Bila Koroleva (White Queen)

You can keep grinning and preening
with your CMYK (0.00, 0.73, 0.49) red cap.
But the dogs of war are finally loose
and the minions of destruction are back

The errand boys of extractive capitalism
have been chipping away at the facade 
of democracy with anti-intellectualism,
the scapegoating of the welfare nimrods.

The identitarian out-grouping of minorities as lazy,
the deceptive notion of private-public marketization,
to funnel public taxes to corruptive elite parties;
starving out health, aid, social services, and mental health institutions.

Svitlana yells at the rolling tanks, “Foolish white kings!”,
Referring to the miners of the past from Sverdlovsk region 
who went missing in the mines and were found wandering,
“YA bachyv bilu korolevu”, when asked about their fortunes.

Bila Koroleva  (The White Queen), a miners’ apparition.
Bila Koroleva a kind of Ukrainian Shubin spirit.
The mythological wandering spirits of the imagination,
The thresholding force against extractive riches.

Bila Koroleva, the mother force against
petro states, the ordinary war as madness,
the delusional claims to pure mythic past,
the diversional propaganda of kin-ness.

Bila Koroleva shedding light on corruption, 
the least common denominator of the ‘common man’ 
while deriding ‘women, racial and sexual minorities’ 
while promoting elite dogma at the slap of the hand.

Bila Koroleva squashing the double speak of freedom and equity,
at the expense of any competing ideas; 
shattering the portrayal of elite and their agents as victims,
the over reliance on delusion as fact to justify their power.

The old woman continues to yell at the tanks
now that you have destroyed the mad houses
we call on Bila Koroleva, the white queen, 
to come settle the political world of madmen 
and their rabid dogs of war.

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Tezozomoc is a Los Angeles Chicano Essayist, Poet and 2009 Oscar Nominated Activist, internationally
published and has been published by Floricanto Press, “Gashes!: Poems and Pain from the halls of
injustice”, a collection of poetry, ISBN-13: 978-1951088040, 9/2019. Featured nationally and
internationally across zoom open virtual mics. Published in the following journals/anthologies: 2021
Boundless Anthology, 1/20/2022, MacroMicroCosm, Healing Hands, Vol 7 Issue #3, BC, Canada,
4/15/2021, Rigorous Journal, 9/21/2020, Red Earth Productions & Cultural Work, 12/17/2019,
Underwood Press, 9/9/2019, Mom Egg Review, Los Angeles Poets for Justice, 03/15/2021, I Can’t
Breathe, A Social Justice Literary Magazine, 8/20/2020.