Calumny!

Cry, beloved country,
your nation is a dead tree,
a flare, squandered by its own
operators, whose fireworks
defrauded the faithful
with the whispers of a whipsaw
perfect fate.

Spare fire, that was the hope,
even toward the imperium's end,
a middle could crawl out of the muck
to make a marsh into a molehill 
and a rodent into whatever floats 
our nuclear aircraft carriers.

Splayed out for anyone to 
transparently transform;
that's the constitutional autarky,
can't find yelling on a yellow day
whose xenophobia matches 
the strike.

No conflagration, no problem,
gasoline is this place's business
and its utility is inarguable
at temporary distraction.

Fed by irony, no spinach required,
that's the cartoon certainty
held by the dreaming utopian elegiacs,
spun to the most comfortable chair
and lulled into a hoarse sense of
impending not-any-place.

Can tradition?
No.
Trash compact?
Not enough.
Our garbage is the subject
of the denominator
in this currency time's
inflated sense of relief.

Reportage is a montage
for the eyeballs and the brain chemical 
oversimplification
readied for its clothes-off,
such that sex is sold to the lowest common bidders.

More, more, more!
That's the message from the missile interpreters 
of Darwinian madness;
the randomness forgetters,
the clock resetters,
the wishful big bang-ites,
meteorologically static
in the radio station well.

Drink less to live more,
long known, 
barely practiced,
it's a comma set,
a command net,
an interweave that 
spells the beginning
and the midpoint
of our triangle's robust corners.