To Create a Sense of Community
To terrify, shock, and dismay
To create landscapes of bleeding corpses
and scarlet fields of mangled body parts
To recreate your homelands in distant places
To unite us all in a web of blood and treachery
To sew tight the threads of death and destruction
To sing the praises of bombs, missiles, and poison gas
To shout the patriotic prayers of justification and canonization
To celebrate in the common language of violence
To create unsustainable communities
of suffering, rage, and fear
To create the ties that bind in communal carnage
United we falter, fail, fall into common graves
Beyond horror, disbelief, and despair.
Charlatan
Comes now, a swaggering troll
ejaculating his heinous history
retold as the hero’s glorious march
An assailant in political cloth
claiming a lecherous license
an ogre of boorish tradition
Our self-impaled
crass concrete cross
Our hypodermic
crown of opiate thorns
Our nightmare
reality show
revelation
Exposing our Janus
faced alter egos
bringing us
Face to face
again.
Photography courtesy of Beth Marie
Instagram: @beth.marie.photo