The Implacable Gilded Age Redux...

Hi ho, Hi ho, and off to hell we go

Fair maidens become anonymous, masked and bejeweled in The Gilded Age Redux.

"The Gilded Age Redux" becomes a profane absurdity when gold leaf is rubbed on brittle pig iron. Jewels so abundant turn to lumps of coal. Obscene wealth takes full measure of compulsive immoralities, revealing the burdens of excess.

The new Gilded Age
Both callous and crass 
Amidst the shattered glass
Hi ho, hi ho, and off to hell we go

 Everything good goes up the flue
 For the lack of some social glue
 The betrayal is nothing new
 Hi ho, hi ho, and off to hell we go.

In the halls of power, 
They scheme, they plot, 
While the common folk suffer, left to rot,
Hi ho, hi ho, and off to hell we go. 

Tell me now: How is it Humankind is in constant retreat from our humanity so late in time, so clumsily, in spite and contempt of the tutoring of Ancient Times? We are so so post modern slithering back in time.

Promises broken, trust betrayed
In the game of politics,
We're all just played. 
Hi ho, Hi ho, and off to hell we go. 

Blinded by gold's frosty gleam,
Humanity's voice, is but a desperate plea, 
Drowned in the growing disparity,
Hi ho, Hi ho, and off to hell we go.

Hearts grow cold, dreams unravel,
Everything is helter skelter,
From the barriers to the bunkers,
Hi ho, Hi Ho, and off to hell we go.
 
 Tell me now: How are leaders like docile sheep led into wars so obviously ruining  prosperity and economies? Now all the dogs of Europe bark, the bribes paid,  indifferent to repentance, walking on the corpses of another million dead. 
Poor, poor, Auden rolls in his grave...
"Intellectual disgrace
 Stares from every human face,
 And the seas of pity lie
 Locked and frozen in each eye." 
 
Programmed lives on endless scrolls,
Empathy fades, with a thousand tolls,
Screens and pixels, our consumptive creed,
Hi ho, hi ho, and off the Hell we go.

Communities fractured in slumbering need,
Well beyond the nefarious deed,
Quislings feed the empire's insatiable maw,
Hi ho, hi ho, and off to Hell we go.

Coins exchanged for the soul's disgrace,
Humanity's faded light in a shadowed place,
The costs of obscene wealth, of war- the deadly tithe,
Hi ho, Hi ho, and off to hell we go.

 Tell me Now: Why is the West so determined to be the petty minded pariah afraid to face the world as it is? Former empires suffer a pathetic fate as they devolve into Britain's Starmer State. Poor Germany the suffering stooge. Poor Zelensky the disposable puppet.  Bitter seeds sown become the crop harvested.  Toxic minds foment tumultuous times.  The torturer becomes the tortured.  

Values sacrificed, hearts turn to ice
Are we so afeared we cannot give voice
Against the demons of the murky gloom? 
Hi ho, Hi ho, and off to hell we go.

The "Robber Barons" are back, 
Their extortions grim and grimmer,
In their furious fires of unrepentant greed
Hi ho, hi ho and off to hell they go.

Opulence is the destitution of our times,
Only capable of opposites and excesses,
So rarely the civil middle way,
Hi Ho, hi ho and off to hell they go.

 Tell me now: How has turning shabby pig iron into fool's gold become the pathetic alchemy of our times? The stingy fraud of foiled gold by soiled souls. The thin veneer of their mawkish indulgences. The Great Legacy stares us down. The foolish clowns pass the time in their robotic greed, shivering and naked, in their gross ineptitude.

There are no crimes 
In these tumultuous times,
Just the fool's gold of endless lies
Hi ho, hi ho, and off to hell they go.

This poem does not exist,
Just another "plausible deniability"
After the crime in due time.

A few words in passing
A bit of off-gassing
Etching the rancorous Babel of our times.

Words have no meaning,
No mo', no mo'.

No mo'.

I say it. I said it.  No, damn it!