Honking Crowd of Fools

Loud blasts at noon, a brassy racket turning day to night,

Foul words, hubris, and chaos mix in drools of spite.

With crude-oil, manners, hearts gone cold in buckets.

A nation starved for grace is stripped of all its rights.

Naivete in the people's house, world in mutiny,

Each misfit gripped by a sacred urge to impune, and slight,

To pierce the heavy air with shrieks of inequity,

As if a horn could conjure green from red and frozen lights.

O honking, tonking throng of grand and jagged wits,

An orchestra of bandits, led by none but fits.

A symphony of stuck despair that skips the rhythmic beats,

As if the pulse of wisdom only throbbed for dimwits.

Merchants howl, truck engines groan, the cyclists hiss their curses—

Soft but deeply meant for gridlocked minds on a conquest bent.

What gold? What grace? What Savior lives in iron hearses?

Just reddened faces after the jaundiced amber's revenge.

The gears grind on within a rusted, toothless maw,

Devouring the silence where the mercy used to dwell.

Where every ego is the judge, and every fender is the law,

Paving Heaven’s highway with the scorching bricks of Hell.