This July 4th, I offer a poem for my neighbours to the south:
In murky corners of the mind
where shadows to the body bind
us fast with glue and glitter bits
and bitter fists raised high in fits
of rage, we mourn the passing of an age
we knew only in its dying stage:
a backward glance, barstool riffs
on gentler times, when Twitter tiffs
unleashed a vast collective groan,
or such a thing was yet unknown,
when the Deal we knew was New enough
it knew nothing of a Queens-born tough
still in diapers filled with shit
whose later claims were full of it.
If today some Booth arise
to drop the curtain over his eyes,
where’s the Whitman to lament
his Captain’s death, his nation rent
by passion for its highest aims,
its pure heart bound by slaver’s chains?
If today we faced such loss,
though a thousand Whitmans toss
their finest words, they’d hit the ground
like Borzoi turds. Without the sound
of nobler aims, or higher things
that stir our hearts, the poem rings
with hollow words, then falls mute:
an orange-haired fool, an unstrung lute.