The tangled webs they weave
span from Pine to Ruby Ridge,
way back from Shay's defeat
on up to Gustafsen
(now cue the ass parade of ditto-heads and commissars and pricks
to drown out this faintest threat of commie faggot heretics). Conclusion:
the nail that sticks up gets hammered down
and the master's finest
tools are found
slack-jawed and placid ,amidst the cacophony
of screaming billboards, and Disney-fied history.

Sometimes the ties that bind are strange:
no justice shines upon the cemetery plots marked Hampton, Weaver or Anna-Mae where Federal Bureaus and Fraternal Orders
have cast their shadows;
permanent features built into these borders.
But undercover of the customary gap we find between
History and Truth, the Founding Fathers
bask in the rocket's blinding red glare.
The bombs bursting in air. One nation. Indivisible?
The truth is when the back-country learned of ratification
the People had a coffin painted black
and solemnly borne in funeral procession,
they buried it deep in the earth as
an emblem of the dissolution
and internment of their
Publick Liberty.
Someday, somewhere,
today's empires are tomorrow's ashes.