Welcome, to The Age of the Lie

by séamas carraher, global rights | 2025-02-17 10:13 am

Post Views: 21

Loading

This, then, was the news today. / It falls like a missile / over the heads of / innocent babies. / No one else is innocent. /Not you nor me. /Not the dead young men they call martyrs, /not the massacred men and the mutilated men

Monday, January 20, 2025

 “When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”

  

1

Obsequious to Wealth and Power

we will now eat stale crusts

from the Oligarch’s table.

 

In good company, we are all,

one among the many, a grinning

multitude among the greedy dogs.

 

Oh, i should have been born

with a flag as my umbilical cord

for a world already beginning to burn

 

for here, beneath each endless betrayal

is the Revolt of the Oligarchs, this televised

Catastrophe of the Celebrities.

 

2

Now is the time to build

mountains within which

to bury our dead.

 

Now we will learn to live

the greedy life beneath

the table

 

among the hungry dogs,

among both the dying and the walking dead,

among the damaged, the deluded, and the damned.

 

The noise of normality here

is shredding my sanity.

Even the streets are no longer safe.

 

3

This, then, was the news today.

It falls like a missile

over the heads of

innocent babies.

 

No one else is innocent.

 

Not you nor me.

Not the dead young men they call martyrs,

not the massacred men and the mutilated men.

 

(Say nothing of the women

and their voiceless

children).

 

4

i was born with a flag

in place of an umbilical cord

for a country that does not exist yet

 

yet each day

i watch it burn

or lie buried beneath rubble.

 

Someone has planted a fiery cross

in the centre of its heart and

the ‘truth’ left here

 

starts to swing in the breeze

like dead boys hanging

from the trees.

 

The label always to read ‘made in america’.

 

5

i’d blow my brains out

but i cannot spare the bullet.

The one i’m saving for my old age.

 

The one that they say could travel

sharpened like a stake into the dark space

of this Empire of the Lie

 

this religion now of garbage and greed.

 

What’s left? i ask this heavy heart

where all hurt is now heartless and well-dressed

in slogans and selfish sarcasm

 

in lies, and treachery and business deals.

 

All that is left are rumours and

the whispering of madmen.

All that is left is the monotonous litany of the lie.

 

6

See how it wears an expensive suit.

 

No one here will laugh

when the emperor shits his pants in contempt.

No one is brave enough.

 

Not a single one of these toothless celebrities.

Not their wealth

wretched with war and starvation,

 

not all their politeness

polished in

phosphorus and pornography.

 

7

This is the country of the Lie

where the sun will never need

to set.

 

Here now is the time.

 

Listen,

listen, to it

ticking, ticking, ticking!

 

séamas carraher

Friday, 31 January 2025 – 17 February 2025

 

Image

“Johnson poses for a selfie with Elon Musk and a blurry Donald Trump. Diet Coke is also present”

Date 16 November 2024

Office of Speaker Mike Johnson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Reference

(22:46 ) “I mean Trump is a very limited intellect…(a) very limited figure

…he’s…he’s a Carnival Barker…” (Chris Hedges)

Democracy doesn’t exist in the United States: Chris Hedges | UpFront

Al Jazeera – 31, January, 2025[1]

 

“When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”

Elizabeth Bangs – Turkish proverb updated[2]

 

Notes

Monday, January 20, 2025

Second inauguration of Donald Trump

Wikipedia[3]

 

(White) “phosphorus”

Wikipedia[4]

Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre (2005)

Italian Documentary of American War Crimes in Iraq[5]

 

 

 

 

Endnotes:
  1. Al Jazeera – 31, January, 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EDKRGkgLsI
  2. Elizabeth Bangs – Turkish proverb updated: https://elizabethbangs.wordpress.com/2022/12/31/when-is-an-old-turkish-proverb-not-an-old-turkish-proverb/
  3. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_inauguration_of_Donald_Trump
  4. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah,_The_Hidden_Massacre
  5. Italian Documentary of American War Crimes in Iraq: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StRI-ht2HaA

Source URL: https://globalrights.info/2025/02/welcome-to-the-age-of-the-lie/