Duplicity

 

Who is like the Beast, and who can wage war against him?

Straddling continental divides, with her thighs,

and grimly smelling sweeter,

Sparkling avarice in it’s eye,

Licking those chops from the top,

and spitting out from the bottom,

At contemptible fleas with their gnawing needs,

Feeding off wounds it bleeds,

But never a juicy bite,

Just a trickle down,

And they desperately lap at the drops,

It doesn’t stop, the wretched clawing and flames,

Dancing over tribal villages, capitals,

Whisper her name three times in the dark,

And Rambo Martha Stuart appears,

The gun or the tablecloth, who lives to tell?

But everyone is whispering,

In five billion voices plastered over fiber optics,

the whole world crying out through the universe,

“Help me! Help me! Help me!”

Through black spoiled oily waters and diseases,

A city swamped, neglected, forgotten,

Or a nation turned reservoir, starving and lost,

A people tortured, brutalized, and mutilated,

Mountains of deformed babies piled high,

For the crime of defiance, of being Iraq,

Or being Pakistan, New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast,

In reverse order, and that’s where we are,

Staring down the beast, rich and powerful,

It’s shadow cast across the whole world,

In culture, influence, carriers, and nukes,

Who are we, really?

Expecting that God is really on our side,

Really? Given the chilling cruelty routinely applied,

The arrogance, the vanity, the hypocrisy,  the murder?

Who is like the Beast, and who can make war against him?

Rhetorical, it seems, but should it be?