Thursday, January 14, 2021

day FOURTEEN HUNDRED and FIFTY NINE

Dream in direct deposit and tangerine

Honey, wine, fig, cut-crystal
shelter, hungry tired cream,
sticky ravaged fingers peeling

an imaginary sun, where
are the blessed as
the starving meet first death

idle in the street? When will creme
brûlée ever finally trickle down?
A friend pointed out a trickle

isn’t much to begin with anyway.
The pawn shop ticket for
Woody Guthrie’s guitar

is buried with him in his coat.
The Cyrus Cylinder is some of
the earliest documented evidence of

human liberty on a societal scale.
At least we have our common dream
in direct deposit and tangerine

the oily pink of one percent
as fluttering eyelids shielded
by designer lenses anyway.

And the phone rings day-job
gray again and they are poor.
Whatever the plan, if you are here,

it went wrong. Tax exempt churches
in America shake their plates and do
their best to explain why Heaven

has a coverage charge.

--Paul Koniecki 




Broken Democracy

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
”—Leonard Cohen


Lame Duck Demagogue whips up the crowd,
shouts marching orders to fascistic supporters.
Gleefully, they break windows, grind cigarettes into carpets,
smear feces across congressional office walls and floors,
halt vote counting from the Electoral College.

Stunted souls spew hatred, destruction.
Capital police facilitate the insurrection,
grin and pose in selfies with white supremacists.
Seditious enablers embrace violent treason.
Sane Americans watch in revulsion.

Traumatized, I wonder what larger plan
our higher power has in mind
to cleanse the diseased body politic,
bring us back to a place of light and hope, restore our defiled better selves

--Jennifer Lagier

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