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Lamentable prolific skullduggery undermines victory

for Homo sapiens sapiens,
whose love affair
with hate and violence
makes living evinced as utopian
an impossible mission,
when within a twenty four hour period
murder and mayhem run rampant
no longer shock the monkey
though being an innocent bystander
nevertheless, I experience
what feels like a sledgehammer
coming down hard and fast
on my head, and if religious
I would equate the following
words somehow linkedin to
the diabolical, which
satanic verse here far beyond
the realm of rational thinking
just attempted to cull
mostly unflattering words ending with istic,
(but I did include some admirable words)
relating to, or characterized
by a (specified) quality —
used to form adjectives
from related nouns
that end in -ism,
and as a sensitive, intuitive,
furtive, and assertive person,
who knows enough to sift the wheat
from the chaff
(beyond the realm of hyperbolical -
cause sensational news sells)
chaff thru a process called winnowing
and horrific real life stories
publicized on the webbed wide world
which on many occasions
seems stranger than fiction,
and though many compliments
can be associated
with profound capacity for naked ape
to exhibit not only
self destructive characteristics
eclipsed - courtesy mortal kombat -
impressive cognitive abilities
the agents provocateurs
capitalizing on immediate yearning
abandon their true values
volunteer to risk their life and limb
to experience rush of testosterone
driving them analogous to a madman
which maniacal potential exists
within the heart of darkness
and insane soul asylum
of the average earthling,
I feel self disapproval
at perpetrating heinous
dirty deeds done dirt cheap
generally repulsed by guts and blood
but nevertheless morbidly fascinated
at breadths, depths, lengths, et cetera
individuals subject themselves
and/or deliberately foment riots
I catch myself unawares
after reading documented accounts
about voyeuristic, ultranationalistic,
terroristic, sadistic, radicalist;
qabalistic (relating to
or having a secret, mystical,
or esoteric meaning); pugilistic;
opportunistic (especially
at the expense of others welfare);
narcissistic; militaristic; lamaistic
(also alluding to someone
being submissive such as yours truly
back in the day, whose sublimated
nonestablishmentarian predilections);
kabbalistic (neutral impact describing
neither positive nor negative
human behavior - in my
humble opinion); jargonistic
(definitely applicable to my writing style);
imperialistic; hedonistic; gongoristic
(that would apply to me
right here in parenthesis);
fascistic, egotistic, dysphemistic,
cannibalistic, ballistic, atavistic,
antagonistic, et cetera,
but still the shear brutality
of the supposed wisest
of global genus and species
breeding like rabbits)
manages to render and fixate
these myopic eyes of mine
and draw occipital orbs
where no shortage of headline stories
adrip with killing, 
looting, murdering,
pillaging and plundering, raping
unsuspected innocent 
victims of circumstance
does color projection longevity
regarding the perpetuation
where the most
dominant bipedal hominid
runs rampant over the planet
procreating without restraint
inducing me to predict
decline and self extinction
when dark shadows
will lurk from the outer limits
of the twilight zone
where one can envision a foo fighting
beastie boy driving the highway 
to hell oblivious at being thunderstruck,
where din of noise sounded like 
a bajillion hells bells being struck
at the same time
signaling the approach
of ten thousand maniacs
coming around the mountain 
when she (ruthless Mother Nature)
comes barreling like the the furies.

In mythology, the Furies
were three snake-haired goddesses—
Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone—
who served as relentless avengers
of unpunished crimes.

In modern language,
the word is used
more generally to describe intense,
violent anger, or to refer to a person—
often a spiteful woman—
who acts like an avenging spirit.

Essentially when most feared apocalypse 
materializes making the American Civil
War child's play especially when the
sixteenth president uttered prophetic words
just as relevant today (July 15th, 2026)
as he delivered them 
on Monday, March 4, 1861
averring closing words 
of his first presidential speech
whereat the mystic chords of memory, 
stretching from every battlefield 
and patriot grave 
to every living heart and hearthstone 
all over this broad land, 
will yet swell the chorus of the Union, 
when again touched, 
as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature
which unfortunately did not become manifest.


 

— Jane A. Rug, Jul 15, 2026

About This Poem

Style/Type: Free verse

Review Request Direction: What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Final polish

About the Author

Region, Country: PA, USA

Favorite Poets: Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, Robert Frost, Matthew Scott Harris, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sylvia Plath, Gary Snyder, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman

More from this author

Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

20 hours 45 min ago

Neopoet AI [2026-06]

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The poem reaches for something genuinely ambitious: a sweeping indictment of human violence, anchored finally in Lincoln's first inaugural address. That closing quotation is the poem's strongest moment, and the decision to let Lincoln's cadence stand against the surrounding noise carries real rhetorical weight. The speaker's self-implication — acknowledging morbid fascination alongside repulsion — is an honest and potentially interesting position, and the nod to gongorism being self-applicable shows a degree of self-awareness that could be developed further.

The central difficulty is that the poem has not yet found a controlling form to contain its material. The long catalogue of "-istic" words, with their parenthetical glosses and self-interruptions, reads less like purposeful accumulation and more like a list that has lost confidence in the reader's ability to follow. When a poem explains its own vocabulary mid-line, the lyric momentum stalls; the parenthetical notes on "qabalistic" and "kabbalistic" belong in a footnote if anywhere, not in the body of the poem. The syntax throughout is similarly strained — many lines lack a grammatical anchor, so the reader cannot always locate the subject of a given statement. A practical revision path would be to identify the single most important emotional and intellectual claim the poem is making, then cut everything that does not serve that claim directly. The Lincoln passage at the close suggests the poem wants to be about the failure of better angels; if that were the spine from the first line, the catalogue and the cultural references could be arranged around it with much greater effect.

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