A cheese roll and a coffee cup

To accompany the morning chatter of the radio

Nattering of menaces out of Iraq,

Dull appraisals with Chicken Little qualities

Submissive to the coercive governmental claque.

Propaganda channeled through diverse media,

But, at end, persuaded by convergence to attack.

No attempt to disguise the latent fear

Solidified by vivid transmissions of the event,

The Hollywood catastrophe of collapsing towers

Which lived grotesquely both in fantasy and fact

Revealing the cavern where the nightmare cowers

That its chill tentacles strew across the morning floor

To re-enforce hysteria from governmental powers.

There is no question that the threats are real.

But there is the sense that it is being used.

A tool to shake the ordinary quality of living.

Outright violation of firm civil regulation.

Violence from laws over-unforgiving.

There seems to be a plan in this assault on liberty

Generating counter hysterias , thoughts misgiving.

Aside from this war crisis that turns the nation jittery,

Other surreptitious governmental legislation

Wearing sheepskins of civilian stewardship

Are slyly slipped into a wary system

Judicial nominations engineered to tip

Legalities into abysses of unctuous hypocrisy

Punishing the poor, the sick, the deprived with legal whip.

Foundations are shifting. The epicenter at New York

Has spread its fissures across the continent.

No ground is secure. Rigidities begin to crumble.

Official nonsense corrodes good humane sense.

Outraged appeals are stifled down to a mumble.

This is glory hour for mindless vengeful hate.

No room for reason. Its flagellation time for the humble.

Our callous idiotics are mounting for the thrust

For the destructive contest of stupidities out there.

Soon will bloody body fragments play at circus.

Internal organ parts will somersault in crimson sprays.

Heads and hands and toes will vaporize, a hocus pocus

Of the military, indiscriminate in distributed democracy.

A gift of raging explosions in conflicts insane locus.

And for what cause? Will this horrid exhibition

Be the surgery to cure the total cancer

That has metastasized to penetrate out to the tips

Of every energy that engines our power,

Or is it frustrated fury that screams and grips

The species in a spastic termination

To leave the landscape scattered with silent lips?