When even words fail, what is the point of a poem?
Unless the pen is a sword heading inwards, the tip
Taunting the heart as it stabs. And as blood bursts,
The frame of bone and blame starts to weaken,
And duly worsens before a Billionaire bastard
Whose Midas touch makes gold drab.
The Americans were pissed off by an Altzheimic
Administration, (but they’d had it before, right? With Reagan)
And turned as in shell shock to another form of closed mind;
One of ignorance, greed and self delusion, a recast criminal
And corrupter of anything good left to find. Stormy Daniels
Will freak, as do I lost in London; adrift in a world
In which reason no longer makes any sense. For, like a
Battered wife, the soiled States have run to a bombast braced
Boyfriend who, with bile and bluff will now blister and torture
Them both at home and abroad. No defence! He’ll be good
For business they say. But then we had Mussolini’s timetable
For the trains that bore tickets carrying millions to the smoke
And so it proves here as future corpses raise condos
Through which, once enabled mankind becomes its own joke.
From anger, through fear the entire notion of law lays in ruins
Accused of rigging elections, how can they elect again!
To provoke Democratic complacency from its cave, so that
The modern monsters may ravage, or to provide Doomsday’s
Sequel, that Roland Emmerich can direct? It should be
Ingmar Bergman of course. But that kind of poetry cannot surface.
Instead we have horror, against which we have no immediate means
To protect. To many this is the worst possible news. I can see Sir Keir
Starmer gulping. I can feel Zelensky’s distemper and hear Netanyahu
Now whoop. The worm has turned back to have sex with soil
That’s grown toxic. And we are in the shit stirred beneath it,
Used now to fuel flagrancy. Intelligent debate has been dulled.
Discernment laid to rest with charisma. Sensitivity and the soulful
Sacrificed hatefully. The criminal was near caught, but now
He slips the net and reseals it. We are in the paper bag used
By those for whom breathing needs to be contained to feel free.
Today in the States all peace of mind has been shattered.
It opens the gates now for livestock keen to run crazed
Through the field. All bets are off. Soon, even opening
Your front door will be Poker. Welcome to the new mental
Lockdown. The Donald damned Age is open us. In the Air
Tonight, next to Covid, a new virus infects us. Drum it away
Like Phil Collins when he could still drum. Do not yield.
David Erdos 6/11/24
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