
They chant his name, a hollow gospel
to the mighty orange they so adore—
Words building wars,
Paid for by the blood of the other.
Gold plated streets
Corroded and stained –
They called it freedom once,
a democratic right.
Now.
Broken.
The land of the free –
Always,
But for the blacks or the women
Or the poor, sure.
But that’s by the by.
Finally.
Shows its true hue.
A hundred paper lies –
And,
a hundred thousand
Lives spilled for a dime
Now.
Caught.
Encaged or enraged
Divided
by the iron-clad grip
of a tangerine führer,
hell-bent on sacrificing
Lambs.
Slick and bloated under artificial light
The spolight is the thing,
No illumination –
the sickly stain of truth,
missing the point.
Again.
A hundred paper promises
for a hundred thousand
shredded dreams.
And tomorrow’s weight lies thick and heavy
like Chernobyl ash, burned and settling in –
Deep.
Rooted and
Inherent.
They call it victory
while evil embeds a hundred feet deep,
clinging to men –
too deluded to see
they’re wading, not walking.
Their comrade is no friend.
They call it strength – but listen,
How it crumbles,
They call it justice – but see,
how it blinds,
they call it a future – but watch
as it dies,
a kingdom of nothing, a throne built on fear,
and every name they gave it,
a paper lie,
repeated
one hundred times again.

If this resonated, share it on Bluesky (or anywhere folks still have an attention span longer than a moth after a sleepless night), leave us a comment, or check out our latest anthologies
Poetry Collection, ‘Is this all we get?’
Prose Collection, ‘ Fifth Avenue Pizza’
Discover more from River and Celia Underland
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
