Waking After the Election
Waking to
these states our future in cold dark sky. Up
off the
operating table. Smells of ice. The thugs
and their commentators
have been waiting. Eager!
Having blamed
our glass all these years,
they've gone
behind their own glass, to watch how
our surgery
went.
Waking to this
new room, all the coat-pegs empty, a
new peg
sprouting every few feet, coast to coast.
Between the
pegs small flames keep starting up.
Waking to our
new job to pay the medical bills: we keep busy
counting the
flames, report how frequently
the victims,
transparent now, turn
to ash and
pile up.
Waking to
these states waking to these states hearing
our new president’s
speech:
our operation
was a success.
After the Election
One by one old friends blink and walk away down
the snowy passes,
even after
you've shaken them, crying "I voted your way!"
--how you know the future is dying.
Other signs:
Your grocery
bags are filling with children's drawings of burning cities.
During the
news your TV oozes a thin white hair from the Himalayas.
With the late shudder of the rulers’ photo ops
you remember that all their policy is foreign.
You remember our dear old negotiations
with the sea lions with blue with Buster Keaton.
And when you look in the bathtub the mutants are
already born:
stunted green
horses waving
their broken
legs waving
you into the
hole
where their
heads would have been
