How many bombs
dropped
from all of the war
props
poisonous and poised to hiss
with a snake’s tongue
venom on the fang drips
needlepoint precision
Shock and Awe proclamation
A river of fire
in a ring around the city
Mercury enters the blood
a kill shot to the mind
Alzheimer’s and a loss of fight
The hawks and vultures cry
“Mission Accomplished”
as they send the Eagle in
to pick up the bloody pieces

How many lives
lost
from all of the lies
cast
carelessly and callously
with spiteful intentions
malicious persuasion
A thousand points
of propaganda
from the lips of cowards
hiding behind a doomed and decadent Empire
dilapidated and disintegrating
toppling like a house of cards
when a hand of five aces
is laid down on the table
by the collective force
of a Renaissance Revolution

How many souls
will rise
on the day that the truth
takes flight
lofty and laced with visions
of a lit up nebula being born
in the blink of a moment
at the brink of a New Age
sipping freely from the full well
raining Love from the constellation
with a song from the spheres
about the cycles of time
The wheels, they spin
The gears, they turn
The dust drifts away
as the Phoenix flows out from the ash

A spoken word version recorded on SoundCloud can be listened to at this link.

Trump Hand is a poem that originally appeared at Dissident Voice in August of last year. It was then published at Guy Farmer’s site Social Justice Poetry, and later included in the 2015 edition of Degenerates: Voice for Peace, put out through Weasel Press.

Trump Hand was also recently published in Richard Robert Hansen’s series Poems-For-All as #1294. This is a really cool project that started up in 2001, and I’m very pleased to have a poem of mine included. I’d urge anyone interested to follow the link and check out Richard’s site to learn more about what he’s doing to try and scatter poems like seeds throughout the world.

This is also the opening poem in my chapbook “Songs of a Dissident” which is in the pipeline to come out through Transcendent Zero Press at some point in the future. The publishers Dustin Pickering and Z.M. Wise do a great job with their quarterly magazine, Harbinger Asylum, which I’ve had poems appear in a couple of times now, so I’m excited to be working with them on a larger collection.

Many thanks to Michael Organ at Tuck Magazine for publishing two of my poems today. It’s always a pleasure to have work featured at this venue.

“Satiating Urges” and “Sleep in the Bed That You Made” can be read at this link.

I’d love to hear any feedback you might have about this post, or the blog in general. Feel free to leave comments, critiques, compliments, curses, or suggestions of any kind.

Anyone who would like to connect can also reach me on Twitter and Facebook.

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar