"history's fair warning"

Oh come now.

Those were different
times.

Let us not enrich ourselves
trampling their funny ways
at atrocity whilst fatting
our butcher spoons for the feast
still stewing from the bones
of slaughter they made in a dim,
benighted past
none of us now
living can imagine,
except to say well, we have it quite as bad
in some respects, and why
haven't I profited?
You know what?
Screw that, LET'S.

WHY? BECAUSE
WE BLAME SCUMBAGS
FOR THEIR DEAD GONE ACTS
OF BULLSHIT? LIKE THAT'LL HELP? No.

Because we seek everywhere now
for example to make of evil. Because
we have oh so many to make right here, but
you know if we do some digging
let's find all we can! And do
a number on them to hype and psyche
ourselves up for the blood of ALL tyrants
and despoilers, past, present and future!

If we wash
and work that lather
around stiff and hard enough, surely
many who'd otherwise settle for burnt
corpse for breakfast, lunch, supper and soup
of every damn day might spit it out! And get up
to give a more personal compliment to today's chefs.

One they won't soon forget, but
not for lack of opportunity
ever to do so again. Right?

I mean, every point we make
is for now. Now, clearly, now
- for we, the living. And there are
now living among us, some scum
up to the same anciently perfected
and modernly progressed
tricks.

There are fine and subtle points
to be made of the past, to good
effect, for now.

When did the b.s. come in
that we should spare the past
criticism, lest the future criticize

us?

WHO CARES
WE'LL BE DEAD. No sense
pulling punches while we got
a chance to lay about
us at and through all human history?
It accumulates now, even still. It's still

building up. Let us take history
as a lesson plan of what happens
or soon will, to tyrants. If YOU
don't learn your history, WE WILL
RAPIDLY AND DECISIVELY ADD YOU TO

IT.

All in due process, of course. We've learned
also
what happens to zealots, when their blood
is cooled and thirst for others' slaked, and
they look up to see

what's left to revolve.
Every good way to protect
themselves, torn down
so it couldn't protect
the beast. That pushed them
past all grief and endurance, and so
well-deserved its fate, probably.

But did they deserve what came afterwards,
and do we? Let's deserve

better, more, more good. More liberty, security
and hard, balanced check.

Let's deserve checkmate.

Let's play like the game is a winnable one, and think
all moves ahead to some final, correct outcome
that begins with v, t, w. And let it be
victory we deserve, triumph we've earned
and a win in the books. But let's not forget

we shall have to serve. Another opponent
appears to sit down. Hit the fool
with every last trick and first cause
in the book: make them play, hard and honestly

as a hard brutal human stands by, watching on
wrapped entirely 'round in soft, brutal laws
- bound to not interfere, no not even
to kill us both! Except where all come
agreeing that it
had cause.

It is we. Our position: both players,
the board and the referee. Let us make good use
of the worst and the best and the ways they're alike
and different, every page of the book
we can point to and say: here's a parallel.

Let's make sure they never do us
this way.

Good cause. Good eye. Good aim; let's try.
Let's show them what we won't stand
and what they shall get,

before we give it away.