Thursday, December 28, 2017

day THREE HUNDRED and FORTY THREE



Onagrocracy (for John Grochalski)

christ, I’m discouraged
Jay, I know exactly how you feel
we knew it wouldn’t be
four years of winning
maybe we thought shit
would get worse more quickly
but the banana republic
still can’t tell their ass
form a hole in the ground
small consolation at least

I don’t know why worse quickly
would have been better though
maybe after the hell of 2016
we are up for a fight
our blood up after another
slash and burn election

instead its been a barrage of ineptitude
things getting worse but slowly
a barrage of policy changes
some in secret some in the open
some buried on Friday so not to
ruffle the feathers of the nightly news

its hard to keep the outrage up
when everything is outrageous
everything is this is not my country
everything is hey America
you could have had a real democracy

there is a term from Fascist Italy
Onagrocracy, it loosely translates
to a society run by asses
to say that one must acknowledge
the tumble down to Fascism
America has become
maybe we’re too late
maybe we woke up too late

Christ, I’m discouraged too
Impeachment dreams
and tax bill cons run
through me, and I wonder
why I care this much, a country
is a social contract and a country
is fiction, we all drank the kool-aid
even as we learned to take each
Horatio Alger American Dream platitude
as they are, which are lies

over the last years I’ve been running
those classic American narratives
through my head seeing how fast
they get debunked, caught in lies
it made me angry, but I
always knew they were lies
and I’ve always been angry
I’m still not angry enough
we’re still not angry enough

christ I’m discouraged
I still got a bad case
of it can’t happen here
even as it happens here

jay, I know you’re discouraged
goddamn, so am I
but we still need our voices
we still got a fight
or try to fight the ways we know how
we still have to believe
in the ballot, in change
if there was any mistake it was
teaching us that was the truth
not a lie, if we give up
then democracy
is rehearsing
for retirement

--Jason Baldinger

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