you should be living now. Our country is a circus,
The donkeys braying to empty air, the elephants trumpeting like a runaway train,
While the Clown—Master of Ceremoneys—takes a piss
On the newspapers under a cowering lioness and empties his brain-drain
Of words, his hand on the starlet’s fur.
We are a feckless people
Giving our brain to the confidence-man’s stump-speech
And cheering the clown’s gassy rump-preach
That fouls confidence in our neighbors like bull fecal.
Walt, take us from this candy-striped tent onto the open, public road
Where we stumble on angular facts because some rocks are true, even dear,
Take us from where the elephants bow low as a toad,
this Saddest Show on Earth
To join the brown and black, and pink invasive species in our square
Where we gulp promiscuously the air of everyone a la mode
And we, in the days of your ‘lesson of reception,’ adhere.
January 2017
Roosevelt, NJ
David Herrstrom
The donkeys braying to empty air, the elephants trumpeting like a runaway train,
While the Clown—Master of Ceremoneys—takes a piss
On the newspapers under a cowering lioness and empties his brain-drain
Of words, his hand on the starlet’s fur.
We are a feckless people
Giving our brain to the confidence-man’s stump-speech
And cheering the clown’s gassy rump-preach
That fouls confidence in our neighbors like bull fecal.
Walt, take us from this candy-striped tent onto the open, public road
Where we stumble on angular facts because some rocks are true, even dear,
Take us from where the elephants bow low as a toad,
this Saddest Show on Earth
To join the brown and black, and pink invasive species in our square
Where we gulp promiscuously the air of everyone a la mode
And we, in the days of your ‘lesson of reception,’ adhere.
January 2017
Roosevelt, NJ
David Herrstrom