Dumb and ignorant are not synonyms. Dumb, well, means dumb, but ignorant means uneducated. Dumb people will vote for Criminal Trump. Ignorant people may vote for Criminal Trump. Educated people, people who know the principles of democracy, will likely vote for Biden, not because he is brilliant, but because he is decent. Our nation was built on slavery and genocide. Blacks and the autochthonous were the victims. The progeny of slavery is racism. Racism permeates America. Criminal Trump, a vitriolic racist (redundant, but for good reason) himself, as was his father, will sell his rotten soul to garner four more years in the Oval Office rather than in a prison cell. Dumb, dumber, and dumbest, right? Criminal Trump wouldn't mind a little plagiarism, would he? He is functionally illiterate. Dumb as a rock. So we come full circle:  simply, there are more dumb people and uneducated people than reasonably intelligent people in America. But it doesn't take too much intelligence to mark a ballot or to wave the Stars and Stripes or to hate others whose skin is a slightly different shade than yours.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

today i am
my own conjoined twin
ribcage aching where i've stuck myself
with desperate thumbtacks to the illusory
ever-flowering concept board of "i"
to save them the trouble of bleaching
my soaking contradictions from the
carpet that makes my elbows itch

sleeping syrup tiptoes on the brain
but if you drink that, you can't have ***
now that would be a tragedy
not getting drunk alone in 30 degree weather
to write unintelligible psalms to friends
imagine that

so with one arm at the equator
in the moulting, drooling sun
and one closer to the bed
in some casual western Spring
i try to balance myself
with this sad little twin
forgetting, for a second,
which one is me,
a little too painfully
awake

When I can't comment on your small talk and I feel dumb
When I can't feel anything and pain becomes numb,
Wondering if I even have free thought.
Wondering and questioning if iRobot?

You said you loved me
and I believed you
You said we can talk
Then took no notice of me.
You said you cared
I was convinced.

And I thought I could treat your pain
But it turned out to just be attention
and depravity
and manipulation
and deceit

Maybe I’m just naïve,
Because I trusted you.