As a writer and poet who absorbs the world and then bleeds out truth, I'm finding it harder and harder to break through the political propaganda that television, radio, and web media has conjured to dominate and control so many minds. I can work around the programming by introducing abstract moral truths, but the moment I reference modern cultural, my work goes ignored.

I feel myself losing touch with a society that I’ve taken for granted my entire writing life. In a gluttonous feast of sensational media
that has proven nearly impossible to extricate ourselves,
we allow the power of profiteers and con-artists
to stream content into our minds that programs us
to accept unprecedented levels of violence.
We celebrate military-style police powers
to remove our freedoms of expression,
the rights to own property at reasonable expense,
and our most basic rights to life under a banner of liberty.
In an **** of hatred and greed, a large swath of society
has proven comfortable with exterminating
or imprisoning human beings for the color of their skin
or the origin of their birth in private-for-profit prisons.
Yes, I definitely feel we are lost in a spiral of human descent,
where there is no end, only torment and death.

-Ron Gavalik

In a world of wage servants
we are drugged, propagandized.
That's how the keep us
docile, in line.
Sometimes a servant refuses
to take his meds.
His spoken truth burns down
the facade, for a brief moment,
until he is silenced.

Padding padded pockets is a leaf of golden steal
Leaving lovely leaflets that I read, and have to feel
Falling from the fountain that shot hope up in the sky
My most favorite leaflet is the one that makes me try

If you can convince people to want dirt,
you can muddy the waters
between right and wrong.

A roster of rotten rogues and rascals
Rapscallions and self-righteous racketeers.
Wrapped themselves in the American Flag,
Like Wicked Witches of the West in drag.
Not a whit of statesmanship in the bunch.
Hearts as black as coal, I have a hunch.
If we go by behavior, the devil is alive;
Queen bees who hate the workers in the hive.


They started with genocide of all those here,
Native Americans before the whites drew near.
They kept it up by importing a million black folks
They owned and ***** and made up ugly jokes.
In time they treated Irish and Italians the same.
Let them come here and then played a sick game.
Promises to those, the non-Europeans, were not kept.
They heaped them with bias while good Christians slept.

It has been going on forever since antiquity.
They make our fine country a den of iniquity;
When not operating from a sense of disdain
They run their show on hatred, death and pain.
They claim they work for the people, but
Most of the people can tell what is really what.
Distressingly disgusting, diabolically divisive
They do their best when citizens are permissive.

In time they decided monopolies were great.
They let those with money put up the gates
And charge those with little to pass through
To get food, water, places to live. Not new.
Old country villainy was given a new face
And soon only a few creeps owned the place.
They cheated and swindled and laughed at those
Who starved, rebelled and fought and died.
Rich children splurged on geegaws far and wide.

Soon the list of enemies grew in the mansions,
They included over half of regular American citizens:
Blacks women and poor people were told shut up.
There was not enough nectar to put into their cups.
Gays, agnostics and atheists were treated as if
They were the living minions of the Christian devil
Liberals and objections to conservatives called evil.
Anyone who had issues to the gathering of massive wealth
Was treated as a criminal who wanted to steal their wealth.

The self-righteous racketeers bought newspapers and lies
All created to be swallowed whole by the lazy and unwise
Who could not see that they bought and sold more crooks
That got into office and wrote evil laws into the books.
This is not a new game, in this computerized info age.
This is an ancient costume covering up the old outrage.
It only takes for most of us to stand by and not protest
When leaders lie, and cheat and steal and call it a jest.

There's noises in the dark, they're keeping me on edge,
the scars have made their mark, a result from all I pledge.
I'm waiting for disaster, but it's always coming in a disguise,
I wish that time would go by faster, I'm counting days by the skies.

Oh, I know I went brain numb,
my wits were just going to waste.
Like a hand without a thumb,
like a tongue that cannot taste.

I'm seeing dreams while I'm awake, and it's making me lose sleep.
A soul can bend, but can it break? And can dry eyes still weep?
Sitting behind three locked doors and I still fail to feel safe,
I hear cracking above on the floors,
my skin is raw and my ears chafe.

Oh, I know I've become uptight,
my shoulders will never again slack.
Like two eyes without sight,
like a spine without a back.

"Just because you're paranoid,
doesn't mean they're not after you."
Everything around you has been destroyed,
but they tell you that isn't true.

Oh, I know I've lost control,
but it was already falling apart.
Like a life without a soul,
like a body without a heart.

Moon butcher- weaned on courting flesh from safe
viewing, whistling to draw the blinds over fettered
flocks, all whose beaks are wired. Upon his eyes, a
monastic charm, cuffed by all means toward profane
morality, are his deeds and are his perfect misdoings.
And in the most miserable quarters of the mind,
along sad shrines where these supple thoughts are
stowed and ferried as the cattle he should drive;
Bird killer.

How mad you are– crimp hearted figure, without
lament for tattered homes and frayed hulls of a child's
laughter, pulled from heavy sacks. But all are beaten dogs
on morbid eyes, clubbed all with gentle hands and choked
with deft ideals-malformed. How artful though, that no
pinion primed should go clipped, nor aviaries-bold should
hold them here, but only should their minds be tainted–
Made whole in mechanics-belt driven. Just stay and take
my woeful Ode: Tyranny be your maxim; conformity be
our dying ways.

Dark ways; made so dark only in their leaden glare, that all
should turn and close their eyes for night. Monolithic as
mauled humans, ravished as the bark of black Willows and
pawing tides‒ all an empty obelisk of horrors-makeshift.
Pavlovian; cold soup; torn rags on the dashboard‒ and
for miles upon miles, ravaged quill over sunken hills, the
feathers poured here as ink into my ebbing dreams. Though,
to think yet that all had been warm upon a day, now too
distant and criminal. Too nefarious for notion, to hold
wolves for wool, and kooks for feathers stalked to hiding.

‪Loneliness‬
‪is a contagion‬
‪of the mind‬
‪fueled by propaganda‬
‪from toxic allies‬
‪Believe it or not‬
‪we live and breathe‬
‪succeed and fail‬
‪together‬