Noah Anew

(on Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, August 2005)

How many studies, articles, foretold
Disaster was one hurricane away,
How ill-preparedness, though penny-wise,
Was pound-foolish? And dearly now we pay!

Yet Wisdom cries out in the streets again
To warn this most destructive drop outpoured
Pales in compare to that bucket of death
Poised to dole out the Bush regime's reward.

Behold the signs: the Bill of Rights destroyed,
Elections faked, the scales of Justice tip,
The false-flag self-inflicted terrorism,
The dismal drumbeat of dictatorship,

Countries condemned, invaded on surmises,
Prosperity awards each wicked scheme,
Totalitarian impulses awake,
The advent of a military regime.

The love of money supplants love of man,
The landscape's ravaged to make way for oil,
God's creatures and Creation are defiled
As corporate monsters milk the sordid spoil.

These early buds of a most poisonous tree
The first fruits of a policy portend
To kill the populace, plunder, torture
And rape, as principalities intend.

The CIA, in service to this ploy,
As in the past shall strike the citizenry,
This time with mushroom clouds and radiation,
Then sniff out scapegoats for atrocity.

Truth-tellers shall be labelled terrorists
While Treason struts in patriotic guise.
Financial cancers shall devour within
With honest assets seized as lendings rise.

I've marched, protested, demonstrated, cried
Against this coming sacrifice of blood,
But may as well tell the sky not to fall
As try to stem the coming fascist flood.

Better to emulate that prophet who,
Hearing from God the deluge would begin
And that the deep its floodgates would spring open,
Crafted his vessel, saved his skin and kin.

Though Time may boast "I told you so," it too
From History may borrow to foretell:
Complacency and Ignorance are fatal,
Their consequences surge the murderous swell.

Just as poor New Orleans could not withstand
Shrewish Katrina of ferocious gale,
This entire nation, being founded on sand,
Against the wind and waves will not prevail.

With nightmares breathing this surreal world,
It needs no sorceror to read the rune.
The harbingers are gathering to speak.
I'm telling you: the Red Tide's coming soon.

September 2005