A poem for 2020

After spending a fair amount of time re-reading some of Ginsberg's work (primarily Howl) I came up with this 'in honor' of 2020...

The year was shaking all and sundry with its wild temper,
eking out its broken plot in fits and starts
with all the eloquent elegance of unexpectedly wet farts
the mess of us caught, mouths agape, in the resultant shower.

Time loses meaning, strange passage stretching out the days and hours,
headlines leaping from the froth, demanding fear-anger-sadness
with ever-increasingly predictable spontaneity, viral clips
with RAID sponsorships, and endless pundits puked-up patter.

Disagreement becomes dispute, then deadly violence, then a blur
as it gets hard to differentiate each Next Big Thing from the last.
Eyes and souls calloused from earnest intellectual engagement,
hearts growing cold and distant the price of an open mind.

Maybe we were too soft and permissive, perhaps too hard
and unforgiving, whichever direction still an over-correction
a record losing coherence as it's spun too fast or too slow.
An art without artifice, bereft of applied sense or sensitivity.

Our prize-fighting septuagenarians clash across polished marble,
from the Congresseum to the Presidential Circus, only status spilt.
The young struggle and die in the street, blood hosed off,
making room for the trendy murals of political statement.

When does it end, does it stop, is there a back to even get to?
Is our new normal this endless abnormal, aggravated descent
into partisan tribal bickering-turned-battery an end itself?
Or is it the end, itself?

Poetry by Harakhte