When chicanery blares from the crooked mouth

What does one turn to?

Especially during pandemic times

When no converse among the few

Who still throb to sanity

Remain imprisoned wall to wall,

When blinded age can no longer read,

When strangled passion buffets the soul?

The rage of music does of course

Suffice a dark instance of individual need,

But the billions now in wretched thrall

It has no wherewithal to feed.

Dead streets, dead parliaments,

Constitutions dead and gone,

Write imprecations to a world now dead

That it may be reborn.

And when a smiling dog wags a tail,

Be lifted by his cheerfulness

That he comprehends more than most

The need of an old man in distress.

There will be better times we know,

But what a human price we pay

For the sway of the hate-mongers,

And the cruelties of the day.

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