Gruesome blister on a denatured mind
Chimes rumble the anchored soul foggy with Elysian wine
Flippant ruse ignites a battered fuse rusty with malevolent impotence
Blustery portents beyond expired extent throngs the chapels and pickets along the electrified fence
That separates the grave from the gravity of a physics enslaved
A physics where disillusioned mathematics and decay are as sure as taxes and the last earthen day
Nescient of giant leaps our stepwise ascension is helical and cheap
It snails along with unctuous repetition of pendulous rhythm and sails biologically with evolved and animated meat
The advent of acid and bass is a keepsake for the epicurean chase
Of a fulgurant galvanization of phases that remain unfazed
Trends punctuate vain diversions and lionized conversions both raise and raze
The velocity of money ensures a melliferous alchemy of a well-oiled plutocracy buffered by praise and pay
Ivory-tower elegance is immune to demotic ignorance
When the shot-callers devise the rules to the game with impenetrable clandestine eloquence
Hebetude and lassitude sink abundant platitude and offer trite prescriptions for useless attitudes
But the vogue of disembogued vanity entraps individualism and trains martial raillery
Trends tantalized by preening epigamic tens makes the roosters become owls that neglect nest egg hens
Fatuous ambush of the Kardashian putsch is as clockwork as Big Ben
Murky lies appear in flimsy disguise suitable for mice “say cheese” demise
Privacy cries and answers only lurk accessibly when spurred by wise “why’s” never asked when garish time flies
Tweets and beats make us obese with threadbare wheat cultivated by nescient bleats
Beatific ambition obscured by the wail of sheepish sheep
Outnumbered by obtuse angels and a cute horde of meretricious dissolution that ever wrangles
The shelter turns to rubble and the cloister turns to bustle: useful convolution thus entangles
Agorophilia defiles a voiceless lechery on speed dial
Disembodied violence sprints a green mile bankrolled by the peaceful throngs slowed through the paid but dilatory turnstile
Thus we loiter in queue as the slew of vibrant militarized celerity taxes our pews
Pews which enthuse jingoism eager to apportion sentient deaths through religious abuse
We can surf beams of light chasing verisimilitudes of diversion bright
Of unwagered immersion gambling a pittance for vicarious thrills and riskless fright
To discover the vestige of war, a useless artifact of sore egos we now deplore
An enormity of unmoored evil percolating apace of the paradoxical rush hour from shore to shore
But more decisively than an implacable brush fire on pristine ground abetted by sleek star-crossed winds that soar
Irenic ignorance placates, because a vagrant vacant mind is more a felicity than a bellicose grimy crease
Because excess corrodes squinty detests, and partial enslavement is both a rest and arrest to earth’s untenanted lease
Decries the devolution of pop culture that transmogrifies people into sheep and then makes them sheepish over their peccadillos. It also bashes war as a callous mechanism of useless death. It concludes by asserting the paradox that the throngs in real life slow our movement but we can move at light speed through technological implements. It concludes that useful idiots are irenic if also disheartening. In the earlier sections it laments that materialistic monism is taking over because science has made us deterministic and thus blind to the numinous beyond that staggers beyond our comprehension. It addresses how we are silently monopolized by artful esoteric chess masters immune to trifling quibbles, and how distracted society has become with respect to digital plasticity and consumerist disfiguration spurred on by fatuous and meretricious values. It further satirizes the effigy of modern culture deliberately disfigured with grandiloquence to deploy resourceful linguistic invention. I hope you enjoy this piece!
Here is a response I posted on another poetry site with respect to this poem. It explains the emblems, themes, philosophical agenda and metaphors of this poem so that more people can appreciate the level of meticulous care I preen with my craft
“I understand the charge of hyperbole, that was unintentional. It is an epiphenomenon of protean grandiloquence ( multi-pronged connotations suffering entropy through translation) crafted to emblazon lurid imagery and to conceal arcane mystery with an emphasis on cadence. When you use big words it is inevitable that some words chosen connote more strongly than you originally hoped for when writing it initially. Also, it was not designed to be solely a scathing harangue bemoaning the decadence and anomie endemic to this zeitgeist. You should read the final four or five lines (after I lambasted how war makes human life unnecessarily disposable for expedient aims). In those lines I marvel at miracle of technology wizardry and insinuate that in modern times we can wager much less to gain the same thrills we would have risked life and limb for before. Instead of a bottlenecked turnstile of industry that admits one person at a time like when entering an amusement park (the sluggish pace of premodern industry) to fund the clunky and internecine annihilation operated through rapid-fire death ( “Disembodied violence sprinting ‘the green mile’ A.K.A. a prisoner’s last walk before execution). The pace of society is a central theme of the poem throughout. The gravity of a physics enslaved implies the dilatory and dismal apprehension of a universe moving at an infinitesimally slow rate. A helical and cheap evolution mediated by animal meat snails along throughout history only to precipitate the exponential acceleration of human progress witnessed more recently after the advent of language. The rate of speed (the velocity of money line) is the lifeblood of all culture and all entertainment but it has become such a blur that it obscures the inveterate values of a leisurely stroll rather than a hedonistic galloping gallivant. Ironically, the plutocracy depends on gradate—(thus slow enough to lull people into the “say cheese” mousetrap (privacy eradication)—cultural devolution (clockwork like Big Ben to me evokes the imagery of a slowly ticking clock, a fixture and emblem of the proctor of the old world domineering over newfangled world prospects). Pop culture centered in the Anglophonic world depends on a rapid velocity of vagary blustery with money inuring people to fast-paced changes that abide by slow-moving subterfuge( the Kardashian putsch). The word ambush in that sentence implies that the encroachment of hegemons depends on a furtive approach solidified by an alacritous leap at the heartstrings of mankind in a moment of brinkmanship. The mousetrap is the slow roll but steady bet “say cheese demise”. The irony is that the only way this plan could work is because “wise why’s are never asked when garish time flies. This bewilderingly rapid pace is also the mechanism whereby sheltered obtuse angels are desensitized by breakneck cultural celerity that disabuses their naivety thus leading to useful convolution (paradigm shift). But there is also a lament that “meretricious wranglers” could lead to unmoored decadence bewildered by a smug agnostic relativism tethered to nothing more than the culmination of momentary fads reverberating in a plangent delay chamber like a finely crafted sound effect in a musical production program. The poem ends optimistically by concluding war is a vestige and concedes that partial enslavement (PC culture) is irenic precisely because it shepherds pedestrian considerations predictably in order to secure a stalemate. The Earth’s Untenanted Lease is thus arrested by counterbalanced nuclear specters. This leads to a rest and also an arrest of territorial claims. There is so much deliberate and emblematic imagery deployed here, drenched with subconscious enrichment that is unintended. A perfunctory interpretation of this piece misses so many astute cultural commentaries. The poem ends on a relatively positive note. The final several lines announce war as a vestige but concede that peace is built upon a latticework of acquiescent sheep indoctrinated to despise the past rather than learn from it (this goes slightly beyond what is directly stated). This poem in essence is about the ironic dynamics of history at the intersection of our modern cultural identity.