The Death of Nasim Aghdam @ You-Tube Headquarters: April 3, 2018
          by Esca Webuilder
          “δούλου τόδ᾽ εἶπας, μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεῖ.”
          “But this enslaves, not to speak one’s mind.”
              —Euripides, “The Phoenician Women”

Self-righteous You-Tube censors push Ad-Pocalyptic Reich,
and try to shove out all the voices that they do not like.
Occasionally they will drive some people to extremes,
like odd Nasim Aghdam who felt the squelching of her dreams.
The PETA vegan shot her gun, on Cherry Avenue,
and hit three in San Bruno; and then killed herself. It’s true.

The horror that her victims felt was visceral and real,
as was the violence she felt, when You-Tube killed her yields.
She lost her income when demonetization occurred;
You-Tube did not accept her views, her videos, or words.
And now You-Tube and Facebook have deactivated her.
She’d cried, “There is no free speech.” What she said seems to be true.

Esca Webuilder is a poet of the Internet, and can’t help but notice that Google is becoming a totalitarian Goolag.

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The Day After Easter: 2018
          by Waseel Budecir

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for deaths
in Southwest Pakistan, the purest country on the Earth.
In a rickshaw, a family of four was traveling
to visit friends in Quetta, murdered, like it was no thing.
Armed men upon a motorcycle shot the Christians dead,
as if they were no more than target practice—bullet fed.
Such hatred and intolerance, such inhumanity—
it isn’t global warming that is on this killing spree.
The evil in the hearts of men thrives in the purest lands,
one day past Easter Sunday, one road in Baluchistan.

Waseel Budecir is a poet of Pakistan. The word “Pakistan” means place of the pure in Urdu. It was coined in 1933 by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, an acronym of Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.

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Putin’s Landside Victory
          by Rus Ciel Badeew

Apparently with no surprise, to any Russian firm,
Vladimir Putin won election to another term.
Congratulations from the World poured in to his desk;
so many nations round the globe are glad for his success:
the leaders of Azerbaijan, Moldova and Iran,
Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan;
all joined the choir, Belarus and Cuba chiming in,
as well as Venezuela, China, full of timely grin.
In fact, the emperor of China, happy as could be,
Xi Jinping said relations were “the best…in history.”

Rus Ciel Badeew is a poet on Russia. Some wished the Salesman had not put in a phone call to the kleptocrat Putin, however belatedly, and went so far as to call him a Trader. [Путинка is a brand of Russian vodka made by the state-owned Moscow Distillery Crystal company that plays upon his name.]

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The Landslide
          by “Scribe” el-Uwade

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been reelected with
some 96 % or more of voters for this vet.
His bet was good, though only 41 % showed up
to vote in this tight race against a strong el-Sisi pup.

Moussa Moustafa Moussa, his competitor, was pumped;
he was himself a strong el-Sisi fan out on the stump;
the highest international codes of integrity,
with nothing spared, revealed utter, sheer transparency.

It was reported some had crossed both names out on their votes,
and wrote in football player Salah, second place say quotes;
but next day the results had been revised to show that there
weren’t spoiled ballots, all were counted, everything was fair.

Authorities had been concerned the turn-out would be low.
No trucks were seen delivering rice, sugar, cooking oil.
The stout, ex-general got close to one-hun-dred-per-cent;
against such greatness there was only minimal dissent.

Embodiment of Horus, like a falcon in the sky,
a distant one, who flies above, el-Sisi rises high,
immersing in Egyptian lands, Great Sphinx upon the Nile,
supplanting Ptolemies and Mamluks with his sunlit smile.

Past Ali Pasha and his followers, the British troops,
around goes fortune’s wheel, King Fuad and other groups;
Sadat, Mubarek, Morsi, and el-Sisi take their turns,
like King Farouk, the Muslim Brotherhood and other burns.

“Scribe” el-Uwade is a poet of Egypt, one of the cradles of civilization.

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Look and Tell Me What You See
          by “Seer” Ablicudew

I sing of civil war, between a nation’s kith and kin,
of unjust wickedness beyond Pharsalia’s broad plain,
of how a people turned within against its families,
a broke triumverate, embroiled in crass legalese.
The forces of the huge techtoxic globe ashift in chance,
the standards risen, eagles flying, missiles poised to launch,
sheer madness fills the country’s mind, while slaughter dwells at hand,
and Crassus’ spirit wanders un-avenged across the land.
Fierce Parthians swarm o’er the fertile cresent’s oil fields.
What other than the death of thinking do such triumphs yield?

“Seer” Ablicadew is a poet of prophesy, a prophet of poesy.

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O, Quintus Cornificius
          by Aedile Cwerbus

O, Quintus Cornificius, Catullus was not well.
By Hercules, he was indeed, distressfully quite ill.
And iller he became each day, perhaps until he died;
but he had hoped he could be comforted. Alas, he sighed.

But he was angry at you, augur of that Roman tribe,
before the civil war had started and you were proscribed.
Did you see coming Utica in 42 BC?
Did Cornificia, your sister, write an elegy?

Alas, her epigrams are gone, like your epyllion.
There is no consolation possible for anyone.
Time travels on with truer traipse than purest honesty,
sans sadder tears than those that fell from great Simonides.

Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of ancient Roma. Catullus was a friend of Cornificius, a general, orator, and poet of Ancient Roma, who wrote a now-lost epyllion Glaucus. His sister Cornificia was also a poet of also now-lost elegies.

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The Foundlings of Rome
          by Aedile Cwerbus
          “Rousseau suggested Roma came from ῥώμη meaning strength,
          but modern etymologists think that Etruscan was its langth.”
              —Beau Lecsi Werd, “langth” a neologism for “linguistic tongue”

Both Romulus and Remus were in Alba Longa born,
one of the ancient Latin cities near the site of Rome.
Their mother Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin was,
her father Numitor, the brother of Amulius.
According to tradition Mars was father to the boys,
conceived within a sacred grove, a moment in love’s joys.
The twins were thus descended from their mom’s nobility,
of Greek and Latin lineage, of finest filigree.

But King Amulius could see they were a threat to him,
for he’d supplanted Numitor, and did not covet them.
He ordered them abandoned on the rushing Tiber’s bank,
but there Tiberinus received them with a fateful yank.
Just as he helped Aeneas, when he got to Italy,
he helped the helpless babes with tender luck and chivalry.
He gave them to the she-wolf Lupa, who had lost her cubs,
and thus to keep them both alive. But suck upon her dugs?

The shepherd Faustulus retrieved them from the Lupercal,
that wolfish, lupine cave he saved them from, their funeral.
They grew up herding, unaware of their identities,
but many there observed their natural abilities.
When they were young adults, they got caught up in fights between
supporters of the former ruler and the present king.
Because of fighting, Remus was placed in a prison cell.
Just who he was, some wondered if his kin and king could tell.

Meanwhile, Romulus had planned to set his brother free,
and set off to the city Alba Longa presently.
They learned their past, they joined to place grandfather on the throne.
It was as if this was the fate the gods had wanted done.
In the ensuing battle, King Amulius was killed,
and Numitor was reinstated—what the gods had willed?
The twins then set off to construct a city of their own.
They came back to what they had known—the seven hills of Rome.

The brothers disagreed; while Remus wanted Aventine,
his brother liked above the Lupercal, the Palatine.
Since they could not resolve the fight they turned to augury.
They searched the skies for signs that could be viewed auspiciously.
Six birds appeared when Remus looked; but Romulus saw twelve;
so he claimed that he was the winner; destiny he’d delved.
But in the aftermath, it seems he killed his brother, or
it happened otherwise, as Dionysius declared.

Whatever really happened, it is true that Rome was found,
in 753 BC as Varro did propound,
or on some other date as Pictor or Timaeus thought;
and though it is much bigger now it still is on that spot,
and has been there millennia, on Tiber’s rushing flow,
despite the ravages of time, a city on the go,
the capital of Italy, two million people plus,
first called eternal by the elegaist Tibullus.

Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of ancient classical Roma.

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The Blind Aleppo Vegetarian
          by Curdise Belawe

Do not unjustly eat the fish the water’s given up,
nor slaughtered animal flesh, nor fresh white milk in a cup.
Do not grieve unsuspecting birds, by stealing eggs from them;
injustice is the worst of crimes; it’s filled with flasks of phlegm.
Do not take honey from the bees who work with industry
to take the nectar from the fragrant flowers that they meet;
the bees do not store honey so that others can take it,
nor do they gather it for bounty or for golden gifts.
I wash my hands of this and wish that I had seen my way,
much earlier, though I am blind, and now my hair is gray.

The above and the following are a very loose paraphrases of Abassid-era poet and blind philosopher Abu al-Alaa al-Maari (973-1057).