Rome was not burned in a day
It suffered an agonizing decay
Pillars raised in golden streets
Finery and art, exquisite treats
Fattened off the backs of masses
Blind prophets cried of salvation
Wastewater wage middle classes
Starved, practicing diets of distraction
2.20.21 - Perseverance and Pathogen
Jailed for preaching the gospel of Aristarchus
Galileo’s agnostic legacy tarnished as heresy
Digital bits mined from spilled blood of prophets
Gambling, not pot, legalized by Wall Street
Scientists gained control of Mars this week
In an alien lake, our machines dig deep
Ancient truths sleep, hidden far below
But, Republicans broke Texas with snow
Oil banks blamed a few windmills frozen
Snake-charmed by Don Quixote’s poison
Inoculated against scientific truth, prose, or
Earth’s omens- tempests, a decade before
Neil’s moon-dust Apollo boots exhumed
For blind Inquisition in evangelic Senate
What holy wars await behind golden doors
If NASA finds signs of ancient life on Mars
1.13.21 - On Consequence
A week later and we’re all still here
Witness to ruin, result of abject fear
Not of pillars and glass concrete domes
But men, by their own actions, undone
Lives splayed open, shame bared raw
Hastily scribed epitaphs in digital scrawls
Weep not for seditionists betrayed fall
Accountability over divisiveness, for all