Pandemic’s Labyrinth

Beware,
Ye who enter,
For thy guide
Is misleading.

***

Roosevelt was elected four times,
Completely unprecedented 
And yet still little remarked upon,
Except that it shouldn’t happen again
Because he happened to die
Shortly into his fourth term.

Four elections
Because only he could 
Guide the ship
In such perilous times,
And so easy because 
He offered a New Deal
After a Great Depression
But mostly because 
Of a Second World War.

And the guy that succeeded him
Immediately dropped
The two worst bombs
Ever deployed,
And changed the course
Of history
But has never been condemned 
For it.

Ever.

***

The worst sin Nixon committed 
Was continuing the programs
Of his predecessors 
And having even a hint
Of sharing
Or even owning
The credit.

***

The problem of 9/11
Was that it created
An environment
Where it was no longer acceptable
To bow to tyrants,
Even those
Who may have been fostered
In times past.

Such was the fate of Hussein.

It still bothers me
That the narrative
Of the WMDs
Dismisses the history
And attempts to define the reality
In absence of proof
In an age
Where proof
Often does not exist.

If in fact it ever has.

And this absence
Has persistently condemned 
The idea
Of finally taking responsibility
For a monster
And reshaping a country
That has so often
Redefined itself,
One of the oldest nations
Of the world,
New names,
New identities
Throughout history,
And yet when change
Is offered again
This is somehow a sin?

***

The problem
With the pandemic
Is that it was prosecuted
With far more reckless abandon.

***

Witness,
Now,
The host.

Witness the host 
In all its grotesque grandeur,
A plague mask
In its strange allure,
Its party favor.

Witness the host
Wring its hands
In sympathy
While the vulnerable die
And the others
Lie stacked in solitude
Bullied into submission 
And shamed continually,
And the world moves on
Without a heartbeat,
Culture in a stranglehold,
Choked off,
Choked out,
Reduced to rank spectacle
In the confines
Of a population 
That shares but cannot think,
Condemns but cannot care,
Tastes the bitter root of irony
But cannot process its texture,
Everyone offered the same meal
And then told to take heed,
For not everyone will like it,
Or will be able to eat,
A banquet of inequity,
Equal, for all that.

***

How 
To emerge
From this?

How to forget?
How to move on?

***

For this is a labyrinth,
And all avenues
Are winding,
Mislabeled,
And at the heart,
An inverted paradox,
So that up is down
And down is up,
A climate of change
For which there is no
Adaptation.

Somehow.

***

And where is the guide?

Forget the host;
Where is the guide?
Where the expert
Of not only knowledge,
But insight?

Apparently all the world
And so many voices
But nothing
Worth hearing.

The world and a nation,
A vast conundrum,
Locked in a riddle,
And the answer is the question,
And the question the answer.

And the guide
Is hidden,
Locked in silent protest.

When you find them,
The guide
Will most likely
Speak in metaphor.

It’s safer that way;
It is a tongue
Unknown
To fools.

And the guide,
To further obfuscate,
Will be open
To interpretation,
Can mean more than one thing,
And perhaps even mean one
But the other is better.

***

To emerge,
Safely,
Will surely 
Take a lifetime.

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