this is not a poem

I have been absent

for days and weeks.

I have been cleaning
and sewing

and trying to quiet the anger
that I can't control
in light of this new America.

They say there will be a day
when federal monies
will be revoked from arts programs.

I suggest we start looking for ways
to protect the voices
the ones that are real and true
*and not alternative

You are born and live and live well, good and bad.

You add and subtract and learn.

You throw out and subtract those things that do not add up.

You keep what makes the equation correct and you add more in and live.

You live well my friend , you live well.

The old songs don’t feel right
wrong key, out of tune
somebody wake Sinatra
reclaim these wayward melodies
My Way, New York
New York
seat of the Queen
a gilded new King
everything he touches
Gold

money equals tower
Freudian crystal skyscrapers
the fitting measure
of a brittle man
who has not strength
to speak the truth
recites instead from
a book of fables
the moral to every one
those in glass houses
shouldn’t throw stones

the town crier proclaims
the truth does not matter
no one cares

hold tight that red hat
lest it be snatched
by a rebellious wind
see it now, a symbol
framed in white and blue
rising above the crowd
boots on the ground speak
shiny brass buttons
on a pert military coat
don’t a revolutionary make

the peddler of lies is just
a liar once-removed
“alternative facts”
brash fabrications
with a fancy semantic bow
such a pretty package
such a pretty family
the biggest crowd
in all of history
let the whole world

Witness

this most
perfect union

Ne'er can any mountain be climbed
Unless at first one is inclined!

there is blood in the streets
and dripping from the slick soles of shoes
of the smiling old men
who sell souls and buy lunch,
who never see and who
never stop smiling.

there is blood in the streets
and flaking like rust from the walls
of the banks and the prisons,
staining the palms
of the rich and the ruthless.

there is blood in the streets,
a graveyard full of my friends
and a holy battlefield
where kids with bandanas and baseball bats
fight for their lives and for those
whose guts stain the whole city red.

there is blood in the streets,
and the rich white men build themselves bridges
so far above the red running river
that they can call this peace.

there is blood in the streets,
but all you can see is a trash can on fire
and the scattered shards of shattered glass.