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The Ballad of Old White

5/31/2017

Old White was feeling anxious
Because Bill Clinton had
Sex when he felt rambunctious
But not like any cad:

He did it with an intern
Whom he had access to—
Enough to make White’s skin turn
An even paler hue—

Because he held great power,
“He had more chance than I”
Old White was seen to lower,
“Who am a poor Small Fry.”

And so forever after
Old White raised up his fist,
Slamming it down—no laughter
To moderate his gist:

“Therefore I hate that woman
Who stood fast by her man,
A loathing grown uncommon:
I loathe because I can.”

He held his grudge forever
When all the world forgot
The scandal and forgave her
But Old White he did not.

When she be dead and buried
Old White yet will exhume
His own lust which miscarried
To spit upon her tomb.

“That woman! Oh, that woman!”
Old White was heard to say,
But Time’s floods kept a comin‘
And washed Old White away.

“May They Rest in Peace”

5/30/2017

Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein
Are gone; before too long, George Bush must follow.
Thus villains, in the end, by time are slain,
Their vanities and airs revealed as hollow.

The good men leave behind may live beyond
Tumescence in the grave, as bodies swollen
Give way to worms, but reputation fond
Among the living soars, not to be stolen.

Let us give to these corpses peaceful rest,
However heinous what they did in life;
To let them lie forgotten will be best,
No drain on good men in this world of strife.

When First the Slanders Flew

5/30/2017

Dear John McCain, you have been party to
So many shady dealings all along,
So now, when the results ease into view
It comes too late for you to change your song.

Man up! Accept responsibility
For what you and your party ilk have done—
You lacked the courage. Now ability
To turn the tide on great events has gone.

“Stick with us, friends!” so humbly you beseech
Your colleagues overseas, or here at home,
As what you ask for slips beyond the reach
Of you who sit within that Teapot Dome.

Republicans so scandalous! Since ever
You let the slanders pass, so long ago,
Expedient so you were, or acting clever,
As comes times men must reap that which they sow.

I’ll not cry me a river over you,
Such lamentations for what you have wrought,
Invidious party lackeys, who eschew
All common decency, and common thought.

You built it and you own it, you and yours!
So join your colleague Graham, and stand aside
To watch the tumult: you have set the course,
So as disaster tumbles, keep it wide.

When These Things Happen, Then You Will Know

5/29/2017

When a reporter gets assaulted
For querying a candidate,
Or legislator goes unfaulted
For saying he’d not hesitate
To shoot a colleague,
I think that you can say
America has changed.

When so-called white supremacists
Have no compunction in assaulting
Whomever they have on their lists,
Such violence a way of halting
The scapegoat that they fear
In its embodiment,
America’s off track.

When persons known as cheats or fakes
Become appointed or elected
To office, mockery it makes
Of government Lincoln protected,
As told at Gettysburg,
It takes the Constitution
And puts it in the trash.

When judges are evaluated
Not for the caliber of thought
But how they are affiliated,
Then hope is rendered nought
For fairness in the courts—
You get flunkies for men
Like Mitch McConnell then.

When people are afraid to speak
Upon threat of retaliation
Severe in kind, even oblique
Criticism a provocation
To those of wealth and power,
The monied oligarchs,
America has lost it!

The Fall of Fallacies

5/28/2017

“Kate has been putting ashes in among the potatoes! I saw her do it!”

Ole Mitch was good at dirty tricks
But they have been found out,
The Party called it “politics”
But without any doubt
Dishonesty and fraud entailed
The means whereby truth was assailed.

O, there are ways of sabotage
That cannot be discerned,
But time reveals the camoflage
And all that eyes have learned
Comes out even upon the wash—
It may have been a smidge of ash.

So mark my words, McConnell boasts
His wealth and acumen,
But he has skeletons and ghosts
That make his soul their den—
The honest truth will be divulged
When lies have ceased to be indulged.

’Tis quite a feat, to tell a lie—
A child knows well that thrill,
But never with impunity
For soon the beans will spill,
And that’s a smudge upon the soul,
Worse than a superficial mole.

Mitch cares not for posterity,
But his house—to be clear—
Was built upon ignominy,
As after many a year
The history books will sadly tell
And this was how an empire fell.

In Lieu of Eulogy

5/28/2017

“Three Americans were murdered this past week for standing up to white terrorists. Richard Collins III Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche Rick Best” (The Resisterhood)

Inflammatory words have sown
Unconscionable deeds,
With human justice overthrown
As hope for it recedes.

Left to these heroes, martyrs now
What justice lies beyond
Such as divinity allow
Them whither they are bound.

Yet, let us not laud them too loud:
For they were decent men
Of conscious kindness, never proud,
Of virtue specimen.

Nor praise may ever exculpate
The blame from where it lies:
With millions who did tolerate
Malicious fallacies,

The promulgated hate and threat
Raised to a fever pitch,
And theirs therein the monstrous debt,
Born of revulsion rich.

Let us remember, let us praise,
But foremost let us love
All creatures great and small, always—
We cannot love enough.

Graspers After Power

5/28/2017

It is not politicians who have fanned
Provincialism and intolerance—
Not only them, but graspers after power
Of sundry stripes, it like a contraband,
Their bigotry in hatreds given flower,
Seething. It is the common man who fans.

The man who has forgotten cultivation
And dignity, remain the human ends
Sublimest in their practice; rather they
Let loose a fury—rancor, denigration
Obsessively cast every which-a-way,
When common wealth requires not foes but friends.

Once giving way to anger, acquiescing,
Man’s intellect and moral force may be
Manipulated, swayed, made mobocratic
By agents of persuasion not professing
Honestly but deceptively erratic
Trite formulas—espoused fanatically.

Yet, politicians bear their share of guilt,
Even as the self-righteous promulgators
Of fallacies and lies—when rather their
Offices as should shun blood being spilt,
Must show and tell restraint, compassion’s care,
And never an alignment with truth’s haters.

Memorialize What—Or WTF

5/28/2017

The flag now signifies the bully’s wrath,
Red, White and Blue, Old Glory, Stars and Bars,
Or rather, Stars and Stripes: the meaning hath
Been altered, to describe the love of wars,
The bloody stripes delivered with the lash
To them consigned to work, but not for cash.

I’ve seen it by the early light of dawn,
Diminutive Star Spangled Banners gleaming,
Arrayed upon some hard right-winger’s lawn,
With signs and banners base invective screaming,
So that the emblem of “Land of the Free”
No longer gives a hoot for liberty.

The flag becomes—with slogans that attest
“Colors don’t run”—a talismanic mascot,
The bully’s cry that “my team is the best,”
Cloth worn like a bandana or an ascot,
As free speech, fair play, and due process languish,
Enough to leave Old Betsy Ross in anguish.

The bully’s credo, “Might Makes Right,” ascends
The flagpole both a symbol and example
Of veiled intimidation it portends,
“Don’t tread on me” reduced to “Let us trample,”
The Rag subverted, by such without manners,
Bigots and knaves, provincialism’s fanners.

Land of the Free? No more. “It never was.”
No, ever many souls had been excluded,
But flag and Constitution served hope’s cause,
Freedom to come, and so Red, White and Blue did
A service to an ideal lately mired,
Self-government, which seems to have expired.

Demanding Times

5/27/2017

“The present aspect of the country, I think, augurs one of the most difficult terms which any president has yet been called to weather; and I doubt Mr. Lincoln's capacity for the task of bringing light and peace out of the chaos that will surround him. A man of good heart and good intention, he is not firm. The times demand a Jackson.”

It seems in wake of the Barack Obama
Presidency, the country groans replete
With vain ambitious men as do compete
“By any means”—not short inflicting traumas—
To be successful in the feat
Superlative of self-aggrandizement,
Lest they face an abyss of discontent.

Men of good heart, nor good intention neither,
They sell the public short, but each colludes
In hurling sentimental platitudes
As though delivered from God (or the ether),
The prestidigitizing brood’s
Sophistry notwithstanding, cheats and lies
Whereby some followers they hypnotize.

How can a land have been eviscerated
(Seemingly so) of all its honest souls?
Integrity has flitted through what holes
Or in what fiery furnace been cremated
If not upon the devil’s coals?
Ambition, for the right, per upright means,
All may applaud; yet not deceptive sheens.

These advertise in language but pro forma,
Deceptive, disingenuous in the core:
No, Lincoln doesn’t live here anymore,
But if the heavens operate on karma
There’s more surprises left in store,
Only I grieve, for the upright and honest
Whose hopes must lie the weakest and the wannest.

The New Republican Values

5/27/2017

The Gorsuch-and-McConnell Party
Has advocated violence,
Assaults that are not even arty,
And bullying. Life grows intense.

How changed the tenor of the land
Since Gorsuch-and-McConnell’s ilk
Raised up a mobocratic band—
Civil decorum for to bilk.

Now, with a free press loud decried
An enemy of party rule,
Journalists beaten—you can’t hide
The sea change hardly miniscule.

The Gorsuch-and-McConnell crew
Says foreign-born or darker skins
Are scarcely human, through and through,
Worth beating, kicking in the shins—

And even worse, a rise in murders
Haphazardly done by their lot
Shake the Republic by its girders,
The Rule of Law begins to rot.

Ethos of the Enlightenment
The Gorsuch-and-McConnell party
Has desecrated, with intent,
Pernicious malice waxing hearty.

<<Previous

The Ballad of Old White

“May They Rest in Peace”

When First the Slanders Flew

When These Things Happen, Then You Will Know

The Fall of Fallacies

In Lieu of Eulogy

Graspers After Power

Memorialize What—Or WTF

Demanding Times

The New Republican Values

News?

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