2024 Election Poem

I’m just writing this poem instead of eating highlighters, chewing gum foil, raisins, or Sylvia’s halloween candy.

This afternoon I wrote “environment”, “change”, and “open border” on a piece of scratch paper in a column labeled BIG. I wrote in pen so it’s permanent.

Most Americans vote for their team, despite this season’s roster. Team captains come and go, mascots are always silly, it’s the score that counts.

Ronald Reagan played right guard for the O AND the D. Yes, he played for Eureka from 1929 to 1931 but none of the plays were of his design.

How could my poem ride a bike up a steep hill and benefit your heart? We don’t need to argue anymore about whether the songbird is pleased with its singing. Sylvia says ants have more brain cells than any other insect.

My student said “coach said if you don’t cheat, are you really trying to win?” A plastic drinking straw, a missing screwdriver with a long silver shaft, boxes of dead batteries and blown bulbs atop the fridges overflowing.

~~~

USA 2024 Election Poem 2

Out in the desert I found a TRUMP sign
beside Pat Garrett’s death site.
Immediately came the metaphor making:
TRUMP’s the lawman that killed Billy the Kid.
Which makes Billy the Kid the Kamala.
Which makes me the one
on the high ground,
top of the hill, who killed Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Suzanne said the man
who put the TRUMP sign there
wasn’t making a metaphor, but if he was,
TRUMP would be Billy the Kid haunting his killer,

dancing on the cross
carved into concrete, singing lawmen die,
outlaws never do.

In a stroke of switcheroo,
I pulled the TRUMP sign
from Pat Garrett’s death site
and placed it on the nearest abandoned car:
a modern sport coup in sparkly blue,
blown out from the inside,
a cartel job or something worse,
the windshield glittering like a magic carpet
across the dash, the frontend chopped
completely off.

Maybe the man who put the TRUMP sign
beside Pat Garrett’s death site
is the island of trees, some up to 30 feet,
standing out in a circuitry of arroyos
and offroads
and powerline service roads,
and maybe these 2 roadrunners
scrambling across the trail are you and me,
and maybe the creosote
rattled by the breeze
remains undecided.