Who rides unchecked across the flattened town,
the dust of bodies settling like a judgement
no court will hear? Who holsters the smoking law
and calls it the new order, calls it necessary rain
upon a land that never asked for burning?
Since when did the sheriff become the outlaw
and the outlaw wear the badge of nations,
and the saloon doors of the Security Council
swing shut on the Dream? Tell me, tell me now,
who wrote this gospel of the smoking gun
where children are collateral and the preacher
blesses every bullet with a hymn of sovereignty?
We built our covenants from the ash of camps,
said never again like a prayer we meant to keep,
yet here another frontier opens like a wound
that no Geneva hand can stitch, no charter close,
and the rider passes through undaunted, proud,
tipping his wide brimmed hat to the bloodied scene
where right and wrong once stood like gateposts
and now lie flat, kicked down, useful only
as kindling for the next celebratory bonfire,
in this reincarnated effigy of manifest destiny.

 

18/3/2026