The ghost dance faded on the plain,
the last herd thundered, then was gone.
With promised blankets came the rain
of Winter, and the world moved on.

A blinding flash on desert sand,
then over old wooden cities sown.
A dead man’s shadow scorched the land,
and shame became their cornerstone.

The line was drawn at thirty-eight,
a scar across a mountain spine.
No victory, no final fate,
just dust and echoes at the DMZ line.

A motorcade in autumn light,
a nation’s trust, a rifle’s crack.
Promises shattered within sight,
leaving only questions from this attack.

A balcony in Memphis town,
a dream cut down by fire and hate.
Another truth, again, gunned down,
and hope was left to chance and fate.

The summer of love had turned to dread,
in Hollywood, that cultish night.
A pregnant starlet, left for dead,
Helter Skelter in the morning light.

From My Lai’s shame to Kent State’s cry,
with napalm scent on every breeze.
The nineteen-year-old learned to fly
home, in a bag, viewed by other draftees.

The king grew fat behind the wall,
with pills and gold, a hollowed throne.
A final echo from the stall,
then found alone, and overthrown.

On the day those towers fell,
to sermons born of a holy war.
A new crusade began to tell,
bringing destruction right to the door.

They sold us sand and called it gold,
with WMDs, a hollow claim.
The lies were bought, the story sold,
as oil ran through each general’s name.

The gilded beast began to rise,
a laughing stock, a moneyed grift.
A carnival of angry lies
giving the American ark its final lift.

With trillions spent, and poppies bloomed,
the graveyard empires cannot sway.
We left the opium fields, entombed
our honour, and so we ran away.

Now turn the gaze to Gaza’s shore,
where children starve beneath the sun.
They murder for the fun of war,
as murder is all they’ve ever done.

The ghost dance ended, yet it spins
in every shadow, every line.
The blood-soaked blanket still begins
the end of empire, the end of this time.

I made this mind-map idea about 18 months ago but it has taken me this long to try to get this down on (digital) paper. The more we look back in time, the further we can trace back fatal mistakes. It’s amazing that the USA ever felt like it had any moral high ground at all.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

There Is Philosophy In Everything

All you’ve learned has given you this philosophical leaning
Everywhere you look, the nature of life never rests
After reading all the words and understanding their meaning
It’s time to greet the world and take its many tests