Nutmeg poems on Hello Poetry

ConnectHook Apr 2018

Qui Transtulit Sustinet

There sat CONNECTICUT, a twit
blue nanny-state, and doomed to sit
on welfare-warrens of the ******
her social service on demand.
She withers on NEW ENGLAND‘s vine
a bygone has-been, and a sign
of democratic overkill
where her once-dear and verdant rill
now stagnant flows: polluted stream
a moribund New England dream.
The richest state with poorest heart:
the Northeast’s saddest story. Part
of history’s renowned revival,
now irrelevant. Survival
chains her children in dependence
keeping back the state’s ascendance.
Apostate Puritan, grown old—
for LIBERTY, no longer bold;
a slave to Man, where once God’s WORD
awakened greatness. Souls were stirred
in ENFIELD (of all strange places),
Christ beheld in radiant faces . . .
Edwards held their spellbound souls
like spiders over flaming coals,
in gratitude for Gospel grace
renewing thus both town and race.
But I digress. Connecticut
is what I came to speak about:
forgotten dull colonial matron
yoked in failure, plebe as patron
nostalgic for her Charter Oak
whose deadwood limbs went up in smoke
along with dark tobacco wrap
while the plantation took a nap.
Her social programs overgrowth
pose forest fire-risk. Under oath
her public servants signal virtue;
sign which really should alert you
to the democrat-machine’s
impending failure (ways and means).
Nutmeg-addled Tax-and-spenders,
dollar drunks on welfare benders
widen economic rifts;
force single moms toward double shifts
while Latin Kings hold court in prison
waiting out their royal season:
fiscally unsustainable—
yet totally explainable
(nutmeg is a drug for witches
spendthrift warlocks, bankrupt *******).
Oh HARTFORD, city of the dead
which dies at five, then home to bed,
insurance once assured your rise;
but now your ghosts haunt sadder skies.
Your life displaced, outsourced, out-dated;
so, it seems, your fall was fated.
Meanwhile, close to New York City,
fairer fields are growing pretty
long on corporate commutes.
Data-driven growth computes
as data-drivers flood the roads
and enter by Manhattan-loads
from golden coasts’ Atlantic shores
and posh patrician golden doors
to bite the apple of our time:
a number-cruncher built on crime.
New England’s puritannic granny
(data-driven tyrant ******)
seeks to harbor tropic isles
with blandly bureaucratic smiles.
Your poor dear heart cannot afford
to welcome every island lord
who looks to better his estate
and so decides to emigrate.
Displaced Jamaicans outta yard
compel the soft verse to get hard.
Boricua separatists, dispersed
show nationalities reversed
and dwell between two foreign lands
in Spanglish no one understands.
Such nutmeg gets the covens high
to soar the stormy Liberal sky.
It’s Yankee hubris: condescension
taxing plebes for such dissension.
Though you connect, there I would cut,
excising from New England’s gut
metastasizing social tumors:
clueless and obese consumers,
teenage moms, pajama-clad
whose nenes wait in vain for dad.
QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET—truth . . .
but that was was in our nation’s youth.
She’s gotten worse with passing years
confirming citizens’ worst fears;
showing her colors every vote
her monotone, a droning note
on which the blue-bloods hang their hue
when hope and change are overdue.
Her atheist zeal meets Yankee pride:
a most progressive broomstick ride;
oblivious to her Christian past,
an enemy of God at last.

Senryu and Haikai:
Basho-san, can you get me
another beer, please?

#ctpoem #connecticut #hartfordct #napowrimo2018

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