It's Never Sold as Something Ugly

Pitched as a panacea
                            by true-believing shills
       who presume to know
              what's best for us better
                     than we ourselves ever will

it's hawked as both counter and cure
       for all things insalubrious   impure
                     slimy vile  brutish and bad.

Yet despite all the times we've been had
shelling out  for the latest magical salve;
       despite all the times we gave in
       to breathless threats of falling skies

we keep buying the same old lies
              the same old tales  however tall
and who can blame us
when it's always sold as something
                     for the greater good of us all?


Immovable  in their refusal to admit
       to engendering even the slenderest bit
of the darkly immaculate havoc
that often ensues from putting into practice
                            their bold utopian notions

perfect-worlders
— in their reckless fervour to impose
those quixotically seductive
impossibly destructive schemes
              they work without cease to sell —

are oblivious  to how their insidious plans
for heaven on earth seem to lead
              to the deepest pits of a living hell.


Tethered  to the ruinous illusion
       that they're immune to the peril
              of reality's ineludible intrusions

the idealistically possessed
              — anchored as they are
              to the rock of their delusions —

when finally faced
       with the fatal effects of their deeds
avail themselves   at the ghastly last
       of this horrific self-exculpatory truth:

when ends are pursued in rabid pursuit
       of fevered  horsefeathered dreams
the ends wind up being used to excuse
       the no-matter-how-murderous means.


A widely highly-touted nostrum
              for the current conjured menace
it's never sold as something ugly
— at best  the best thing there ever was;
              at worst   a necessary blemish.






NOTE:

This poem, along with "In Ages of Unreason", could be taken as bookends in what could be seen as a nine poem series.

That being said, while thematically connected, all nine poems are nonetheless complete in themselves, which is to say, can be read on their own. Additionally, except for poems 2, 4, 6 and 8, all are entirely independent, stand-alone poems.

The series was published here chronologically. This poem is the last in the series.