the new millennium a battle for scraps
lions released upon
difference, the poor, choices not those of the keepers.

a loaf of bread
tiles balanced on the heads of relations
keeping out rain

homeless, threadbare peasants huddled
soft rocks
under drone surveillance, workers

packages dropped by insidious machines
images unseen
cameras shoot too

the power of malevolence
micro bombs
Hiroshima Death Park

they visited there on a slave break
from the unseen threat
enacting punitive whims

keeping everything rare
at the headland the dam flows
into a filthy stream

outside gates of steel reinforced
minions guarding a winter palace.
inside, a committee of charlatans

votes on the next to go
for another course of degustation.
hobos cold, tired, thin

targets without crosshairs
and it's there outside
what people think they see

human robots misread a glance
some concentrated glare
only then

goose-steppers shoot
at a flinch of skin
another one down