Earth, O Earth, What Have You Done?

The weapons of World War IV will be stone clubs.
-Albert Einstein

3—Seen from the Earth
Samson, servant of God, loses a bet
And kills thirty innocent men.
Jephthah, servant of God, wins the battle
And assigns his daughter spinsterhood.
Elijah, servant of God, when summoned,
Calls down fire from heaven.
Naboth, a righteous man, talks smack to a king
So he and his sons must die.
Lot, a righteous man, flees to a mountain, submits
To drunkenness and impregnates his daughters.
Noah, a righteous man, gets drunk
Only to curse the son
Of his son who sinned.
Locusts swarm the beleaguered earth.
Cavalry ride.
The harlot drunken with blood
Is trampled and burned by the beast.
Big words.
Big troubles.
Big chills.
Big hopes.
Big fears.

4—Horns and Beasts
The Great War was fought from facing fractures
Dug in the earth, the mother of life
To be loved and honored—beaten and bloodied,
As whizzed the bullets and cut the knife.
Stormed all to the war with righteous eyes
Thinking justice in need of a knight-in-arms
To staunch with courage the craving cries
Of a hurled people sounding alarms.
Winners and losers alike were the cause
Of the senseless slaughter by the Devil’s paws.

A Great League was endorsed with a promise of peace
As all horns would unite in a common goal.
Disarray was to vanish with a global surcease.
Parts would be gathered to a welcomed whole.

For all the talk of kindness and solidarity,
The loser-beast by the winner-beast
Was punished in chains of iron.
Arose a savior of the loser-beast
Who intended to bring a thousand-year reich
To a world smitten with woe.
The chains he slipped with a slimy grease
That smelled good to the laden slave
Seeking relief from the dizzied knave
Who had harried the beaten into turning mean
When shared remorse could have been seen.

Thus,
The War Even Greater was launched with a dance
Stemming from schemes that would challenge and chance
A forcible fielding of the people of earth
To yet another brave new way of ample girth.
So to flatten the hills and fill the valleys
That the people may hasten their crawl
Beast number one rose out of the sea
To hustle the scapegoats from their gardens and halls
Into boxcars of doom whose numbers overwhelmed tallies.
The God of the ones labeled ‘foul’ seemed the loser
While the beast of the new way seemed strong.
Yet strong were ones, too, a winner-beast stirred,
Which differed in thought of right and wrong.
Thus two beasts clashed, each with multiple horns—
Clashed in a mighty war—
And a third beast, from the north, was aroused
By the vainglory of the would-be savior of the world
Choosing to fight on two fronts.
The fight was brutal and dirty as warring beasts
Bit and clawed and tore.

Horns went their way, sitting tight; jumping beasts;
Jumbling contentment, pride, and anxiety; choosing
Between the boredom of peace and the thrill of war;
Choosing from Aristotle’s spread of methods attempted
As people governed themselves or dominated others
Or ventured the brave utopias.
The War killed the League in spite of treaty and church.
Try, try, try! is history’s cry—
Try again and make it work.

The Great League was revived with hope-filled air
As the lovers of life pursued every care
And Declaration Universal was spread on heights
Protecting human rights.

6—Uprose the Two
Uprose the Eagle-beast, the rising spire of the bunch,
To assume the role of keeping the world at peace.

With ‘alas’ by the Eagle and ‘albeit’ by the warriors of north
The Bear-beast uprose to snatch to itself the peacekeeping role.

Ideologies differed—sunk in mind and heart—
Rand’s world of trade confronting Plato’s republic—
Godzilla versus Megatron—
Juggernaut utopias disregarding their architect’s praise.
Each beast found creatures to worry with a sideways glance
Showing bite and claw and a spirit to fight.
Neither would blunder by striking head to head—
The Fury of Fire in Flaunt stolen by each from the bowels
Of the Earth precluding the ultimate madness.
Great War would not happen. “Peace” would be kept.
A death stroke delivered by either would trigger
A death stroke right back.

7—Maybe This/Maybe That

7C-?
Or
poetchilde misreads
sacred scripture
And squirms to hide
From what he said.

8—Events
The Peacekeeper disabled as the stupefied sun—
The Devil dismayed? delighted? fooled? scheming?
Who knows the depth of his mind?
The Peacekeeper/Musclemaker absentee
Speaks to the way of the danger of wounded animals,
Of humiliated warriors, of wrack and ruin to the Devil’s glee.
The heated ones hustle while the humble ones grasp at the straw
Of peace universal and a way to withdraw
From a world compacted of dead matter breathed
By smoke and stench which is sorely grieved.

Order of events fail to proclaim cause and effect.
Connections hide themselves underneath the general confusion.
Opinions bury opinions in rapid deployment and change.
Facts are few regarding the how? and why?
The League comes alive with inspectors
Rebuffed by its swell-headed members, in turn shouted down
By its grass-root fabric with a clamor that sells the news.
Inspectors ride waves as members are caught in between.
Lies and truths mingle as bribes and threats a-plenty
Scurry the dark underside of events.

9—Knights
White knights and dark knights all tremble at something bigger than they—
Dragons blow smoke—mysteries taunt—forces offend!—What now?
The unknown
Places a crossroads that hangs a knight’s head along with his horse’s, too.
Feel the pain! Feel the choice! Demanded out of the blue.

Time waits in a press that possesses both horse and man and soul of the critters
Caterwauling under blue and gray sky as war plays zombie with finger in curve—
Jointed—disturbing—compelling—demanded—what plans in reserve?—
The earth has been tried by the sun lullabied—by the moon and the stars and the stones
And the clouds—by the birds and the poop laid down by its own—by the twigs
And the bugs and its owner.

White knights in service under thrall of time—dark knights bettering with steel and breed—
All snatched into depths of glop and goo—shunned by the nobles they ran aground—
Hissed by the scholars who seek the skies—cursed by the peasants who feel in their bones
The stuff of the earth which is fed by the sun.

Knights broken in battle—knights prancing in pride—ladies fair turning peasants to prophets—
Prophets to porters—porters to priests who serve gods of brightness too bright and darkness
Too dark to serve human needs thus miseries turn ladies to shrews who dodge stabbing spears
Of knights spent with confusion.

11—Decoration of Life
The prophesied day arrives.
The sun rises out of its ashes—
Fire and light to reign again
Above the battered earth.
None else! we cry. None to claim suzerainty.
Our trembling hearts dare not look beyond.
None to claim knowledge. None to claim pride—
One sun to gather the howling masses of anarchy sublime
Who nearly devoured themselves by the Devil’s anthropocide.
The sun arisen to its ancient glory! Defeater of darkness!
Decoration of Life showering oil and odium
On ones standing too tall while sparing the gnomes
And the dwarves and the leeches of blood
Who have waited in darkness.

The sun! The untouchable! The dread of mankind!
The worthy! Adored! Bestower of glory!
Almighty! Invincible! To which empires pray!
Too bright for eyes—raising blisters on skin—
Feeding the greenery flourishing life!
The sun! Supreme! Subservient to none!
Commanding our corpses-to-be! Subsumer of all!
Victorious! Magnificent!
We bow in plea that you not again flee.

14—Ordained
Those to the sword—to the sword.
Those to the wolves—to the wolves.
Those to the woods—to the woods.
Those to the gods—to the gods.

The human race trundled its path as it had for six thousand years
By the biblical timeline, diagramming yesteryear by ten generations a step,
When a light dropped from the clouds to the signs of Apocalypse—
Dazzling the eyes of cloudwatchers—and then was done
The double preposterous—
The globe of the kings like a vast living creature was humbled—to the quick—
To the mortification effecting the waving of the dreaded white flag—and then—
The globe of the gods like a vast living creature was laid down—torn down—
Trampled and burned—leaving one God in his tent in style—truth above lies—

Soon to be regretted in forgetfulness or doubt or a clinging to the old ways
As the beacon of hope became a disappointment—first to the kings who had finagled
Their continuance among their own out of their debacle and second to the merchants
Who began a slow slide toward the dreaded and feared state of having less than abundance,
Followed third by the traders who loved the seas of the earth for adventure and mermaids
And gold.

In review: The magisterial ones caught in their bluster
Had so transgressed their fold that they cringed in their calamity
Of nearly killing the ones in their charge,
And the canonical ones caught in their lies and deception
Were then ever so gently set aside of their doings,
Defrauding the people of time and their money,
Of hope and their peace—
Set aside of their pockets of love strewn with hate
That had ravaged a world that would love to love love.
War with the Lamb had been engaged with precursor
By war with the lamb who was a monster within
Speaking words kindly as it strapped on its swords
Of inevitability as caught in its cords.

16—The Battle’s Stage

The queen was to rule the people marked with the steeple
Which sometimes stood off in squabble as crosses or stars,
Yet be loved for her pockets and folds giving room for the simple

To find what they liked in worship of god, putting money in jars
As sign of approval and to keep things humming along—
To keep the queen dining and dancing and moving in motorized cars.

The queen would not know till it happened, her lament sung in song,
Striking her heart and closing her doors
As the music she played in her past would not play and her pie would be gone.

Kings would like queens for polishing doorknobs and sweeping floors
Of the kingdoms through hands of her folk
While the kings would rule over the forests and fields and moors.

And always the jesters—always the clowns—
Ask Mr. Shakespeare—the world goes round—
Hear I the jester?—No! The minstrel in key!—
In lament ensconced in irony—O my God! It will happen!—
The music—the players—to the coast with the Sacred Three!—

There would be kings over hills and kings over mountains, no joke,
Who thought they knew how to bring wisdom and joy to all mother earth,
Who would strive with contention to fill with their credence the holey global poke.

Supremacy of rightful rule—“mine!”—would be promised to end the dearth
Induced by division and squabble that kept many a forest so poor
With proclamations contending as gold fever challenged noble ideals of worth.

The forests of people would trot to the tune when sent to war
For the sake of the kings in tit-for-tat by the queens
With ideals and wishes of glory shouted in roar.

The Great League would scowl and squirm, slighted for lack of means
To accomplish its charter of calming the world
To the day-to-day trudge of earning shelter and bacon and beans.

The spirit was troubled and the stage was set for all to be twirled
In a whorl of loyalty impossible to keep
As the kings saw their daymaker to the abyss rudely hurled.

Beep, beep!

18—One Thought
Trees escape by the husk of their seeds
From the sun-sucked windstorm
Which rose from the soil
Of the rapacious scene
Leaving the trees mortified
By the actions royal
That well-nigh swept the forests clean.

Trees abandon the pride of their niche
To pursue the heartfelt, fellow goal
Of forbidding mania from again reaching a pitch
That would ruin the earth in its toll.
The forests unite in a solemn mien.