100 Days
and Counting
The agent
of change is wrapped
in a neat
package of one hundred-
day
increments like fabric softener
or
college-ruled paper.
It is the
marketer’s promise,
the
salesman’s ploy that a new
habit can
be established as easy as
one, two,
three months and change.
While
Americans wait, partially sheltered,
partially
masked, entirely grateful
each day
we do not wake
with a dry
cough or fever
we can
return from exile, improve
ourselves
with 100 days of
3D design
Eating
real food
Professional
Learning
Walking
100 Miles
Reading
Poetry
&
fonts
In the
next 100 days, our wartime
president,
who is losing his battle
with an
out of control virus
and cowers
at addressing
the
Russians’ bounty on our soldiers,
will not
take one step towards self-
improvement
or self-awareness. His time
overwhelmed
with puke tweeting,
watching
Fox News and waging war
on his own
people whom he promised
to
protect, but most hold to his
heart,
like the American flag he claims
to covet,
that more citizens have died
than in
nearly all the casualties
in every American War
—
Combined.
He trusts
his genius,
repeat after
me person, man, woman
(pause as
he thinks of Stormy Daniels),
camera,
television. . . Person, man
woman
(pause as he thinks of Stormy
Daniels),
camera, television.
His eyes
get sleepy from his tired
hypnotic
mantra. Person, man, woman
(I’m
afraid of AOC), camera, television. . .
Earned
extra credit for circling an elephant
his
lackeys ‘yes, sir’ him into fitness,
he longs
to re-convince Wonder
bread
white-bred America, who pine for
The black
and white world of Leave It
to Beaver
and Daddy Knows
Best, the
world will be more
menacing,
more dangerous in full color.
As a
confederate general he will conscript
our
youngest soldiers to the front
lines to
prove everything Is ABC, 123
And winks,
“I need you to do me
A favor”
go to school.
With
crystal ball clairvoyance, imagine
a Labor
Day truce will be declared.
Workers
will celebrate their good fortune
to stock
grocery shelves, process the carcasses
of cows,
pick strawberries, and clean
vacant
office buildings, while wondering
which day
the pandemic arrives at their doors
or lament
with the other 20% labor-less people
while
doling out hamburgers and fruit salad
In the far
reaches of this land, Keeping
socially
distant, the mask-less
president
takes an 18 hole victory lap.
Three days
from the election
will not
be the masked
distraction
of Halloween.
Postponed
until 2021, at least.
The only
tricks will surely
be in an
October surprise
brought to
us by - Russia?
China? Ukraine?
Any other
world
actor the president has
promised a
quid pro quo?
Until
November 3 arrives
the fog of
these years like
the tear
gas in Portland
or
Lafayette Square may
start to
clear and our imperfect
20/20
vision cleared. Our nation,
having
witnessed white fragility
and
government institutions
apparently
as delicate as fine china,
might
finally be broken free
to address
our unadorned in plain
sight
history that has been cloaked in myth.
100
unpardonable days.
Herbert
Hoover lifts his glass.
The weight
of historic failure shifts.
--Tom Lagasse
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