Chaos and Control: A Fairytale for the New Era

The vampires were 
On the offensive
Sucking the color and 
Light from the living. 
I saw a werewolf chewing
On the heart of the century
While it's lungs were still 
Heaving and breathing. 
He was picking a flea off 
Big Foot, while smoking a fine cigar, 
They were riding in the back seat
Of Jack Sparrow's stolen car. 
The jackboots were all taken
The armbands were fastened
On with A Zee:
It is chaos, out there honey,
The Gods are shaking the tree. 

A jealous one eyed yokel
Is running a school 
For the aesthetically blind.
He is insincere and he isn't 
Local; he is queer but the
Straights pretend that they
Honestly don't very much mind. 
His factory was open until the
Day they shot him down.
They say he went down crying
"They want me out of this town!"

A centaur is galloping wildly
Right down to the sloops 
In San Francisco Bay, 
They are Byzantine and 
Wreathed in sweet Eglantine 
And waiting for Helen of 
Troy to come out to play.  
But Helen is getting freaky
With Leda's swan down by the docks
There doesn't seem to be anything
She wouldn't do to for that
Hollywood screen siren shot.

The cameras are all flickering
Recording a thousand shots an hour - 
Who prefers the mechanical
And who lives and dies by the bloody flower; 
Those who continue to carry on living
And who won't breathe to tell...
Who is reaching for heaven...
And who is choosing to stay on in hell. 
The days of Leary running acid tests
Out on Fisherman's Wharf
While the Beats got old and lurked
And played with Snow White's 
Revolutionary hard hitting 
But friendly dwarves, 
Are over and rapidly fading
But still occasionally twitch and jerk.
Their ghosts are old and gnarly
But they continue to hang out and lurk
And watch as munibus day trippers 
Berate Harley-riding
Legendary Thompsonian 
One percenter hacks who
Wheelie down the hills 
With all the freedom 
That the rest of them seem
To not miss, but sorely lack. 
It is quite the show but
Nobody real can afford 
To buy a ticket.
Besides, they sell out in 
A fairytale minute.

The Powers don't do 
Anything useful with the 
Images they steal:
They exist only to be minted
Pressed and keyed - 
Worthless frippery - while 
Someone else is missing a meal. 
The rich run around buying
Sick NFT's of the poor
Bleeding all the red that
They have left to bleed. 
But don't worry the bubble 
Will burst:
It is insanity while there 
Is so much longing and need. 

And the moon it rises slowly
Over the horizon, over the hills
But it is not made of cream cheese:
It is piled high with pills. 
The dark side is concocted 
From the boot scrapings,
Of Texan border Kings,
And the junkies will be glad for them.
Beggars can't be choosers, you see.

Someone has a missile that can
Destroy an entire land,
The rich have a way to 
Evade them, while the rest of us
Have yet to come up with a plan.

Iron Man's space lasers are ready 
To shoot that missile down, 
But instead they are aimed at
Overpriced electric cars
Sold to the rich 
By Krusty the Klown. 

They run on bucking bronco
Reactors, that occasionally
Hemorrhage death,
I have a sneaking suspicion that
Tomorrow is certain less and less.

Homer Simpson
Buys more junk stock but fails
To find anything that
He can afford to eat, 
He would prefer a 
Hamburger, but ends up
Sniffing a rich man's 
Impossible meat. 

As long as Homer has internet 
He is fine with starving for now,
His wife is wearing a knock off
Amazon evening gown. 
She figures she might as well look pretty
If she is going to have to live in a 
In a glowing toxic mess.
Her hair is unconditioned,
The dog is humping on her dress.
She is pretending to ignore it,
She can't stop it happening anyway,
The men have outlawed propriety
And the Patriarchy is here to stay. 
 
Homer figures there will always be 
Twinkies in this apocalyptic 
World wide outpouring of distress.
He ignores his rumbling belly
And heads off to search for new
Tweets in the nest. 
But a man cannot live on 
Entertainment alone. 
He takes pity on his wife
And wrestles the dog for a bone. 

A couple of orcs are telling
Jokes to the emotionally unstable. 
They would leave behind the insults
But they paid ten thousand 
Dollars a table. 

Persephone is mourning
The loss of her glory days
But her looks are already fading
And she has been eating the 
Magic creeping purple haze. 
It leaves her hot and shaking
Pondering ethics and rights and wrongs:
There is always Betty Ford for when
The trip has gone on too long. 

She is jawing with Kublai Khan
About a business opportunity.
While cousin Genghis is moaning -
He has been drained
Of his last drops of 
His masculine vitality.
When a man's only legacy is
Procreation and war
It is wise to avoid him
Before he drags you 
To the door. 

It's murder out there, Angel.
It's all about control,
Life is slowly dripping 
Down another gaping hole. 

I put to bed all the fairytales
I've laid all the monsters to sleep
I fear we are on the verge of dying
And there is no time left to weep. 

It is chaos and it is control
It is a party down at your house
It is wild and it is weeping
And threatening to go
Out as quiet as a tiny
Nuclear- mutated mouse. 

It is a modern revenge tragedy
Playing out in fury and sound. 
It is order to the nth degree
And anything is allowed.
A fire sale is happening on our
Experiment in  representative
Capitalist democracy.
I hope that we can win the 
War, but how can you fight
What you can't see?
The systemic torturers and
Practitioners of cruelty
Leverage their assets and
Put a price on loyalty.
But the slavering masses 
Are starting to sell short - 
They are starved of education.
And Everyman has become 
A gun slinger for bread
But claims to be saving the nation.
The rich, they have my eternal scorn:
They figure once their world is done
They can live inside their heads and
The only way to feed the prosperous 
Living is by making the majority
Of us bloody doornail dodo dead. 

And everything has got strange
But that is not the issue. 
I am looking for sandwich
But end up sucking on
A shea-butter infused tissue.

The Fisher King
Is smoking crack down on
Skid row with Cinderella,
She is watching a woman 
Called Dink who is rocking
Mary Poppin's broken black umbrella. 
If you listen closely, she might 
Have a word or two. 
She told me to duck and roll
Because she has seen some 
Crazy shit go down 
Around here too.
I enquire about her husband
But she has not seen him
Since Nineteen hundred and Nine
I break a loaf with her
And pour her a glass of wine.
I tell her that in my time
Some white dude has stolen her song.
She looks and me and shakes her head
And tells me the Kingdom won't be long. 
She asks me if I'm experienced
Or if I am just playing.
I answer that the night comes down
On most broken women praying.
She cautions me against bitterness
She plays a fine guitar,
I would love to have 
That kind of dignity
But I am about to hop onto
The next high rolling
Doomed city street car,
And as it rolls off down
Annihilation Hill
She sends a thought
Rolling after me, 
She bowls it at my brain. 
Her eyes are full of the sorrow
Of generational pain.
There is no potion to 
Fix it, no shot, no draught
No pill. 
I catch the thought as
It passes. 
It reads:
"We are all just simply souls
Trying to outlive 
Some madman's oil spill."

It is about chaos and control
And en-masse destruction,
It is a grand performance
A top tier puzzling production.
There is a fire that's burning
In the heart of every living soul
And I am not about to go down
With them:
Survival is my goal. 

(From the news desk of Detroit Richards, May Day 2022)