When It’s Gone


My political life began early on, when Kennedy ran,
	Democratic Headquarters was just off Water Street,
		Now the Phillips Academy Bookstore,
I festooned my red Schwinn with bumper stickers,
		(One-speed, chrome fenders, fat tires)
Kennedy For President!
	Ask not what you can do for your country,
			A man on the moon in this decade,
Youth, vibrancy, and hope,
	And America was challenged, and responded,
And then Dallas.

My political life
Was shot in a pantry
At the Ambassador Hotel, head cradled in the arms of a busboy, 
And the future bled out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, 
                                  RIP sixty-eight,
			When history changed again.
		All the rest, ennui.

In the first election I voted,
              Nineteen, seventy-two, drove to the polls 
                      In my sixty-four Beetle, 
                (British racing green, bad brakes, no heat)
	Cast my vote, drove home, and got high,
		Because I knew what was to come,

Watched the results on a plastic black and white portable tv,
            (Rabbit ears, bad reception, tiny screen)
Channel 27, a tiny UHF station out of
           Worcester, Mass.,
		Which carefully tallied the Bay State vote, 
The only state Nixon lost,

	A landslide victory for another crook, 
and I learned, without doubt,
That many Americans have different ideas
	About the direction to steer our country, 
		Who will lead, what is right,
What shade to color our history, 
                                        
And I saw, brightly illuminated,
How so many of us can be wrong.
 
See, I thought it was obvious,
        That Nixon was crooked.
		(Divisive, silent majority, nattering nabobs)
Dragging Viet Nam through years of warfare
To insure his chances for a second White House turn, 
                (Dead soldiers, dead students, illegal bombings)
			Don’t change horses midstream,
				His evil cabinet…
Won in a landslide.

A half-century has passed since that election,
	And presidents have come and gone, some good, some bad,
And some of the candidates I supported won, and some lost,
	And I’m an old man now, watching our steep decline
Into a corrupt, malignant, constricted country ready to elect
	A degenerate thug, pompous ass, pathological offal,
Ignoring that his policies will not only doom the country,
             But the planet as well. 
	Drill, baby, drill.

	And I’m left with only the faintest hope
That enough of my fellow citizens will find it possible
	To retract their craniums from their posterior and see
This louse for what he is, degenerate clown, 
	Preposterous liar, rich, lazy scum, breeder of lies and hate,
		Vile, vile, vile,

But it all comes now, so late that we’ve already lost,
In a country where so many support this “populism” that is not populism at all,
		But denialism,
	So comforting to be told that climate Armageddon is a hoax,
	That we don’t have to give up V-8 engines,
	That feed the oil oligarchs and idiots still building
		Enormous gas-hog road-hog machines, still, 
As if the resource was infinite
 and not killing the planet,
	That we might still have our coal mines, and factory emissions, plastic,
	That we might still sequester safely in our houses, which are now arsenals,
	That we might still cradle our arms and stand our ground,
That we might go back to the delusional whitebread country you always
Wanted but never had,
	That we don’t have to learn Spanish, or pay attention to what’s happening
		To the rest of the world,
	So comforting to be assured of American exceptionalism, 
	That the rules don’t apply, 
	That you believe the big lie,
		The biggest liar. 

Have we already lost? That there are so many
	Yearning for the lies, and the liar; that we’d disavow not only 
The threat of the future, but the promise of our history.

My father, my uncles, my grandfather went to war, volunteered
               To battle tyranny, the fascists, the nazis, 
                                             And so many died,
Returned damaged, wounded, proud, defending liberty,
	Freedom, even after years of deprivation, stood tall,
What would they think of where we are now?
	Who we are now? 

Sorry, dad, this feels like the end of the United States,
	We didn’t do a particularly good job of nurturing the experiment along,
Patriotism redefined as neo-Nazis and skinheads with automatic weapons,
	Proud boys, oath keepers, kicking down the doors
		Of Congress, threatening to hang the Speaker, 
	The vice president, urged on by a sleazy conman
Who somebody elected president. 

Imagine that clown sitting in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s office? Abraham Lincoln’s? 

Sorry, Dad. Mom. Uncle Bob. Mr. Walker. 
Sorry, Sorry we’ve done such a terrible job 
Watching the home front, disappearing freedoms,
	Disappearing future, and so deeply sorry too,
		For the future generations
	Who may, or may not, find a way
To progress through the wreckage,
That we leave behind as we 
Drift toward dissolution.


10/29/2024