The empire's last dance among the ruins

“Every year the United States, the United Kingdom, and a host of other industrialized nations ship (often illegally) cargo containers filled with unwanted electronic waste off to less developed countries for disposal. One of the places this e-waste ends up is Agbogbloshie— nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah—a low-income suburb of Accra, the capital of Ghana. There, workers (often teenage boys) comb through the detritus of Western society looking for anything that might be of value”— Stanford Social Innovation Review

The empire wants to be God on Earth
with dominion over all, except--
its scriptures were written in hell
by the Devil himself.
 
It is the Mafia don
applying for sainthood
on his mother's grave, 
while nearby tombstones
speak the truth.

It is the singed Icarus
Flying low,
Flying slow,
Drowning
In the acrid smoke of its hubris 

It is the stuttering jabber
Of walking cadavers,
In the dark of halls
of flailing power
Where no lie is left untold. 

It is the blind rage of ravenous greed, 
And corruptions infinite--
Infantile politicos hawk their lunacy
Paychecks grow fat,
Luscious graft swabs endless misdeeds.

It is the smell of betrayal,
The horror of war, warm blood
Turned cold, while the parasites
Count their cash 
In Hell's half-way house.

It is the obscenity of proxy wars 
Where others generations are slaughtered,
The empire's imbeciles gloat
Over cost effective wars
And the terrorism of blown up pipelines.

Senile senators have lost their minds
While dissidents proclaim the ultimate truth--
Once and for all, the Anti-Americans
Are the enemy within, 
The whore Houses of empty rhetoric.
Their sordid souls, sold and bloodied
All for one, one for all.

The ghostly spirits of empires extinct,
Rise in a chorus of rebuke,
"We told you so, but you weren't listening, 
You never do!
Never have, never will"

These are the cowards wars,
Push button wars,
For push button profits, 
Executed by zombies in their 
Lunatic ideological despair.

The empire is racing to become nothing.
In God it may trust, but for God there is none
As the empire turns to dust,
This is the last dance among the ruins,
Before the dawning a of new age;
A new cycle with new players,
New hope for the same old story. 

History makes no exception 
For those who claim,
To be the exceptional;
Suffering the whore's flush,
And the hangman's dirty underwear.
 
Empires are born to die,
A crazed and corrupted death 
From the very seeds sown
By the harlequins of human folly. 
Now shamelessly
Holding the world hostage ,
to yet another empire's deranged predestination. --- the author

***** 

Quotes for our time:    

"When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires."

-Doris Lessing

"I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction."

-Martin Scorsese

"Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments - a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared.

-William Jennings Bryan

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

-H. L. Mencken

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

-Oscar Wilde

******

For further reading:

https://robert94015.substack.com/p/where-hate-and-war-prevail-the-crisis

https://robert94015.substack.com/p/imagining-a-better-world