poem of the day 03.21.16

the protester

how in the fuck

did i end up here?

i think as the cops

put up the barricades

on one end of the block

people call up the line of chanting thousands

that they’ve done so on the other end

how in the fuck?

thirty minutes before this

i was eating indian food on 46^th street

and talking about going to see some van gogh

now i’m breaking the law

blocking a city block

or rather the cops have broken the law for us

by caging us all in

what is your endgame officer friendly?

america, you and your corporate politics

you and your pseudo-populists

on both ends of the spectrum

america i never liked you

and your hateful kind anyway

i just want to live somewhere

where i can read a book

and have a drink in peace

i’m an isolationist by nature

but you insist on

nominating authoritarian lunatics

so here i am

my belly still full from lunch

not a goddamned van gogh in sight

just thousands of kids with picket signs

and old hippies with their arcane slogans

dull, stone-faced cops

lining the street by the hundreds

billy clubs and guns

extra strands of handcuffs on their belts

thuggish tools

for the whole corrupt system

always ready to turn on a dime

and hurt the people they protect and serve

my little wife and i in the middle of this shit

a couple of dumbs

who should’ve followed their lunch

with some frozen yogurt

or a black and white cookie

stayed out of this circus

avoid maybe being arrested

or pepper sprayed by pigs in the pale afternoon

because the wrong people

are always being pepper sprayed or worse

in this rotted out hollow beast carcass

everyone here still keeps calling

the united states of america.