliptic brings us round You and I and Orion (And the rest) And we'll join the summer sun Proffering its dog days In diurnal convocation.

Carrion Bird

                                                        Long before the wheel life

                                        When travel meant kicking up

                                                            Clouds of choking dust

(That never reached me)

                                                             I cruised the tracks and trails

                                        Finding what the travelers killed

                                                                Finding the killed travelers

                                                                                        And munching all without bias.

I wasn't picky.

Nothing to knock.

Just a part of the flock.


                                                    Now I cruise the highways, unhurried

                                                            Hanging on blackened fingers

                                                            While monsters roar by below

                                                                                                            Giving me a bellyful

                                                        Of what cannot escape

                                Their frantic rush

                                                                                                                        To evade

                                                    At any price

                                                                                    The one predator

They all dread:


The ticking clock.