(A diatribe without apology) 

 

I

How exultant the Satanic smile

that beholds how eagerly

humanity accepts and takes to heart

his most invidious lie: the one

tempting our species

to preemptively assume

--like the benighted Bonaparte--

the crown of sovereignty;

and then cloak our hubris

with glory that belongs to

Heaven Alone.

 

Of all the Tempter's offerings

surely no blasphemy’s been more deceitful

(or welcomed)

than humanity’s hell-bent conceit:

our unmitigated hubris

that slaughters all that moves

and decimates whole forests

of the Tree of Life,

(the one vouchsafed to us by Heaven)

all to feed ever more wanton billions

of the paragon we believe our breed

to be.

 

No matter

the proverbial ‘twain’

of wrong-again Rudyard’s refrain

did finally meet.

 

For all the combined wisdom

of East and West

comes to nothing as long

as mankind’s S.R.O. conceit FN

continues to pave and pollute

this dying speck of universe

--this one of a myriad stars--

where Heaven chose to garden

its sacred Samsara dream

of more than human life.

 

 

II

To what bloody sorrowful ends:

the Tempter's despicable ‘con’

and our complicit blasphemy

in ignoring Divine Providence,

stealing from Eden’s

Forbidden Tree

its proscribed yield

of good and evil judgments.

 

Were it enough

their relativistic core’s

mock the sanctimony

of our moral suasions:

but their unholy relativity

stains every page of human history

with bloody consequence.

 

So on and on it goes

what surely seems to be

Satan’s sinecure of the world.

See the esteem given

His beguiling minions of greed:

the corporate traders

with their advanced degrees

of avarice and prevarication.

Shameless hucksters

fettered in the stocks, and

by the bonds

of Wall Street’s marketplace:

selling their souls, and ours

for the bottom line,

its hallowed status

revealing the respect given to greed

is a devilish design.

 

 

III

Even so, mere pikers these,

compared to the Devil’s favorite disciples,

the nameless lords of

international finance:

the cabals of world bankers,

armament makers, and

assorted billionaires designing their

corporate exploitation

of nations and natural resources . . .

who dare misuse the IMF and

the World Bank to extort

needy nations to ‘privatize’

their public ownerships

else receive nothing -- but

the likely subversions of CIA and

‘School of the Americas’ intervention. . .

all to replace the people’s democracies

with brutish repressive regimes:

oligarchies whose nihilist and elitist creed

promises riches to a few,

and poverty for the rest.

 

Greedy corporate machinations

unconscionably maintained by

Pentagon- and CIA-funded juntas;

neo-fascist stooges who murder

and terrorize innocent millions

into wretched lives of poverty,

ignorance,

and disease. Yet

nations blind with hubris

--and exploitive capitalist greed--

only wince, and ignore

the desperate plight of

Haiti, Guatemala, Columbia,

Mexico, Palestine, Africa,

and yes, even capitalist Russia,

with its eleven, new billionaire gangsters.

 

These and all the many other nations

enslaved by ideological tyrants

who, devoid of all compassion,

create living Hells on earth. . .

under deaf-to-Heaven spells

of the revengeful ‘Fallen One’

whose obedient servant

many of us have been, and are.

 

 

IV

Incredulous Pollyannas

might well consider

the devilishly designed facade

now given to “democracy:”

one surreptitiously perpetrated

upon the nation by self-serving

cabals of the corporate rich

and the ‘military-industrial complex,’

the likes of which Ike warned

and the nation forgot.

 

The result?

A denial and grotesque distortion

of Lincoln’s hallowed credo:

“a government of, by, and for the people.”

A noble prospect

now but a cruel fiction:

one which attests to the forgotten truth

of Jefferson’s admonition:

“only a freely informed people

can create and preserve democracy.”

 

Yet the eternal halls of history

continue to echo the cries of millions

victimized and deprived by

the insatiate greed

of leonine corporations

unleased by Republican rule.

 

What a mockery of democracy

does our lobby-ridden republic

makes of Lincoln’s noble credo.

For today’s corporate financed elections

are but well-orchestrated theater

of graft and deceit: where

plutocratic puppeteers

pull the strings

of beholden politicians--

all tap-dancing through

Electoral College smoke and mirrors

to that Old College Tune

that always accompanies

our skewed elections.

 

By what sanctions but power and greed

are lobbies allowed to subvert

the people’s right to fair

and unbribed representation?

Again, a perfidy perpetuated by

a corporate-controlled mass media,

whose deceitful right wing agenda

--and flagrant sins of omission--

show how prescient Jefferson’s warning

that only a freely informed polity

prevents democracy from succumbing

to the tyranny of oligarchic rule.

 

If it be true that voters receive

the kind of government they deserve,

only nationally financed elections

can restore a people’s democracy

from the neo-fascist plutocracy

corporate America has become.

 

 

V

Alas, human genius notwithstanding,

nothing man might devise

could trump the Tarot of

Damnation and sorrow in Satan’s hand.

What then, if anything, might arrest

humanity’s ever plummeting

Fall from Grace?

 

And yet, redemption awaits--

if our supercilious species dares to address

our blasphemous hubris that was, and is

the Original Sin

that blinds mankind with

self-deifying arrogance:

which defiles through denial

Heaven’s foremost Commandment:

“No Gods before the One.”

 

Pride did indeed

go before our Fall.

It’s time to face and end

this charade of self deception.

 

To hell with satanic scapegoats

posited in the evasive

myth and metaphor of ages:

whose many aliases reveal

how universal the fraud

to conjure and conceal

the “evil doer’ within ourselves.

For the Devil resides naught

but within that exalted

“Palace of Pandemonium”--

the Mind of Man.

 

 

 

 

VI

Or so it all seems

in life’s daily dream.

For the ubiquity of Creation NOW

is inexplicable and transcendent

--as in Zen’s engimatic

“Samsara is Nirvana,

Nirvana is Samsara.”

Or posited intellectually as:

a syncretism

of Creation and Creator.

In either case, unknowable

to all but transcendent Experience.

 

While far short of this,

the world’s needless suffering

deems some inkling of revelation

at least worth a try:

so if you will

regard the realm

of Ultimate Reality

as a profound Mystery Play

one imminently created and performed

within Now’s ever-evolving stage

by the King of Emptiness

who, through the guise of

a myriad masked actors,

witnesses in life’s infinite diversity

none but the Self-same Spirit

that is in truth,

our Lone

Eternal

Self.

 

by J. W. Hackett ©2003