Ode to Empire

Ode to Empire
[for John Hobson]
 
Wars without
pause
pride without
cause
Occupations
free of laws
mass murder
just because
no contrition
no remorse
all a prosaic
matter of course

Where self-critique
is heresy,
where, the scope
for apostasy?
not democracy,
nor autocracy:
but ersatz Realm
of Hypocracy

It's the Rule of the Hypocrite:
where the human
soul is split:
by bad faith
and suborned wit
possessed of every human sense
save the hallowed grace-
of conscience

forged their gaudy
Taj Mahals:
palisades, and
gilded halls
swathed in dun blood and
sweat of an entire
World's Precariat

So It Is:
and so It Was:
Endless Scourge
without a Pause
debauchery will stalk
the land
where guilt is writ
on every hand
yet still think it
blessed to live :
in dank bosom of
western civ -

O what immutable
parody
can frame its
sordid asymmetry?

© R.Kanth 2021
(my remarks reference the ruling elites,
not those who carry them on their backs)

The Cost Of Doing Business

How have we come to accept thousands of deaths every single day as just an additional cost of doing business in a pandemic? 

I'll guess it's years of practice ignoring the death and destruction the US perpetrates worldwide to keep our gas tanks full of cheap gas, the military industrial complex humming, the stock market soaring, the stadiums full?

It's just a few more voices in the churning ambient chorus of suffering we already tune out, much like with gun violence or unnecessary deaths due to the cost of healthcare or the thousands our military kills around the world. Many of us, even the “good ones” like you and me, already do that in a way or else how would we manage to function on a daily basis? How do you get up and measure out the coffee and heat up the water and poke your stupid face into the fridge for a nice piece of fruit every morning without pretending if at least for a while that no one is dying just beyond your doorstep?