Gothic Guignol

The pitchfork’s pale/the church is paler
faces steely, occult violence/palest still
all gothic grimness in the American shale

you can see how the overtmurderousness
can spill and then refill,
these are not undertones of unintended massacre

this is an undivined madness
a cult of deadening souls
determined to be devoted to excess

so why do we love its expressiveness
the death upon death and death
of the destroyer zealot-a'-threatess

the warrior queen Kali the skull-wearer
who loves her man-o'-god
the battleship bully with Poseidon's rod

why do we hail them
these quasi-sacred Shiva shems
perhaps just apothegms

why don’t we name them/not myth
trump and bush and hoover
jefferson and his Monticello slaves

doyens of depraved democracy
why don’t we shame them
these acolytes of a-dolts and the reichs?