True Detective

On this July day of 2016

The future uncertain,

The summer wind

Blows across my apartment

As the mysterious Lera Lynn

Permeates the airwaves

With her melancholy Nashville drawl

Southern voice and strummed guitar

Lend company to a tired soul

At the fag end of a long day.

Lera Lynn, of True Detective fame

Croons - "This is my least favourite life

The one where I'm out of my mind

The one where you're just out of reach,

The one where I stay and you fly."

35 years on this planet,

Perestroika and Glasnost,

I was around when Reagan exclaimed,

"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down that wall,"

A future of hope, 

Obama - "Yes We Can!"

We walked away from MAD,

Mutually Assured Destruction

Only to have Osama bin Laden,

Declare his war on the west.

I was awake at 2 am

Aged 20, working on an assignment

At the University of Melbourne,

When, precision strikes

On twin towers

Made Islamic terrorism

The defining headline of the decade.

Defying international law,

Invasions were made

Radar-defeating F-117 Nighthawks 

Flew over Baghdad

And destroyed non-existant

Weapons of mass destruction.

Osama is dead,

The Middle East is a mess,

Saudi Mullahs 

Continue to preach

An abhorrent ideology.

Syria burns, Assad lives

The Land of the Free and 

The Home of the Brave

Manhattan skyline of my youth,

Glistening in the dawn of 

That day on September the 11th

Can do nothing right.

On Capitol Hill,

My beloved Obama, 

Defeated, his hair grey,

Lame-ducks his last few months 

As cretin and presidential nominee

Donald J. Trump

Seeks to build up that wall

To insulate and segregate America

From the rest of the world.

On this side of the Atlantic,

Demagogues and Trump's choirboys,

Brexit and ISIS sing his refrain,

"Make America Great Again."

As airports and subways explode,

They appear to fulfill a prophecy foretold

By Samuel P. Huntington

And his thesis,

A Clash of Civilizations.

Meanwhile, I take refuge in fiction;

Flickering on my apartment wall -

Rust Cohle intones in

A scene from the True Detective ..

"Human consciousness

Is a tragic misstep in evolution,"

As he drives across 

The vast Louisiana floodplain.