It isn’t rare for me to witness
One of propaganda’s victims
Spitting back the facts they’re given

I’ve learned it’s better not to listen,
lest I find myself compelled to try and help them grasp the greater picture

I walk away,
Contented not to bother

But That’s harder when the victim
is your father

When it’s a man who saw beyond
the feeble reasons we were offered
to go occupy Iraq,
til, after 20 years of slaughter,
the democracy we came to spread
Does not extend a centimeter farther
than the army bases
stocked with our marauders

This isn’t foreign land,
But, Dad, I beg you,
PLEASE don’t drink the water

Please don’t view the news as something other than a transcript of the sheriffs office blotter

There aren’t any officers worth half their salt
I can’t recall
a decent cop,
the brush with which I paint
is something broader

The brush with which I paint conveys the shade of beaten daughters
Of officers who trafficked children
shielded by the guise of honor

Shielded by a culture that uplifts them
to such high regard
it overlooks the powder mark
that always was their calling card

Now we’re told to fall apart
at Biden’s feet
and make a plea
that he can find it somewhere
in his hollow heart
to call off all his oligarchs
and LEO’s in army garb
With army tanks
and lethal arms
and carve a path to peace
between these monumental prison bars

It isn’t hard to listen
to the rabble spout the script
They memorized it from the instant it departed Clinton’s lips

But once you’re standing, stunned,
and hearing state department clips
from a voice that taught you right from wrong,
you’re loathe to come to grips

You’ll start slowing to a crawl
Until you’re low enough to limp
You’ll be pulled between just holding back,
or giving Dad a glimpse

Of every hospital they’ve bombed
or each civilian that they hit,
and posed to take a couple pictures
and say “look what Russia did!”

We’re cooking all the history books
from now, until Berlin

But we’re not the fucking heroes here,
We’re Nazis counting limbs

We lied about Gaddafi,
and Saddam,
and Ho Chi Minh

We’re the Fourth Reich,
Shining little city on a hill of sins

We got a taste for war,
and ain’t been civil since

We will show up at your doors
and you will let us in

We will colonize your pores,
commodify your skin

You’ll consent to this and more
if you’re not vigilant

Or, Jesus, even outright militant

How many citizens
could hope to glimpse the light again
If they’ve signed on the dotted line
to sacrifice the wiring out their filament?

and, Mind you, winter’s imminent

What could you expect from those you’ve trained to know they’re only worth donations they can make to those a half a world away, who daily writhe in NATO’s throes, on top of years of Nazi occupation

We’re so used to being bled,
so, what’s another leech, or ten,
cause, once your blood is not your own,
it matters not, the destination

Be it on the altar stone of capital,
or in the River

Be it in the streets cause the police saw you were moments from committing free speech,
and so, justice was delivered

Or Be it in a glass for Bill Clinton, so he lives to see another Winter.

This is Cattle-Syndrome,
if you need a raw descriptor

Passive pasture victims
Slurping CIA scriptures out the cistern

Only change the water every midterm

Democratic progress via inchworm,
Tethered to a twig
While Harris breaks it down to kid terms

Watch me lock a full-body cringe
Like a pinched nerve

Watch me try to stop the clip,
fist-first

Watch me spend a half an hour
staring out the window
til the first verse, fifth verse,
and all that’s all in the middle
hits my fingers with a ripple on the richter

Suited more for those who see the war,
than the unwilling listener

Who block out all the bombs
along with native whispers

That drift along the wind with a familiar whistle

Or plummet from the sky like hellfire missiles

The sun observes it all,
the leaves that fall on thistle,
the truth that’s underneath the skin,
betwixt the gristle

The truth that leaves your lips,
and brings your swift dismissal

The sun withholds his speech,
it seems the only words he knows
are those that sew division

The sun can see the truth,
as from the windows of a prison

The sun can see the dawn
before it’s even risen

The sun can see it all
though he may wish he didn’t.