Fascism sings with sweet lies as
The chorus wails. We sit weeping,
Our history bastardised and
The body of our nation growing cold

Console us not you priests!
We need more than your words

**** fascism and
**** communism and ****
coronavirus

7:20 PM
4/6/20

Feathered Fiends
by Michael R. Burch

Fascists of a feather
flock together.

Alternate:

Conformists of a feather
flock together.

I came up with the "Fascists of a Feather" epigram after Donald Trump repeatedly praised authoritarian "strong men" like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Rodrigo Duterte, Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Heroic Americans fought a war against fascism and many of them paid the ultimate price, so why is Trump giving comfort to the enemy of democracy?

The alternate version of this couplet was written first and won a National Couplet Contest sponsored by the Society of Classical Poets. The couplet has now been published in one form or another on the websites of major newspapers and news services like TheHill.com, Haaretz.com (Israel), ******.com (Australia), Cleveland.com (as the headline of a letter to the editor), Reddit Political Humor, and Humane Conservatives Unite Blog. Sometimes the epigram is quoted in reader comments, sometimes by the writers of letters to the editor, and sometimes within articles.

Keywords/Tags: fascists, flock, together, fascism, conformists, nazis, blackshirts, brownshirts, dictator, tyrant, autocrat, despot, totalitarian, cultist, militarist

The headlights blaze,
a horn honks,
I look at the traffic light, I wait,
at a signal, in a traffic jam,
stuck.
Soldiers storm a university,
in a book a dog dies,
a girl fights tumors in her *******,
the world turns,
and in a traffic jam, I remain
stuck.
Later in the night,
in my bed, I lie scrolling
Instagram stories follow one another,
a quick progression:
outrage on an atrocity turns and
becomes 40% Sale on a fashion brand, turns and
becomes the best biryani in town, turns and
becomes a friend at a pub, turns and
becomes my office desk, turns and
becomes an empty page, turns and
becomes a traffic jam, turns and
does not become anything, and I remain
stuck.

one above another
seeking power beyond
Mother, Father, God;
three of a kind
trolled into a full house
to douse the criers with
gaslighting and rhetoric:
"make America hectic";
painting the targets brightly
through the sights of terrorists
sowing blight in the name of
white, white, white
power, money, ***
insecure, bored, loathing--
guns, roaming
thoughts, looming large
online, in hot spots
traffic's booming,
grooming a genocide
that hides in
plain sight

hate sings a love song,
blithe, pretty, little tune
in honor of its heritage.
hate sings sweetly, a song
of marches and hangings,
of ghettos and slavery
it hums admiration for its people.
it sings of this land.
the majestic peaks and playful meadows.
it sings, with love, of blood-drenched cotton and  
trenches adorned with crooked bodies.
it sings of its forefathers-  
the conquistadors and pioneers.
saintly butchers and child rapists.
hate paints it’s history holier than the Sistine Chapel,  
singing blindly like a hymn.

hate sings a love song,  
possessive and vicious.  
it scrawls the lyrics on
subway walls and sycamore trees.
it sings in symbols and metaphors,
accompanied by the beat of temple gunshots and kicks to the ribcage.
hate sings through the pulpit and the pew,
clipping it’s verses from a holy book,
it sways to the rhythm of “Amens” and “Hallelujahs”

hate breathes down my neck and yours,
knocking door to door,  
bearing music with a message,  
it weeds out the undesirables one by one.
for the greater good,
hate tortures children therapeutically,
and executes those presumed guilty.
it erases generations
in concrete rooms  
and in the bellies of ships.  
it explodes homes,
smashes panes of glass,
and burns every convenient symbolism.
hate roves and rages and spits and howls,
singing the song of a beautiful future.

Do you see me brother?
A feckless skyscraper marching on.
Not deaf but deafened, not blind but blinded,
I watch myself marching past the children,
a million miles away and
all in pretty rows.
We were these children once
before blue academies and flags and books and songs written by long-dead men,
the songs we used to sing, we watched the soldiers,
marching by we marvelled at the colour.
They were so handsome then.

I find you, with graveyard eyes,
brother I feel those eyes on me.
You, who watched me marching by,
you, who turned against
that old familiar stench, drift
into my sleeping focus.
I will not rest-

Tonight
the rivers of blood are sated. Tonight as I listen to the old recording:
“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding”
Like the roman I see the Thames is foaming and all is red.
A needle skips,

the hush descends.

The tears flowing from my eyes
are invisible to me, the taste of them is all that’s left.  I shout and scream into the bed
but still I find your staring face.
Locked safely far away from me.
Locked safely in my memory.
And I choke on empty air.

These are voodoo days
When monsters have their way
With the good people alive
So the evil people can thrive.
This is a time when madness
Roams the land to pillage
And rename the boundaries
Of our fine global village.

Children once went to school
And we made sure they learned
What had happened to us all
When dissenting books were burned.
Then too many scary people
Got by with lying to us a lot.
They didn’t have us in mind,
And didn’t care what we thought.

So, their Halloween costumes seem
To only be visible to the eye
When you listen to their chants
Instead of just passing by.
If you listen closely to the words
And not just campaign speech,
You quickly see dictatorship
Is not far out of their reach.

When your friendly candidate
Starts sounding like a Mussolini
Standing up and calling them out
Does not make you a ******.
No, it makes you more of true
Patriot caring for your country
Than guys in expensive suits
Who only care about their money.