The Fascists Are Always Perverts
And 8 other poems about government power.
The Fascists Are Always Perverts
it’s the writers who have to take sides
mark clear lines at which the fascism has begun
earning the hate of fascists never goes out of style
so I write books mocking them so if they take over
and send me to the camps
I’ll have satisfactorily earned
their existentially impotent incel blood lust rage
and what writer wants to live
in a dictatorial regime anyway
the forced politicization of thought and art
by sexually deranged fascists
it’s better off letting your example
spark resistance in others
who are better suited for surviving years
of totalitarian suffering
and what a compliment from fascists
to be early on their purging rolls!
Petersburg, Virginia
sitting in a trench with orders tomorrow to go over at dawn
I consider how I will almost certainly die tomorrow
little of the wave today survived
and if I am spared it’s likely I’ll be maimed
and shunned for a life in the gutter
so here I am on my last night of existence
sitting in a gash in the earth uncomfortable
and cold and a little hungry
with wet boots and soggy feet turning a worrying color
smoking a bland cigarette
and writing a last letter to my parents.
Imperial Nouveau
we fought together shoulder to shoulder
to free the native tribes from monarch bondage
and cleaned their wounds and fed them feasts
and when at last the upstart democracy
threw the crown into the sea
we turned against the freedom fighters
and took their land for our own imperial flag.
The Country Needs You
so you fight and are disabled
and then you come back
and the people you fought for
don’t want to look at you
and won’t make eye contact long
handing you coins and small bills
as most walk quickly past you on the street
and an administration or two later
your promised bonuses are ignored
and the societal emasculation weighs you down
as we wait for you to die
the death of an uncomfortable sacrifice
for our freedom.
Movements Of Cynicism
romanticism aged ugly from the bombastic pockmarking
inaugurating modernity with the great war
a war that should have but haha didn’t
end all war and dada drowned itself
not silly enough for the moment
and the radical avant-garde were arrested
by surrealized fascist pop stars
putting everyone to work digging the empires’ graves
before the post-modern epilogue into nuclear madness
and schoolyard bluster of private schooled government suits
bluffing the destruction of millions of people
saving face in jerkoff poker
as existentialism is the last inhaled breath of humanity’s soul
and the poets hallucinate absurdism in their asphyxiation
and with wheezing lungs wander the wasteland wasting.
My Revolution Starting Pen
I am for artistic liberty
amidst conscripted nationalism and so am armed
with absurdism and blasphemy
proof that prayer cannot stop a heathen
I am a guerrilla pouring the sweet nectar of disrespect
into the public fountain
whispering polite obscenities to doomscrollers
for sanity’s sake
a trolling spotlight on the kaiser’s culpability
for all the statist madness
it’s asymmetrical warfare that brings down
the monarchs and emperors.
A Liberating Binge
the enemy was leaving town without a fight
quietly in the dead of night
and the reporter glum at how slow
and boring was the coming action
saw his opportunity for exciting
the ruckus he was craving
and he secured the neighborhood
one liquor store or bar after another
and inspired a partisan uprising
to parade around conquering the city
and in the morning met
the americans’ patrols and army tank columns
and standing in the back of a truck bed
he poured the general a shot
of the oldest aged whiskey bottle he had found
and offered the general the key
to the city he had already liberated.
Business Boom
a profiteer sits in his high floor corporate office
smoking a cigar pondering which potential war
would be most profitably manufactured
which peaceful people unaccustomed to belligerence would
as his employees truck crates of ammunition to the port
he is a murderer but a safe one
with the immunity of spreadsheets
and protected by middle managers and shell companies
he leaves no blood-soaked weapons himself
but the weapons are all his
and government lobbying for a war of attrition
he makes sure that business is always booming.
Gobblers
there are turkeys on the television
behind the anchor desk
in front of a world map gobbling away
with all the breaking news
the news corporations gave up their journalistic responsibilities
it’s cheaper to hire birds as their newshour hosts. 🥃
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