Poem: “Playground”
America feels reduced in 2017, held back a grade
or several, possibly even to elementary school.
The bully pulpit of our highest office turned over to a bully
scarily resilient to unchanging rules, petulantly even his own.
His senile rantings magic us into rowdy kids again;
to wit, my words are already much regressed.
A teacher might find us all culpable, but what adult is left to judge.
Justice is at recess now with all the rest,
Congress ignoring the government gangland forming.
King of the jungle gym surrounds himself with Yes-Men
as independents self-select out of ignored posts and councils.
They think they stand a better shot at change outside,
overlooking just how hollow our hallowed halls become
without them. Despair cedes all authority to them.
The lies are too much to keep straight,
his supporters don’t care for the “he said/she said” of it all.
Hell, even if it’s literally “he said & he said”,
fake news is out to get him, who can really say?
“I’m rubber, you’re glue” the Conman-in-Chief sneers,
preemptively and baselessly recycling his faults as accusations,
simultaneously obfuscating and normalizing his tactics.
Power-hungry playmates plug their ears and close their eyes,
like the monkeys who see no evil, won’t hear it.
In the cacophony, it’s enough to compare voices and tones:
you seek to shame us and he assaults your P.C. play-nice.
A weak-sauce machismo but if it talks like a duck and walks like one
maybe our “basket of deplorables” should all be not-sees together?
Call us what you will, you’re biased so not like we care.
Right now everyone is drumming up support amongst our own,
swelling the rhythm in our echo chambers before the starting gun.
Post-truth makes children of intellectual giants
as a bombastic Trump claims to be their equal.
By the time we clash, words may lose their meaning
consequently crippling law and making our only outlet violence.
Will it still look like a playground after that?
