The Twenty-First Century by Max Blair
Swimming and struggling in a loosening spiral
The newfoundland cannot hear its master.
Things clam down tight, cold authority
Constricts the testicles of the world.
The blood block belt’s unloosed and everywhere
The passion of innocents atrophies.
Surely some reckoning is at hand,
Finally the Twenty-First Century is at hand!
The Twenty-First Century!
Hardly are those words out when some sick image
Out of hentai anime troubles my sight.
Somewhere deep in the sunless stony damp,
Squats a bloated figure with the threefold face
Of Kenneth Lay, Karl Rove, and Bill O’Reilly;
Its many tentacles writhing slowly now
But steadily building speed as its
Autoimpregnation cycle quickens.
The vision slouches back into blackness,
But plainly shows
How two-thousand centuries of bleating sheep
Were hexed to genocide
In name of Peace.
So now, what rough beast
His hour come round at last
Slouches through cherry groves to be born?

January 1, 2001