day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FORTY FOUR

America 2020

When a stranger smiles
as we pass on the street
I feel a smile spread across
my face like cream cheese
on a bagel. Now, mouths
concealed behind cotton masks,
we smile with our eyes.
It isn’t frivolous or phony to smile
this way; we need connection now.
Let’s remember this when
in a few months we might find
ourselves on separate banks,
enemies all along, with fear
in our hearts and guns
like coiled snakes
seething beneath our beds

--Tamara Madison

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FORTY THREE

BENEATH THE SURFACE OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

“American exceptionalism? Exceptional at what? Waging wars against innocent people for fake reasons? Exceptional at what? Being addicted to pharmaceutical drugs that have people's minds wasted? Exceptional at what? Eating more junk food and becoming the most obese nation on Earth?”

---Gerald Celente

Beneath the surface
Of American Exceptionalism
Lies the more arrogant and pernicious lies,
The lies every president and politician
Has told you all your life,
The lies you still believe, accept, and trust.

In an authoritarian voice,
They told you America is Exceptional,
Claiming the US
Is the leader of the free world,
And the world’s sole superpower.

When Big Corporations
Started looting America,
Because it affected you personally,
You started asking questions.

Why did Congress
Give Wall Street
And Big Corporations
$5 trillion dollars?
The largest upward transfer
Of wealth in US history,
A CARES ACT welfare gift
To the oligarchy,
While throwing crumbs
To small businesses
And the middle class
During the worst pandemic
In the history of the country.

While other industrialized countries
Continue to pay their workers
During quarantine,
Putting cash directly in the hands
Of impacted workers.

Why did 40 million people
Lose their jobs?

Why did 14 million people
Lose their healthcare
When Congress could have passed
Medicare for All?

Why have 60% of small businesses
Closed permanently?

Why are 19 million people
Being evicted from their homes
On the last day of December?

Why were there thousands of cars
Lined up for miles
Waiting to receive food
From the North Texas Food Bank? 

Why is there always money for war
But not for our crumbling infrastructure
And not for the citizenry,
And not for safety nets for the poor?

Why isn’t Congress withdrawing troops
From over 800 bases
In 80 countries worldwide,
Which costs over 100 billion dollars
A year to support?

Why is the US still in Afghanistan,
After 19 years,
An unwinnable war,
The longest war in American history?

Why did Congress allocate
Another 740 billion dollars
Toward the military budget,
A budget already larger than
The next 10 countries combined?

With over 300,000 dead from COVID-19
When will you admit
American Exceptionalism is a myth?

Will it be when
You have a ventilator
Crammed in your mouth,
Brainwashed and arguing
COVID-19 is a political hoax? 

And the last face
You will ever see 

Is a respiratory therapist,
Dressed in blue PPE,
Wearing a plastic shield
Over her face.

--Victor Henry

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FORTY TWO

What it’s Like to Lose a Parent to Fox News

Things were supposed to be different
after sailing past the age your parents were
when you first met them, different at least
with the one that is still around

but an adulthood of mature
hopes, dreams, and triumphs
was not to be, childhood forgotten
no confessions, no reflections

phone calls from mom
last about ten minutes
small talk about the
weather and football before

the big immigrant take-over
and the Muslim communists
Biden put in charge
of the government

ten minutes before
sorry ma I think
there’s someone at the door.

—Matthew Ussia

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FORTY ONE

lie after lie

told again and again 

herd immunity

--Don Wentworth

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FORTY

Cracking Apart

We used to bake marbles,
toss them into a bowl of ice;
we watched veins appear
and waited for the spheres
to crack apart, but they never did.
Today we’re watching fires
erupt from veiny cracks
in our republic and I’m thinking
of those marbles,
how they glistened in the beauty
of their new veins
but never broke open.

--Tamara Madison

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY NINE

COVID Christmas

This holiday there are empty chairs
at our table, fewer cards to write,
online contactless shopping.

We watch old black and white movies
decorate our home with icicle lights,
Christmas trees, red and green garlands.

Since March, we’ve isolated,
practiced social distancing,
cleaned every cupboard and closet.

While sheltering in place,
we grow accustomed to simplicity,
solitude, return to the basics.

In the past, we traveled to reunite
with our scattered tribes,
this year only gather through Zoom.

--Jennifer Lagier

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY EIGHT

Wrapped Too Tight

I should smash my face
against this table

I should smash my face
against your face

Merry Christmas
in an angry world motherfucker

Merry Christmas
it’s such an angry world

Not Yet

Every time it knocks
I stall & say not yet

but it keeps knocking
not yet, please not yet.



*

auld lang syne
resolutions -
vomit in a rusty tub

--Bart Solarczyk

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY SEVEN

A very Melania Christmas


Melania Trump 2017 Xmas Haiku

in a dress as white
as her dead tree branches she’s
clawing, ominous shadows up the walls


Melania Trump 2018 Xmas Haiku*

I’m working my ass
Off on this Christmas stuff, who
Gives a fuck about Christmas stuff


Melania Trump 2020 Christmas Decoration’s Haiku

This year packed with urns
Fifty to be exact
A sea of funeral arrangements

The Nightmare Before
Christmas Queen is right back
Not giving a fuck about Christmas

I Don’t Really Care, Do You? - A Melania Trump Xmas Summary

That’s on full display
Here in the dead branches
The blood-red trees, and the funeral urns

--John Stickney

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY SIX

Sink into Oblivion

It never felt so good to say goodbye.

You will no longer govern.

The world can breathe easier.
If you sink into oblivion,
the breathing will be that much

more easier and no one
can worry that tomorrow will be here. Our minds will be at peace.

Who is crying for you?
It must be only those who seek to destroy and tear down
our lives through violence.
Those who have a screw loose,
those who cannot love

a diversified city, they have

forged their hate with blood.

His followers are many.
Their souls have expired.

They have tunnel vision.

I will keep my distance
from their indifference
and avoid their hate.

From where do they come 

in the name of destruction?

--Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY FIVE

Cat on lap
rat in White House
I prefer purr

 --Steven B. Smith

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY FOUR

Pharisees

we see clearly now
in the aftermath
if we didn't before—
it's all a ruse
it always has been
your pachyderm skin
is but a cheap disguise
your professed Christianity
your fidelity to higher principles
your tough love of capital T Truth
all nothing but artifice and affectation
masking a whorish devotion
to the gods of worldly power
you probably sleep
with Machiavelli’s “The Prince”
under your pillows
and it's a good thing
you stand behind podiums
when you speak
otherwise we'd see the dirt
on your knees
I guess it's an acquired taste,
eh, boys?

--Brian Rihlmann

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY THREE

Plucked Chicken

Like a plucked chicken,
he squawks and struts.
Like a wounded animal,
he grunts and growls.

He’s got the kitchen
sink of lawyers
and lies to toss around
and see what sticks.

The lights are dimming.
The sun and stars
are no longer shining
on his dark soul.

It was never fun
and it lasted
much too long for us and
the world at large.

Sure he has his boys
he has brainwashed
to follow his lead and
spread his hatred

for all he does not
understand like
the rule of law and for
equality. 

--Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY TWO

"if I die, let it be known that the Army and I died because of this son-of-a-bitch."

-General Mikolai Boltuc speaking about Commanding General Wladyslaw Bortnowski Battle of Tuchola Forest 1939

Belligerents

For four days in September
Bortnowski refused to believe in the existence of tanks.

Woods
death
and a refusal to retreat

this was reasonable.
Inside everything is recorded. In
life every conversation is

a conversation with yourself.
This afternoon
at work through a line of pine trees

to the east of my cubicle
out the window I heard
an ice cream truck selling my favorite

bright orange push-ups.
Yesterday
they had us wait

in the stairwell as a tornado
touched the tops of DFW’s tallest towers
this was reasonable.

Later a fifty-two year old co-worker
running back from lunch break
afraid

to be a minute late fell
and broke her shoulder
then was made

to wait four hours
crying in a seat outside the human
resources and attendance office

for permission to seek medical treatment
and not be terminated
for insubordination.

Belligerent
belligerents
belligerence

in a call-center this is reasonable.
An orange sherbet sun
setting through the clouds

shines off a bloody palm-print smeared
on a cracked bit
of parking lot cement.

The trees in a distant
Polish woods reached once
brown bark slathered

and stamped in rust-red whorls
for the far-off fading orange
butter colored light.

--Paul Koniecki

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY ONE

Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You

there are cracks forming in the shell of this world,
forming in our sleep, and we don’t always see
them when we wake, when we work, when we
try to love and hurry and slow it all down and
suddenly we glance up, pause in place, and
there they are, a hairline fracture in the ceiling,
a suture in the wall, the house lilting just a bit,
just barely visible if you look hard, so hard,
but, hey, it’s fine, everything will be fine,
right? if we just leave it like that? there’s no
emergency, it seems to be holding itself upright
and the Tower of Pisa has been that way for
age upon age, so who’s worried about one more
filament of space and time broken away to dust?
one more shred of democracy? one more ounce
of human decency poured into the sewer drain?
and so we look away from our walls, we look away
from the cracks in our ceiling, and one day we
leave that place for another, a place with white
walls and good Thai food, a place with better WiFi
and a casual sense of anonymity, just another
animal evading extinction until the chain of command
loses link after link, crack after crack, and the tide
begins to lap at our ankles, waves rushing in as we
stand on the peak of the world holding our iPhone 15 up
to the sky begging for help as the satellites pass by,
glimmering amongst the garbage and stars until
even they melt in the brilliant embrace of the sun

--James Duncan

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY

Small Rooms

Feed your hate
with make believe.
The days will
grow heavy like
elephants
inside small rooms.

You will lose
your right to breathe.
The end is
near for all you
sycophants
and sad buffoons.

To celebrate
such a travesty
will only
last until the
lights get dim
and hate spills out.

Conquer hate
is the thing in need.
Where do we
start? When do
we end it
without a doubt?

--Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY NINE

ST. RONALD REAGAN SMILES

A Mr. Rogers for the wealthy,
Warm and snuggly on cue,
Fatherly firm when needed.
Making them feel good about
Pillaging and looting the
Country they claim to love.
With trickle-down, supply-side
Ecocide and globalization
Shipping American jobs to
Any place where there is no
Union to protect the workers,
No regulations to protect the earth.
Opening veins and drinking deep
From the blood of the poor,
The exploited, and abandoned.
Squeezing the middle class
Out of their security, their homes.
Deftly turning us all against ourselves.

Now we go at each other’s throats
With picket signs and chanted slogans,
Guns like fascist fashion accessories.
We’re doing their work for them.
Cheerleader tRump leads his troops
With invective. His failed lawsuits,
Provide him the excuse for an attempt
At coup, the ultimate manifestation
Of the wet dreams of the wealthy.

We congratulate ourselves for electing
The other guy, and quietly pray
That something will change while
St. Reagan smiles from beyond the grave
And American Armageddon inches closer.

--M.J. Arcangelini

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY EIGHT

12/14/20

Today is the day a sense of normalcy
rises from the collapsing lair of the
grifter in chief, from the seditious 126,
from the 17 blind mice, from party in
his pants Ruddy, from attacks on the
middle class, working class, poor. Of
the soon to be ½ million killed by a
virus Pennywise told everyone would
go away, was nothing, don’t wear a
mask, come see me, I am It.

Today is the day that begins our
democracy once again and with that
we must question why an American
President killed his own people, took
away health care, dismantled the federal
government, attacked the courts and the
very foundation of a free people.

And when the truth is revealed and his
supporters feign shock, deny the truth
the answer will be the same as it was
in November 2016…. polezny durak!

--g.e. Reutter

g emil reutter can be found at: https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY SEVEN

BYE DON

 

                              photography by John Grochalski

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY SIX

5. singularities

many cultures can succinctly emphasize
their worthy differences
in single words.

for instance, Pāli expresses Buddhism’s
very special precept of Mudita,
meaning Empathetic Joy

while Spanish summarizes a complicated
concept of Falling Out Of Love
in one breath, Desenamorarse.

on another hand, Inuits indigenous to Alaska,
northern Canada and parts of Greenland
now have gazillion sounds for White.



Bonus: Just Ask Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273) [3]


Curfew earlyed up,
jackboots on firebrands’ necks,
what can word artists

do about menace
of unmarked police state thugs
pummeling citizens?

Here are our new rules:
break your wineglass & fall toward
the glassblower’s breath.

--Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY FIVE

Refrigerators

A political science professor, in a moment
of jocularity and respite from political theory,
said to his class, “if you really want
to mess up your kid, teach them to
call a ball, a refrigerator.” The president,

Since he started campaigning five years ago
has spent much his political capital renaming
things. Now nearly half the country parrots
his tweets: stolen election; no COVID.

His acolytes, like a pack of feral dogs, love
to chase refrigerators and will follow
them to the junkyard of ideas filled
with nothing but refrigerators.

--Tom Lagasse

 

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY FOUR

Hate 

for Donald

It has taken me two decades
to cultivate my mind.
Tilling this baked clay
from educational fiasco.
I break hand tools
before resorting to a Kango.
White finger making,
head shaking, back breaking
efforts to let go.
I mulch in kindness.
Surface dress with love,
caress my forgiveness.

I have not hated for years.
I grub out those weeds,
ripping out the roots.
No fresh shoots survive.
What is this alien species
that slips past my defences.
An orange stained disgrace
spreading vile runners,
infecting every waking hour.
I accept this bloom of hate
may wither in November chills
but these seeds will linger.

-- Linnet Phoenix

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY THREE

4. Supratentorial Organ Recital Talk

My fast friend for seventy years
began our Zoom schmooze
catching me up on

an apparent second epidemic,
as taking an Envo mask off,
one more tawdry tale

of early-stage dementia among
our grammar school chums
on Chicago’s Southside

comes out of her mouth along
with that quite obvious
requisite follow-up

question: whether our Alzheimer
crew’d be envious of comrades
who’ve already walked

the ultimate gangplank, are dead?

--Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY TWO

NEVER FORGET (2016-2020?)

 

                             photography by John Grochalski

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY ONE

40 Years Ago Today

 

               photography by John Grochalski

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and TWENTY

3. Definitely, Maybe, Possibly True

At least in theory
It’s such a great
Concept that
Every citizen

Including those
Mostly silent with
Gloves plus hats on
Circling the block
In snowy Wisconsin,
Some masked up
And/or distanced;
Plus others inside warm
Homes, still quarantined,
Can only mail ballots

Oy has an ostensibly
Equal voice deciding
To whom Badger State’s
Electoral votes go.

--Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and NINETEEN

TRUMP FONDLES, HUGS, AND KISSES OLD GLORY

“Come my friends,” wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson;
“Tis not too late to seek a newer World.”

If you trust a bully,
A pussy grabber,
A malignant narcissist,
A bone spur draft dodger,
A white nationalist,
And an authoritarian wannabe
Like his heroes:
Putin from Russia,
Kim Jong-un from North Korea,
Viktor Orban from Hungary,
Rodrigo Duterte from the Philippines,
Jair Bolsonaro from Brazil,
Recep Erdogan from Turkey,
and the Saudi Crown Prince Salman
Then you are crass and callow enough
To be conned again by
The ass clown’s latest scam
To soak his supporters
for MILLIONS OF DOLLARS,
To fund his election lawsuits.
But if you are a shout-me-down Trumpster,
And you don’t bother to read the fine print
Of his “Official Election Defense Fund”
You would learn
“There is no limit to how much
Donald Trump can pay himself
Or any member of his family
Under “Save America.”
So, Trump supporters
Open your wallets wide
Then bend over
Because you just
Got “Grifter Fucked.”

--Victor Henry

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and EIGHTEEN

2. Besotted Short-term Staycation

Back from golf,
mind fractured
against yourself

mein president
hunkers down
in White House

that ever since
defeat’s surrounded
by citizen catcalls

as his infected
chief of staff’s
puny underlings

now phish for
industrial strength
election fraud.

--Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and SEVENTEEN

AMERIKKKAN ASSHOLE

                           photography by John Grochalski

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and SIXTEEN

 What They Did

was elect a Dump
a D period apostrophe ump
counting dollars and nonsense
McPounds and Pence
wipe reason from the counter
order disorder with
a side of squalor
and scatter sense

What they did was
undo the fabric
of e pluribus unum
attempt to divide us
to undo civil discourse
with undue faux news
make America grave again
especially in Puerto Rico
and the homes of dreamers
in the minds of our allies
and the realm of morality

What they did was kill Hilarity
while trying to make America
gray white and male again
get us talking about Them again
without Van Morrison

What they did was chirp
G L O R I A to America
while forgetting that
Mexico is part of America
forgetting “One nation
under God” means united nation
not only nation or number one nation
because if an omnipresent God did exist
he or she would have to be
big enough to cover every nation

What they did was keep
churches tax exempt
though their Bible plainly states
that the church is not a building
or organization but the people
and yet they still tax the people
but not always corporations
though they claim corporations
are people too

What they did was spit
in the name of God
on the words of their Jesus
who they conveniently forgot
was a man of color, a man
of Middle Eastern descent
and when they heard his words
“Love your neighbor as yourself”
they spit on them too

When they heard his words
“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
and to God what is God’s”
they spit on them too
and took everything
for themselves

When they heard his words
“Let the children come to me
for theirs is the Kingdom of God”
they spit on them too
and detained the children
and deported the children
and sometimes even lost the children
while insisting that “Jesus saves”

What they did was hear the words
of the man they claimed to follow
and find them hollow
exclaiming “Hell no
we want a white Jesus
made in our image
one that is not a socialist”
and thereby caged
their thorn torn Christ as well

Swell

We may need to save Jesus
from the Dumpster too.

--John Burroughs

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FIFTEEN

WRETCHED AND LESS SO AMONG US [5+]

1. Phaeton’s Fate

-- thanks to Walter Brooks’ Freddy The Pig Goes To Florida, 1949
and Naomi Fry’s Basic Instincts, New Yorker, 16November2020

Lulled by such monotonous
patter on satin carriage’s
gilded umbrella roof

rich housewife & man dither
to care for other mothers’
kids of poverty while they

preserve their safe distance
through what C. Dickens
sarcastically labelled

“telescopic philanthropy”
of boss-ladies or gents’
slick televisual clichés

as the Corona’s death rattle
prattle grows to more than
this horrible dull roar war.

--Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FOURTEEN

Shitting on the American People on His Way to Hell

Moscow Mitch has no time for COVID relief,
needs what’s left of his flagging energy
to pack more right-wing cultists
into lifetime federal judgeship appointments.

Sycophants follow his lead,
spin conspiracy theories,
deny the fact their fascist-in-chief
has lost the presidential election.

Around us, coronavirus rages.
Trumpanzis refuse to wear masks,
socially isolate, take any safety precautions.
Infections and death rates skyrocket.

Democracy is on the skids.
Sick, unemployed Americans
cling to fantasies of deliverance.
Grifters grift. Civilization unravels.

--Jennifer Lagier