The Deporter –in-Chief now become the Detainer-in-Chief
as ICE (and assorted militarized polices) arrest the undocumented
so fast they can’t deport them as quickly as they are arresting
more and more so as millions fear to go out to shop or pick up kids
at school or just to be outside with other humans Agent (Russian?)
Orange Head in the White House tweet, tweet, tweets the Muslim Ban
his legal mouth pieces contend was only “a travel pause” tweet, tweet
tweet, tweet an alt-right reality to the American people but we are told
tweet, tweet, tweet and reality never the twain shall meet as the leaks
drip, drip, drip keep dripping down from above and there’s absolutely
one thing you must never do if you want to save the house there must be
a good roof to keep the rain from creeping into the walls and leaking down
through the floors to where the people just like us have nowhere else to go
and must live lives tending tottering buckets and overflowing trash barrels
and wide flat mixing trays and tripping over litter boxes that never manage
to do a thing about all the rot from all the water everywhere under the growing
holes in roof, the gaping roof, the one thing you have to have other wise
you lose the whole, the one and only house where we all live however much
the Deporter-in-Chief now become the Detainer-in-chief may tweet, tweet, tweet
about all those so desperate waiting for a roof, just a roof over their heads.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.