“You are your own god – and are surprised when
                  you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across
                  the desolate ice fields of winter.”

                               ― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

Crazy old men bellowing at each other
Crazy old women shrieking at us all:
The Spiritus Mundi is hard at play
Among the wreckage of civilization

The stripping of the altars 1 is complete
Holy innocence is a toilet joke
And the literature of millennia
Now serves as cleaning rags for The Machine

An executioner, while waiting for you
Pauses to admire his latest tattoo



1 cf. Eamon Duffy

A white tee shirt with a pack of Camels
Tucked up ‘way cool in the left-side sleeve
And new blue jeans, the cuffs exactly right
And in my back pocket a happenin’ Ace comb

For keeping that duck tail so hot for the chicks
To swoon about, so High School Confidential
A cheap tin switchblade hidden carefully away
More Sharks than the Sharks, more Jets than the Jets

Even Kookier than Kookie, oh, my! -
While swaggering home from junior high

We’re all reptilian; our skins slough free
Each hour, a few epidermal cells cleared
Sliding away so silently that we
Don’t even know that we have disappeared

And then the dermis – it steps bravely up
The hypodermis in its place stands to
All cells and capillaries to duties new
And slowly, slowly, there is a brand new you

But what is truly important every day
Is that we don’t slough our dear friends away

This is the Last Straw –
and Something About Sacred Buckets of Holistic Ice Water

****** predators, human smugglers
Starvation in the Sudan, civil war
in Syria, mass executions in China
Journalists murdered almost everywhere
Fashionable infanticide, homelessness
Unemployment, urban terrorism
Mass ******, school shootings, wildfires, racism
An unstable national government
Anti-Semitism, border desperation
Riots, arson, ecclesiastical corruption
****, alcoholism, historical cleansing
Skinheads, abuse, Khardassianistas
Volcanos, the death penalty, free verse
Affluenza, Jerry Springer, The View
Herbal tea, antifa, anti-antifa
And the soul-******* existential despair
Of inspirational singer-songwriters:

Nah, not a bit worried about plastic straws

But I must go now; The Voices are telling me
To pour a bucket of ice water over my head
(As long as it’s not a plastic bucket)

A Straw Man Accessorized with Exclamation Marks from the Eighth Grade (Rainbow Brite™ © Glitter Optional)

I heard it, dude; it’s part of the nexus!
A floating island as big as Texas!
All made of straws, there in the Pacific!
It’s on the ‘Net, dude, it’s there, specific!

It’s a Russian plot, sponsored by Putin!
It’s on the ‘Net, dude, sure as shootin’!
Them plastic straws will soon bring down the grid!
They **** the whales; they even got a squid!

The science is settled; let’s make some laws:
The source of all evil is them plastic straws!!!!!!!

If…
          Some Crown of sorrows sit
          Upon a little world for a little hour –
          Who shall remember it? Who shall care for it?

                    -C. S. Lewis, “In Prison,” Spirits in *******

It’s not a bad cell, but it is a cell
Requiring you not to be who you are
Quietly within your designated space
And keeping your insolence to yourself

A grated hatch of disapproval drops
And leaves you to the berth penanced to you
A hard and narrow bunk of pain and guilt
Against a wall that now must be your world

And in that world do thoughtful battle against
Shrill voices telling you how wrong you are

Our leaders’ reputations decay in the corners
Of their star-spangled offices, curling up
Like fallen leaves wind-blown against a fence
Then writhing in the *******-fires of history

Their bubble reputations in their own mouths 1
Ephemeral as the grey and ashy smoke
Adrift among the vaporous lies that once  
Scented the sewage of their resumes’

Our leaders call us comrades, shipmates, brothers -
From their forward positions on the 501C

1 Shakespeare, “The Ages of Man”