Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Turning in your neighbors

Harsh enough, starch the cuffs
I sort of liked their sofa, Like their cars and stuff
Turn’m in by lunch time, Grab their fav’rite chair
They’ll be cleared out by eleven,
but then they’re be cluttering up the jail.

Repudiating humanism, its a mechanistic age,
With compulsory church attendance,
public prayers’ now all the rage.
Everyone wears their AI watcher,
don’t leave home without it. Nacho.

Even at the bedtime be no more a whisperer,
you better shout about it!
Keep your battery all charged up
Yeah its only a misdemeanor don’t doubt it.

but if your caught without oh my dear you’ll learn
what its like, when your ears and finger tips will surely feel the burn
when your street block captain,
checks your record out online
and if you watch refused to shine,
you will be emailed one hefty fine.

No more lawn boys at the neighbors,
gardening done for white folks, by prison labor,
all those teachers and professors, no longer high falutin
men of letters. No more at colleges or universities
they no more think their our betters.

we emptied them all, we ain’t got no more need
the doctors all work for insurance, so if your poor
you’ll need endurance. Whole things run now for GREED.

I turned in all my neighbors they were a suspicious lot
and when they left we rounded up, all the things that they bought.

We’ve got great employment surges,
has centered in a few select favorite churches
Everyone must sign up for compulsory attendance
not more private morality, you’ll never more be friendless.

when the CHURCHY-state rightward lurches.
You’ll see attendance kept in churches.
When the church enforcers at the door hands out the new Commandments
You better hope he still signs your churchy list attendance.

So many hours of prayer each day
You better get your card stamped by a neighbor anyway.
You’ll have to buy the leaders picture
Its mandatory now, or else you’ll get a lecture.
They’ll be downloading your prayer history,
how fervent are your studies of the latest revision
of the sacred trumptacious mysteries.

After they rounded up the brown ones
And all the political media clown ones
The Dems were next, them rhinos hexed
Into the gulags, then the proud profound ones,
may just have their collars stretched.

Those college professors were gathered
to stand before the STATE confessors
Each class room has its Bible Belt and should you
without your homework caught
only if you offer a hefty bribe
will you go back safely to your tribe.

School now renounce formal learning,
didn’t you smell all them books be burning.
Not much left for the discerning student
when carrying books for study isn’t prudent.
Best to be an athlete now
All them art and music classes are
long lost and over boy and how!

Idiocracy is the new ideal
No more transgender surgery (it was never real)
No more punishment for perjury
No more stool pigeons with the big reveal
All the January six prisoners have been knighted
Now all them choral horror hoodlums are delighted.

One a year they climb the dome
to remind us all that DONNIE’S Home.

 

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.