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[godplaysdice.livejournal.com]

This is from former Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser's excellent poem cycle about a fictional president named Carthage.
EDIT: Indents courtesy of the superior HTML knowledge of _sappho__ and angabel


Carthage And The Evil
by Baron Wormser

Carthage is sorting out the bad
        From the evil,
A task that could give God a headache.
Carthage shoulders on,
       Searching for criteria:
When the evil obliterate a village
They brag about it,
        Whereas the bad snivel
And protest that the blood on their hands
Is dye, that they too are victims,
        That the ax of reason is an equivocal tool.

Distinctions are dubious
        But some rule of thumb is required.
Without distinctions you'd be at it forever.

Carthage finds solace in imagining
        The demise of the evil.
They will be standing in a room screaming
        Or pointing a pistol at the sky.
The ceiling will dance on them.
         Imploded stars will impale them.

        The righteous murder the evil
     So the bad can live in murderous peace.
           The good, like the widow's
Three sons who were in the marketplace
Purchasing lentils and chickpeas when the fires descended,
           Do not appear in any strategic equations.

The good have no ambassadors.
They are tasteless as water.
They drudge in apolitic mills of love.

Look at the evil,
Carthage is saying to the bad.
        I am measuring their tyranny.
It is like a shoe size.
    You better talk to your miserable, human feet
        That are always growing.