Part 3: Progress To Power Poem by Marshall E Gass

The hawk nosed general in the grey suit sniffed
out his enemies, labrador like, nose to the noise,
chest beating, bleating, blaring in the thunderous
applause, that made his ego bloom amongst the corpses
of the shrunken heads and hands reaching out for bread,
in the shut down quarter of the empire
where the eagles flew in/ out dropping mustard,
caught between a deadly sandwich of
closed escape routes.

'Burn them all' he said, and turning to his sidekick,
he smiled a thin smile, devoid of the god he worshiped
in the minarets on the mosques that stabbed the blue sky
with their sharp bulbous needles of attention.

At twelve the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and
moaned for mercy on the unbelievers.The call echoed
and reverberated down the streets.
The mustard closed the eyes of the city where the
gas cannisters jangled on thin nerves and let the
people sleep forever.

The grey suit, now eau de cologne scented handker-
chief
hawk nose sniffed
wiped his forehead and walked
spritely to his armoured vehicle, to call his wife
and enquire if the kids were enjoying their summer swim.

'Yes, darling! ' she tingled with excitement.
'How's that part of the city
where these rats live? '
'Good love! Just need to smoke 'em
out some more!
By tonight I'll be home for dinner. Bye for now! '

The line went dead
with twenty others, fried in the concrete
pan of a bunk buster bomb dropped from a drone
with butterfly wings and a sharp upside down minaret
nozzle of spray now stabbing the earth.
Earth to sky, sky to earth?

The barbed wired brains circled the city.
Children soon crunched cockroaches,
mice and rats and grass salads, autumn leaves on wild spinach
thousands died eating succulent poisonous roots.

Even the carrion claws refused to descend into the darkness
of carcasses that lay down in the streets to pray forever.

The water turned green with envy as lichen,
clogged with blood and vomit and bones rotting
under bridges, damned up the blue river
and sent the beavers into burrows of omerta
The world watched and waited.

?

Around the dinner table the grey suited general
tucked his napkin under his red, wellfed face and smiled
at his lovely wife in a designer outfit.
' Pass me the mustard please, darling! '

Author Notes
The revolution shifts elsewhere. Follow it.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.