Almost Halloween

Almost Halloween.
No Charlie Brown,
No Snoopy,
No Linus &
The Great Pumpkin.
No Norman Rockwell
Halloween nostalgia.
Instead, a country
Divided.
Hate, irrationality
Infectious disease.
Marxist mouthings
At every turn.
Border wide open
While people fired
For expressing rights.
There is no center
To hold.
The gyre sputters
Out.

Campfires in the Sky

I sat on the edge of a cliff with the wind & rain & weeds
tumbling to the forested valley below.
Dawn came slithering across the horizon.
Above the stars winked out one by one as though blown
by a cosmic wind puffed from the lips of indifferent gods.

All those stars.
                        All that vast emptiness.
                                                             All the blank indifference.

The weeds, leaves, broken rock in the damp mud,
the weak yellow sun breaking through the treeline
as I moved down the slope toward the apple orchard
below—all seemed more inviting & real than the infinite
canopy overhead where stone age behemoths, huddled
around dying campfires must have wondered about
the people in the sky, whether dead or alive, sitting
stone-like around celestial embers, futile, flickering
flames that the darkness mocked.

At the center of the orchard, the leaves yellow & red, the
wind cold & slow, a gaunt hound gnawed at the bloated
carcass of a dead boar.

This was fire to warm its belly, this cold, dead thing
in its region of imaginary bliss.

The dog ate, not as a thing in & of itself, a separate self,
not distinct from dirt & bone, no different from the
apples ruined by cold hanging as dulled lamps
on bare boughs, or scattered over the leaves
as though waiting to peel away their skins the way
the hungry hound ripped at the boar’s crust, different
flesh reduced to the love of atoms, there among
blunted spines of elderly weeds, the boar’s eyes
gone out like the stars, the dog moved among its
love feast, communion of fang & fur in the manner
of candle lighted aisles caught up in the murmur
of eucharist.

All—the day, the frost slipping away, the two animals
locked in embrace to fend off the winter lying within
cold bones, lovers in life, lovers in death—this moment
a temple as old as time.

Crucifixion of the West

Civilization has been crucified.
Woke vultures pick at its bones
            Lying strewn & wrecked across Europe & the Americas.

Choices. Choices. The West slept while cultural
Hyenas plucked their possibilities from the quantum field.
            A super-positioned wave of hate crashing down.

An abdication of consciousness pummeled by radiating
Wave after wave of illogical cultural guilt simply for
            Being born.

The lies of Goebbels, Alinsky, Marx & Engels fueled
By the deconstruction of French philosophers.
            Pure fruit turned rotten.

Woke lemmings that move in serpentine waves, tongues
Flicking, flicking, predatory eyes surveying the carnage,
            The carrion they have done to their own nest,

As woke means bringing the nightmares of the deranged
To settle like dark angels upon the cross of the world &
            Say we know not what we do, but we do it anyway.

A gyre so twisted even Yeats would shudder, Eliot tremble,
Stevens say this is not of the mind. Turning & turning, a
            Mad tornado of sound & fury fueled by those who sleep.

To be woke is to sleep, to have consciousness shackled by
Talking heads prattling postmodern poison across the airwaves,
            Genesis of their own soul destruction.

The soul of the West has been crucified, hung on imaginary
Graphics, vomited out by political correctness, the past
            Canceled,

The future as horrifying as the next Fauci lie. Shades of the
Greatest Generation stir at Normandy, American Founders
            Pray for the reconstitution of reason.

Even Kennedy says this is not what I meant; this is not what
I meant at all. King shakes his weary head & knows this
            Is not the meaning of sacrifice.

Old Glory waves on in the coming dawn, liberty’s light
Blinds like the sun. There is nourishment, there is food
            Coming like Christ to plow the land.