Let me show you the latest trends.
White, white and white.
White is the beginning, and the end.
We’ll mix it up with ecru,
eggshell, ivory,
some cream, or light beige,
perhaps a  grey on pearl tapestry.
Color’s so last decade,
and black so last year.
White is what’s now and what’s here.
I know some good painters–
the price won’t be too dear.
Throw out your carpeting,
and your upholstery.
I’ll set you up with my people–
of course it’s not free.

Your artwork must go.
Just throw it all out
or donate to Goodwill.
And your Black Lab as well.
Get two white Toy Poodles;
everyone will know you’ve got oodles
of money. Because you’re hip to the latest trends.
And we’re sure it will impress your friends.

It’s a simple rule: Why things don’t go
as they should.
The bad drives out the good.
The internet, cities or democracy--
everything becomes dominated
by the dumb, the vile and the lazy.

Instead of community, the web
is **** and hate.
Time can’t run backward; there’s no recourse,
It’s too late.
The bad apples poisoned the tree.
You, out there, ruined it all for me.

Democracy has become mob rule,
and the mob prefers a tyrant, a demagogue, a fool.
City Hall is occupied by panderers and jerks.
Public office for them is just a way to get some perks.
A crass madman on Pennsylvania Avenue
doesn’t represent me–but maybe you.
That’s what the mob wants–someone just like them.
And when it leads to disorder, collapse, mayhem,
they invent a paranoid conspiracy theory.
But it’s not complicated. We made insanity easy, and free.
Now we have the rule of the dumb, the vile and the lazy.
And we call it democracy.
People aren’t equal. We all forgot this truth.
We let the mob take over. I guess we needed proof.
Proof that the old adage is as true as ever.
Have they ruined everything good forever?

I awoke from the dream, slowly fading,
with only one image remaining:
As I fished, in a lake, on a boat,
police brought up a body
disfigured by bloat.
A man, with his features erased,
leaving an unrecognizable face.
But then I saw the tattoo…could it be..you?
Sodden and bloated from all of your drinking
your body, heavy,  slowly sinking,
until you descended to the bottom below.
The water is also the sum of my tears.
The dream a depiction
of my sorrows  and fears.
Awake, I know that you’re not dead.
But there’s an emptiness
in my heart and my head.

Your time is now over.
Your death will be slow,
and cruel.
A vulture picks
at the corpse of a fool.

When greed is worshipped,
all compassion fails.
Dogs eat dogs
and chase their own tails.

No one reads books.
No one understands law.
Might becomes right
and all succumb to their deepest flaw.

**** is entertainment,
and fantasy, addiction.
Degradation is beauty,
and cruelty, conviction.

The sun is now setting
on the city dying
Darkness begins
under a red moon rising

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                    President Musk and His Five Bullet Points

I was a federal employee in Viet-Nam
(More than five bullets and mortar bombs)
No one in Washington demanded I document my day
Or offered to send me home early with eight months’ pay