Song for the Camo Girls and Boys
“You know in Africa no woman ever misses her lion and no white man ever bolts.”
-The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Ernest Hemingway
They grin from ear to ear
In camo artfully splotched
For grinning from ear to ear
Above a twisted corpse.
Goldilocks in post-slaughter bliss,
lolls beside a crumpled giraffe.
Camo triumphant, oh glorious day,
She grins from ear to ear.
A hunt camp litany of ask-receive—
Elephant, rhino, wildebeest, lion,
Impala, warthog, kudu and buff.
Walk upwind, spot ‘n’ stalk,
Sting him good, check him off.
Sleep with a smile from ear to ear.
Pleased as punch, the khaki boys
Replay the Springfield’s blam and whunk,
Rifles propped for the photo op,
Above a grey belly and twisted trunk.
The trophy head and bragging rights
Shore-up their gleeful mantra—
Shoot for the bone, send it home…
And grin from ear to ear.
__________
Post-truth Discourse
2016 entry, Oxford English Dictionary: objective facts less influential in sharing public opinion
than appeals to emotion
“It’s-huge-it’s-gonna-be-great,”
no one asks about the “it.”
So the huge-it’s-gonna-be-great
gets dragged through the gate,
the Greeks pour out and flash goes Troy.
Hags in the woods screech
“It’s-huge-it’s-gonna-be-great,”
promise, cajole, beseech.
Baptized by bombast and blood lust,
the Thane of Cawdor converts
and summarily snuffs out a dynasty.
That “it” joined at the hip
with the vaguest of verbs
spumes and spews false claims,
lethal adjectives, and siren calls.
The “huge-it’s-gonna-be-great” con triumphs
in the Post-truth swamp, and the O.E.D.
__________
Image By: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Leopard-Namibia.JPG