Another false prophet, another beast—
Another peace process for the Middle East . . .
Another massacre, a newer war;
A bright new scarlet global whore.
Another poem, another curse
A further plunge from worst to worse . . .
Another sociopathic brute
Another bitch in a business suit
Another smiling psychopath
Another angel’s bowl of wrath
Another data-driven plan
To twist yet further fallen man . . .
A bolder data-driven lie
As LUCIFER ascends the sky
Another depression, another bust—
In MAMMON we supremely TRUST !
Tag Archives: Babylonian poem
Hell’s Thousand Thrones: Dim West
LO! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye —
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrown aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
The hours are breathing faint and low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence.
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
The City in the Sea
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849)
Lawyerspeak

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales:
and he received sight forthwith . . . [Acts 9:18]
When judges decipher what lawyers speak,
offended defendants may leave confused.
Legalese labyrinths capture the weak;
Babylon’s law makes for justice refused.
Enshrined at the ziggurat’s doubtful peak
tyrannic gibberish mocks the accused.
He blinks at the courtroom, bewildered freak
as sentences are uttered unrecused.
Cuneiform marks; codified patter—
who dares define such esoteric terms;
in Heaven’s eyes does it even matter ?
While the sacrificial defendant squirms,
Justice, unblinded, lifts higher the sword
unscaled eyes beholding—her gaze restored.