"Anarchy"

Sometimes it seems that the world

 We call our own,

Is nothing but a parody

Of a beauty salon.

It is filled with narcissists and cowards,

Who shed their veneer,

Of the last ten, twenty years,

Made with herbs and potent goodwill,

Of ill-gotten gains and foraged plans,

And discover that the masks

They had pinned their hopes on,

Have not reduced the ugly marks,

That have set like hard cement,

On their collective faces,

Never to be washed away.

Perennially to create

A doomed coveting,

A feverish desire to own

What the other has,

To look like others look,

To create an order in anarchy,

To regress to a space,

Where neighbours stealthily attack,

Where humanity cowers in disbelief,

Where bodies are ruled by strange, old men

Where choices wither,

Where the so-called peace,

Burns slowly in the embers

Of a vengeful earth.

 Published in Ravishing Rhapsodists: An International Anthology, The Impish Lass Publishing House, pp 44-45, November 2022, ISBN: 978-93-91646-28-8.