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Time's Enchantment

Either follow tradition, or invent such fables as are congruous to themselves.”

                                                        —Horace

A penny for the Old Guy

The Old Guy crashed the party.

He was the Sign of Things

To Come. He could tell all, he could

Shuffle all the cards.

 

He could give his little finger,

Reveal what he had seen 

In the past, before his execution 

On November Five.

 

Gunpowder was alive. But no one was 

Shocked. The cards were 

Obsolete. They had redrawn 

Everything in their cheat sheets, 

 

Reprogrammed their SIMs

And RPGs, planned their Gran Turismos

& Shoot ‘Em Ups. Seen it all:

The RH Bill would pass,

 

But not the Freedom of Info Act.

Corruption would win 

In the wink of an eye. Neither

Asange nor Snowden

Could prevent the State 

From snooping. And bad governance

Would persist despite

Facebook or Twitter, despite

 

The Anonymous hackers.

And only Junior saw the sign. 

The dystopian future 

Was a Selfie in the mirror:

 

Time’s enchantment 

Looking at itself, Big Sister 

Contemplating her old age. It was 

A Miss Universe Contest.

 

The Middle East will break up,

We will not know when 

The Second Coming was at hand.

We will only hear the drones

 

And our enemies, our masters, will be sitting

In Board Rooms, presiding over arms

Deals and factories, and Terror and Capital 

Will continue to eat our children.

 

 

August 17, 2014

Marcel Antonio, The  Falling Star

MarcelAntonio TheFallingStar.jpg
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