Warning!

They’re coming down the street
A mob breaking into every house
Stealing
Raping
Killing

You weren’t prepared for this
Too many in the madness
Like a rolling tidal wave

You won’t run
This is your home
Your wife and kids hiding in the closet
Terrified
Crying
Praying

You only have a baseball bat
Ready to swing
When they break down your front door

You’re spitting blood you’re so angry
A rock bashing through the window
Footsteps swarming to your door

All those years preceding
Warning of this
And you didn’t believe
It could happen here.

Terror

Unbearable
Inaction at the sight of the scene
Those first seconds shocked

Ringing in the ears
Dry mouth

Someone’s blood spattered on your clothes
Then the screaming
Sirens
Faraway

Jerking into alertness
You begin to move to help

Later discovering you’re one of the dead.

The Cyber Nude

the skull and the rose

when the face
of the clock
shatters;
while
the flies
crawl
the walls
dreaming
of libertarian
socialism;
while
America
goes broke
from
endless
unwinnable
wars
in faraway
lands—
there’ll be
time enough
for
the skull
and the rose,
for
the raven
in the fire
of my endless
night.

another anarchist manifesto

in your democracy
of corporate jets
and homeless families living in shelters

in your republic
of killer cops
and nuclear bombs and drone strikes

there’s still a handful
of noble Marxists
that you’ve locked up in your
prison-industrial complex

or you’ve buried them six feet under
to fertilize your fields of Monsanto GM crops
somewhere out in Kansas

so long as the sheeple
keep paying their taxes and keep on
keeping their mouths shut

and you can kiss my fucking anarchist ass

while the ghost of Howard Zinn chuckles
as the empire smolders away into the ether
just like he said it would.

The Beatnik Cowboy has rode back into town from the sunset…