The Monster's mob

Does power come from followers?  Are we only as beautiful, talented, or likeable as our war chest of social media followers would have us believe?  Does the leader inspire the hate or do the people entrust him with theirs?  Jim Jacquin's "The Goomben Men Have Come," asks us to look at ourselves before we point fingers and Maksim Sarkisyan's artwork dreams up the glory of an epic battle of good intertwined with evil.  

THE GOOMBEN MEN HAVE COME

by Jim Jacquin

The Goombeen Men have come, as sleek as crows in their greed, ghastly their creed.

Deftly they move among the throng lifting purse & coin with contracts made, multiple clauses laid in the liars terms of the huckster's trade.

Among themselves their glasses will be raised to the Huckster King, brazen face sagging into suety, orange fat, the eyes hard and porcine will remain as smile fervid shrill upon his lips will play.

Words flee his tongue like felons, cloaked in idioms dark then banal. Stiff chubby fingers rent the air, nor even a flicker unto the eyes does he ever entertain, hard and porcine they remain.

The jug around they pass the Gombeen Men, gamboling, ghastly jigs they dance before the Huckster King. Upending sacks of worried, crumpled notes of promise from the people they did loot now before the greasy midden upon which sits the viscous, brooding brute.

The eyes hard and porcine will remain as the Goombeen Men they now have come and now among us they will remain, untrammeled as they've now become to ply the huckster's trade.