The Undercurrent

               
Would you like to be              
a part of something epic?            
Unique?              
           
Come join the practice squad                
Go Team Iron Dome              
           
No one's ever cut              
due to high mortality rate                
           
Not required to speak              
Welcome to play from home              
               
WANTED: Gazans only need apply              
           
Preferably              
Gazans willing to die            
               
Oh, say can you see              
the rocket's red glare          
in the starry night sky              
right over there?              
       
Crisscrossing the border                
mortar exchanged through the air              
               
Who fired the first shot?              
It matters not        
        
The responsible party?              
Inconsequential!              
           
Any excuse for more shelling from each side                
Retaliation on this battlefield                
always justified                
             
The true nature of the power they wield:              
Operation Human Shield              
           
And there are innocent bystanders aplenty              
in this spectator sport              
               
Running up the score;             
strategy of the game              
Other side of the fence              
---more of the same              
               
A single rocket guarantees retribution              
with excessive force              
               
Excessive force guarantees retribution              
with a hundred rockets              
               
Sock it to'em              
back and forth            
No one ever wins              
           
Back and forth;              
punished      
thousands of civilians              
           
Back and forth              
put into harms way:              
elderly, children, entire families              
who never volunteered to play              
               
You cheered on Hamas          
You shouted,    
Go Team Iron Dome!              
invited bloodshed            
into your very home              
Don't come crying to us              
armchair quarterback hero              
when your neighborhood    
is blown away              
           
Just pray    
that this doesn't go        
into Overtime      
       
Score : Zero to Zero              
Israel versus Hamas              
               
Playing games with human lives              
       
       
             
 

  
Drowned in tidal waves of concrete
---whole families who lived  
along the street, scraping by    
to pay rent, barely  
making ends meet  
in areas designated  
aggressive dissident  
   
Apartment complexes  
up and down the block  
obliterated with rockets  
 
Despair filled lungs  
saturated with dust and ash  
in cinderblock pockets    
emptied of air    
   
The Politicians    
on both sides of the fence  
don't even care  
   
Busy as bees, they're  
targeting which buildings  
to completely level next  
   
Blown out of context  
any religious text    
   
The Fanatics    
on both sides of the fence  
don't even care  
   
Indiscriminately  
stinging the innocent;  
spraying cans of RAID  
upon insignificant insects  
   
The Militants    
on both sides ot the fence  
don't even care  
   
Heartless. Soulless. Evil.  
Doesn't. Care.  
   
 

        
You've no choice!        
Must wear a mask!        
Be injected with vaccine!        
declares Marjorie Taylor Greene        
       
Livelihoods forever lost      
in 21st Century Holocaust!        
Forced labor induced!        
scares the Propaganda Machine  
   
from the podium        
riling up more followers        
all the while heil stepping    
to a uniformed cause        
       
fitting neatly into this        
crooked X-boxed        
pandemonium of hers        
       
 

      
She's done gone      
against her party's [en]grain[ed]      
desperation to support the Big Lie[s]      
rather than the overwhelming Truth      
     
When your time comes in Wyoming      
or elsewheres, will you likewise      
( anonymously, of course )      
vote your conscience in the booth?      
     
Will you risk being estranged      
from your home-homing on the range      
where the elephant rarely plays      
nicely anymore with donkeys      
or anyone else      
( except for men dressed like bison )      
these days?      
     
There she goes      
     
She's done      
     
She's gone      
     
while the Lawmen insist      
that for the sake of herd mentality      
he stays on and steers      
     
Liz Cheney unchained      
now sans one deranged      
all-hat-and-no-cattle      
man's cow'ardly plot      
to be the hottest topic      
every hour on the hour      
for another four years      
   
 

in taking the Capitol back
she spews the vitriol  
  
---his number one, super    
duper Shock Trooper  
in action as she tries  
to gain traction with her Uber  
Commander's base through  
repetition of Big Lies  
   
Don'ning a red-visored helmut  
shielding her fearmongreling eyes  
   
Make America a great place    
again and again until we get it right!  
her battle cries night after night . . .  
   
Don'ning the riot gear  
covering her warpanting face  
   
Batonning out fake news;    
the most conspiracy addled nonsense  
you'll ever hear  
   
ready to spear anyone in the way  
as she marches under protest  
waving false flags pitchfork poled  
   
She spews the vitriol  
taking the Capitol back  
in attempt Number Two  
   
And her tiresome shit is getting old  
   
 

There are no glass ceilings    
on men's sports teams
---only women whose dreams  
shatter from brittling beliefs  
that they can't compete  
   
Those who make forward progress  
in the collegiate football arena  
play like a girl with  
as well as against the boys  
   
while you continue making noise  
complaining that transgendered  
males are sidelining females  
from achieving their goals  
   
If only you and them played  
for love of the game?  
   
Not fortune    
   
or fame  
 
having a name  
in the record books  
   
Shame on you  
   
for demanding an entire gender  
be penalized, setting them back  
on the field so far from
the Fifty Yard Line  
that future Sarah Fullers of the world  
bench themselves from ever getting  
black n blues'd and grass stained  
tackling their brothers in backyards  
   
Thanks a lot for that kick in the balls  
 
 
 

for Holocaust Memorial Day

I read an article by a survivor,
on a news website.
Separated thus by time and place,
so many years and miles making
that enormous gulf, a red canyon
of human memory, I cannot feel
the death march in my sole.
We can’t experience the whole
of human wickedness inflicted on
that man. But we can own our privilege.

As if Nature's fury  
---fire, flood, pandemic---
wasn't enough insult  
piling on the injury  
Australia now under threat;  
houses overrun by  
the mightiest of mouses  
---most devaststing plague yet  
upon the land down under  
Is it a systemic attempt  
continued contempt for Humanity?  
The experts begin to wonder . . .  
Harvests at risk of being consumed  
by little whiskered marauders  
A billion dollars worth!  
is the economy doomed?  
 
Will the Meece inherit the Earth?  
 
 

  
In the year 2020
1 out of every 4 Republicans  
are Republicans no more  
as alien raiding Party implants  
known as QAnon  
burst from the GOP  
uterine conservatory  
writing a presidential ticket of its own    
in sequel to the story    
shattering the Trump empire's chance  
of striking back in 2024  
   
That's what happens    
when you throw stones  
from inside a house of glass  
whitewashing Democrats  
in broad strokes as radical  
and unhinged folks    
   
---crazy bites you in the ass  
   
   
 

The name of treachery is Blood.
The senators beneath their desks,
cowering like schoolchildren
from the atomic bomb,
as men and women painted, fierce, throng
the offices of law.
And leading them from those same offices,
Blood stands and licks his hands, and grins,
his eyes not evil but vacant
of any moral sense, or sense at all.
The Devil did not murder you.
You were murdered by The Fool.

George Blake (1922 to December 26th, 2020) was a spy with Britain's secret intelligence, who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He has been described as having caused more deaths of British spies than any other "traitor" of the period. (He estimated his death tally at about 400.) He was exposed, served a brief period in a British jail, escaped, and fled to Russia, where he spent the rest of his life.

I couldn't dig up all the guilt
(you no doubt didn't feel),
not because of loyalty
to Queen and country, policy,
nor any dull, bladed concept we used
to starve the Irish fields,
to fill the workhouses,
and rape a path across
the Indian subcontinent.

Because, instead, of cowardice
when faced with extreme pain.
The information sold
to Moscow's torturers
was used to smash the teeth,
and break the bones, and snap the limbs,
to violate the very blood
of countless men who'd come into the world
inviolate, and innocent.

However much you dreamed
of worlds more just than ours,
philosophy crumbles
and faith shatters like coal
beneath the sledgehammer.
Pain is apolitical.
The bloody screaming mouths
and addled glucose eyes
of men you might have joked with once,
or asked how was the wife,
are what swims into vision when
the grave is opened for
your old and well-fed corpse.

          
Yes, it happened            
           
here in the United States          
a mere 100 years ago            
yet the bulk of Americans          
are just now learning about it          
           
Oklahoma          
           
Tulsa          
           
Greenwood          
           
---up to 300 Black lives            
and billions in wealth          
by todays standards---          
an entire neighborhood          
erased by jealous people          
bent on creating a world            
where only Whites prosper[ed];          
           
this dark chapter of our often          
fairy-taled storybooked nation            
about supposedly created equal men      
wasn't overlooked, but was instead          
systematically scribed indelibly          
with invisible inking          
           
More than ever these days    
it seems easier for ego    
to accept whatever appeals most          
while rejecting the rest        
as if those events never were        
       
or simply revise the Past            
with malwared content            
           
No, the Democrats of 2021          
are not of the slave-owning          
Democratic party of 1863          
no matter how many times            
you imbecilically repeat history          
with conflations engineered        
impurely for modern political gains          
           
Ignorance is forgivable          
           
but blatant disregard            
for what factually occurred          
is evil, a breed of stupidity          
not to be tolerated regardless          
of when or where          
           
And over there            
over there, my father served          
more than his country        
in a world war fought to put a halt        
to similar strains of virulant      
thinking-disease          
           
Yet here we are, here we are        
on another world wide stage;        
the conflict is still ongoing      
fraught with omissions  
and inaccuracies       
           
Regardless of when or where          
power is in the knowing          
that memory remains          
and Truth will be heard:          
           
#BlackLivesMassacred          
           
 

I walked out on Capitol Hill,
my pant suit cut like pastrami
on rye: thin slices to make a wad,
the meat piled and cradled in the bread.
 
I spoke for all the dead
women to that male assembly,
Minerva by my side and even Jupiter
respectful of our turn to speak.
I didn't know he'd raped again.
 
The chairman Zeus laughed at us when
we said that each woman,
just as a man is blessed with genius,
is gifted with juno.
'She thinks herself a gift!' he roared.
 
'Does Io think herself adored
now that she languishes in fields,
reduced to sharing cud
with all the other cows?'
I looked at Jupiter, confused.
 
'You didn't know that Io was abused
by your unsatisfied husband?'
Now Zeus was trembling with mirth.
My husband blushed as red
as evening in Hades. He looked away.
 
Olympia was rolling, gay;
our chairman shot a thunderbolt
directed at Minerva's heart
and mine. 'I've seen that cow!'
Poseidon laughed. 'A pretty heifer, too!'
 
Minerva stared at me. 'You knew?'
'I don't know what they mean!' I said,
but suddenly I did. The heifer in  
the field outside had looked at me  
with glum, black eyes.
 
The cruel disguise
was forced on her by Jupiter,
the metamorphosis designed
to keep his rape of her hidden.
To take away her voice.
 
We left the podium. No choice
allotted us would save our dignity
by then. The poets called me jealous, mad,
a wife of incomparable hauteur.  
We learn our place, we fat harpies:
 
to be pleasing, like silent peonies.

In fact, some are downright
fucked up in the head  
  
We are finding this to be the case more  
often these days as God fearing Christians  
are being sued for refusing to provide  
services to gays and cashiers are shot dead  
for repeating sign language posted on the door:  
MASKS MUST BE WORN INSIDE THIS STORE  
to prevent further Covid-19 spread  
   
We've become a global civilization dwelling  
in a narrow valley of expectation that  
dollars must only be met with satisfaction  
as if every transaction was made equal  
 
But it goes both ways;  
convenience comes with its own cost  
---selling as well as buying whatever you want  
with no questions asked  
   
At what price do you find it convenient  
to sell one's livelihood?    
Freedom?  Integrity?
Soul?