As I go out the door this morning on “Morning Joe”
Eugene Robinson is opining that “some people say”
that the USA is a “beacon of democracy” thus using
the rhetorical trope of last, that is former president
who was allowed to bring anything at all he wanted
into the Common that is the public discourse of us
all because “someone said” five long years of campaign
and then presidency of one blatant racist sexist actual
murderous homophobic xenophobic sectarian hate
meme one after another while the USA my entire life
has backed dictators often imposed by election theft
or out and out coups and actual mass murder so that
our southern heavily militarized border has hundreds
of thousands of refugees seeking asylum all or at least
almost all who have been directly affected by many
decades of U.S. policy in trade or directly by sanctions
on their countries or U.S. war on drugs abolition that
creates the gangs, the armed militias, the real gangster
capitalist crews making fortunes in black market deals
in drugs, guns and human trafficking of people fleeing
desperate to get to somewhere where they won’t have
to fear rape and murder for trying to live a simple life
free of men, armed criminals with guns taking over
their lives while meanwhile we all watch “the former
President” being daily revealed as what anyone could
all along have known ever since his long down elevator
reality T.V. entrance campaign kick-off what a crook
cheating and stealing and lying about everything over
and over through his whole life but still has two thirds
of the wingnut minority party of reactionary nihilism
foaming over with hate and rebellion while his enemies
the demo-can’t-do-nothing about all the what-about-
ism who wallow along as usual consolidating security
state around the drug war, the trade war on working folk
all over the world the endless drug wars that come from
the endless Forever War War War issuing from our City
on a Hill that once was Beacon Hill before they cut off its
top of and used it for fill on Charles St. where I now go
for dental hygiene just across from the Public Garden
where psychedelic twisting trunk of the stately Chinese
Cedar even as our “city on a hill” prepares to do battle
in South China Sea over Taiwan & Asian shipping routes.

 

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.