The Orgies of Barbarious Regimes

[Shock value is present throughout this statement.  Parental discretion is advised]

Passenger lands at a makeshift runway of rocks and marsh grass.
He is Moses parting Lake Tanganyika with a mere briefcase and laptop bag.
He clears the gate and heads for a commune that make Joyce’s Dublin
   look like the Elysian fields of Virgil

In this hell, Ptolemaic-Dantesian celestial architecture doesn’t apply.
Le Corbusier came in one day with Marx, Ginsberg and whoever that guy
   was who advanced coffeehouses as part of the entourage.
And unintentionally made this a fucked-up place to use a digital camera.

The occupants are going about their routines
   (For they are professional actors and models for National Geographic)
Multitudes of children embark in a game of feces ball fights.
Oxygene and natural pollution are harshly mixed by a hundred producer/engineers.
Emaciated poets and artists struggle to realize a creation worthy of a best sellers’ list.
The next generation is welcomed by the sound of pain and confusion.
Old wars have modernized only by its technology of destruction.
And the dark storm clouds of death are the eternal canopy that lingers over a many.

Then, the sun reaches its daily zenith
And the breadwinners and labourers walk outside their homes.
They lie beside the central sunken lane, hoping to find the key to a mental escape
For they know that animal instincts can climb up the ladder
   (Where it ends up remains a puzzle of contemporary ages)
Reaching for the higher ground, they paint a picture of a touch, a kiss
   or the flow of blood.
Isolated fantasies unify the country, equalizing Tribe X and Faction Q,
   The gaunt serf and the Napoleonic dictator, the poor farmer and the bureaucrat of a failed state.
They see the light and push forward to meet it.
Tongue pedals liquefy to the sight of Jezebel
And everybody cries out to a session yet to be realized
   (The children don’t do this for they don’t know any better, thankfully)

The day has reached its climax
All enter into a trance of premature enlightenment
And sleeps lightly through the rest of the solar day.
Human sound cease and the natural ambiance takes over.
He leaves the village scene.  His last image was the small rivers
   flowing across the road.
Date of First Draft: 22 March 2001
Commentary:
This poem requires some explanation. I wrote this poem during my AP Comparative Government to serve two functions. The first one was trying to describe in my words of a Third World country. The second one is an outlet of frustration of our long-term substitute, Mr. McCarthy. The latter reason is more of a motivation rather than something that is presented in the poem.
 
The picture of the Third World was something that came to me while thinking about P.J. O’Rourke’s Eat the Rich, an economic treatise where he looks at different countries’ economic systems and find out what makes a country rich and another one poor. One of those countries ended up being Tanzania, probably the best example of a Third World country. Granted that Tanzania doesn’t have a major health problem as say India or Rwanda but they still have problems. The final two stanzas is my take on a comparison between Third World nations and adolescence. Using what a fellow classmate has said about a Third World (sex was present) and that idea, I thought, what if the entire village out of frustration had a public masturbation session as the high point of the day.
 
The reason for this was to portray the chaotic state that many of the Third World nations are going through and what better way to show that maybe Thomas Hobbes had a point by using the act (and I mean sex, not masturbation) that is both natural and heightening. This is not necessarily what I think but it was simply a creative challenge and an idea to illustrate.
 
The title stems from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (and "Barbarious" is probably spelled wrong but I'll assume it is a mistake on her part)
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