Poem: Election Day 2008

 

Election Day 2008

 

the people had their swill,

and now throng the troughs,

not to digest more, but to vomit up

what they were told to know.

 

each face reacts to the caricature

of the one in tandem,

 a cordoned assembly line

of the anguished and the grotesque.

 

a man holds a noosed monkey.

three women wear the same t-shirt:

a baboonish candidate

who sucks a banana and gloats.

 

there is talk

of terrorist homosexuality,

of negro delinquency,

and a liberal anti-christ,

urgent to outlaw prayer.

 

but mostly guns.

 

big-bellied clichés

with beer-red neckmeat

bluster and swagger,

while dog-fierce kids 

fetch to return, return to fetch,

the hate tossed between sighs.

 

the unamerican elites.

round them up.  brand them.

force them to leave.

 

hours of this.

a vexed parade of the bitter.

how it bristles,

 as if to constrict the schoolhouse,

raring to get inside.

 

 

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Obama vs McCain 2008, based on news footage.

This poem is a way to get out my own hate and rage, focusing on racism.  The enemy is not people.   The enemy is racism and its effects.