A polemic:
— noun
a controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc.; a person who argues in opposition to another; controversialist.
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our principals have principles.
principles as long and as shallow as a
tv sound bite.
give me ten careful good persons who have the courage to say,
I am unsure.
men and women who can acknowledge that
doubt never changes never ends.
who do not lie with sweet surety
for the cameras to salve their self-knowledge of
prideful lies, yet ashamed of their piece prizes.
when you cannot pay back that student loan,
email them asking for the ten bucks back
you once sent them.
liking the sound of their voice filled
with hackney trite, and give us tripe,
not once but over and over again,
with greater ease of the groove,
then oops, a single apology,
now that they have taken away your choices.
doctors who do not plagiarize
with reckless abandon,
whose credentials are self-certified
mislead so ease.
Bill gets $700,000 to make a speech.
He charges only $500,000 for old friends.
Poor Hillary, she gets a trifling $200,000
Ask Maureen of the New York Times
tells the truth between the
news that is filtered then called
fit to print.
But when they say,
see me and believe,
then send
me ten bucks, once more into the breech,
go and register to vote instead.
we have sacrificed our ability of hard reflection
on an altar of mushy easy cheap construction,
accepting polemics as political philosophy.
we chose this.
we yearn for crumbs of certainty
in these uncertain times.
how we long for a man who can say
unhesitatingly:
let us try this
and if not perfect,
edit and change,
even start over again.
doubt never changes never ends.
seek out these men.
s elect them.
Tell me something you know
with utter confidence that
men have constructed
that cannot be improved.
when I gaze upon the poems
of my early days,
see the typos
and the hackneyed,
I amend, even delete.
doubt never changes never ends.
outside the fortress walls
behind that you hide,
your enemies are
constructing new technologies
capable of going under over through
the old concrete
of yesterday's stale minds, worse,
molding the lazy ones.
Those who are certain
never confess that
their actions can have
evil consequences,
until you put them in the docket.
then they say,
I did not know.
they knew.
they say
I was only following orders of the
principals.
The worst is yet to come.
The tv is on and the soundbite lies
unceasing.
Those who get played,
are the ones who did not play,
but watched tv.
Did you ever see a poor, retired politician?