New Year Fear II

New Year Fear II

Return of the puritan progeny
countless Cotton Mathers would really rather
you didn't have much fun, that you'd
pray all day, and pay your way
into far more important worlds beyond.
Old ideas: ill-gotten gains as a blessing
from on high, and poverty proves your
unworthiness. There's more: those who
worship only power and wealth, along
for the ride, fueling the mean Machine
rolling over the land and objects below.

The new calendar on your wall says
2006, better scan for viruses within
legislative/administrative entities and
dark motorcades, passing bodies slumped
in doorways, babies in trash cans, unnatural
disasters sweeping across the
weather channel. It's the 21st century,
they're finally doing something about it
in a 17th century sort of way. You see,
it's in the air. Do you care?

Down here in our new Homeland
shelter, secure from you people, we
are celebrating the fire this time, the
2nd coming and going with all the rest
of it. We are chosen, you see, and
O so free.

[Not so fast, bible-banger
we're planning a special party for
you this very year, a sort of
Rapture, only one respecting
the laws of gravity and physics.
You're under arrest]