Monday, March 21, 2016

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 46th 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.

                                    


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