There is a place, way yonder
Where devils and demons meet
It’s white and filled with gold but
Oil runs the river deep,
Swaying to the rhythm 
of mendacious Manticorean needs
The diamonds shine and sparkle
From the depths of flagrant greed but
The man who dwells in higher places
Has a chimera that he feeds
It will strike and bite and mumble
when the midnight hour tweets
His apocalyptic horsemen ride
with lies and travesty
and the unholy force of empty
faith
wrapped in the poseur’s penny creeds
You wanted this? Empty promises from
a naked emperor
and his sycophantic trumpeting heirs?
My people, oh my people
How humanity now weeps.
“The Martikhora (Manticore) is an animal found in this country [India]. It has a face like a man’s, a skin red as cinnabar, and is as large as a lion. It has three rows of teeth, ears and light-blue eyes like those of a man; its tail is like that of a land scorpion, containing a sting more than a cubit long at the end. It has other stings on each side of its tail and one on the top of its head, like the scorpion, with which it inflicts a wound that is always fatal. If it is attacked from a distance, it sets up its tail in front and discharges its stings as if from a bow; if attacked from behind, it straightens it out and launches its stings in a direct line to the distance of a hundred feet. The wound inflicted is fatal to all animals except the elephant. The stings are about a foot long and about as thick as a small rush. The Martikhora [the Persian word for man-eater] is called in Greek Anthropophagos (Man-Eater), because, although it preys upon other animals, it kills and devours a greater number of human beings. It fights with both its claws and stings, which, according to Ktesias (Ctesias), grow again after they have been discharged. There is a great number of these animals in India, which are hunted and killed with spears or arrows by natives mounted on elephants.”
http://www.theoi.com/Thaumasios/Mantikhoras.html
