in tenebris

no government anymore
but this slick circus
come one, come all,
see the treacherous,
rump-fed runions baying
at the ragged remnants
of democracy, equality,
and any decency

hidden hands twitch strings
that pull a jerky dance
from the clueless or corrupt,
an ever-changing cabinet of maggots,
a charivari whose kettle-drumming
conceals their deeper work
of long-wrought
unravelling and rot

at the head of the parade,
Trumpkin in harlequin livery
happily capers and scrapes
at the gates of hell
gibbering, leering puppet-fool
fanning ancient hates and
peddling Soviet-era snake oil
to the red-hatted rubes

and little sick Pence none-the-richer
who, despite his pious posturing,
strokes golden calves and
tucks into his trundle nightly
under satan's brassy bed
where he dreams of mommy,
and the simpler times
of nursery rules and tales

and muckle mite Mitch,
soft-shelled, soft-spoken, purse-lipped,
un-pinnable, slippery swamp thing
whose whole-cloth lies and strategic evasions
should raise hackles on any hearer
yet somehow he always slithers through
unscathed, while the wickedness he works
goes off without a hitch

so the sorry sideshow goes,
circus wagons circled 'round an evil bonfire
made of the disrespected bones of the dead
and the dreams of the living
we have forgotten who we are, were, and should have been,
listening to idiots' tales, 

full of sound-bytes and fury,

dignifying nothing.