“new” world by Jim McGowin

 

only the necropolis decides
who gets to go to the pinnacle,
the engendered or endangered ascension,
a treacherous ruse that cloaks itself noble in
sloppy approximations of belief,
and people can’t sock away enough comfort
in their barbed wire yards,
dragged tangled, clinging or cast away by
a tide of serpent’s tongues
flicked heavily against lost orphans
who collect garbled star chanties
hanging like effluvia
racing above synthetic heavenly peaks,
until the foundering meat brutes,
honorable to the pure blood
setters of infliction,
come preaching about deliverance
via homicidal sensations of
falling into pottery shards
and bones broken against the flags,
ordered by mechanical
gunmetal garnished
trigger eaters,
all in the name of
a fraudulent word game.

___________

Jim McGowin does art among other things and lives in St. Louis MO