In the Shadow of the Yellow Star

[HarleyDelight]

I found this to be pretty great.

by Ronnie Pontiac, Poet-in-Residence, Newtopia*

So what if I laughed when I followed orders?*
Law and justice mean different things.*
Rules are a concept anyone can understand.*
Follow the rules or get punished, understand?*

Law is the shadow of justice.*
Order is the shadow of truth.*
Empires in love with law and order, they say*
are always brought down by justice and truth.*

As long as I have the freedom to safely order fries*
the law is a TV show to lull me to sleep after work*
until the news and pharmaceutical commercials*
invading my dreams wake me to change the channel.*



For-profit private prisons half filled with third strike pot heads*
provide cheap labor for corporations*
and a steady stock for shareholders*
despite numerous escapes and murders.*



In the name of peace we scatter depleted uranium*
the way Rome sewed salt in the soil of Carthage.*
In the name of law we kill local contractors*
who won’t give the godfather his percentage.*



The Order of the Fraternity of a Dignified Eternity*
siphons sweet crude and currencies, circulates guns and drugs,*
meticulously performs ritual holiday charities;*
officially grateful, ruthlessly brutal, in regard to disparities.*



In the name of the law they say a certain man would stand*
at the entrance gate deciding which lost soul plucked*
from some innocuous but treasured life would burn,*
begging the question can heaven resemble Auschwitz?