Begin the Impeachment
Begin the Impeachment
A theory of the moon
You read the newspaper
Gazing at the train wreck
The comfort of alienation
The alienation of comfort
Trained to be addicted to those things money can buy
Life an edible garnish you do not eat
Moonshine
The state of mind in
Which you are a separate being
From that migrant worker or
That dandelion or that cop
Is psychosis
How it all might fade into invisibility, air
Jailed behind the nonexistent
Bars of our own problems
Not seeing how we are not an individual
Trapped behind eyes that cannot see themselves
Except as reflection, representation
Suffocating together
The stained glass window
Shatters, colors become shards
You back into decisions you are
Unprepared to make, your right to the
Remaining air
In a world of dying people
Tolerable only
Through reduced language
Allowed free reign of the imagination
For fifteen minutes per four-hour shift
According to the gates of a theory
As full of life as a prison
Who stitch the shoes
Of the heroes who take to the streets
Who never figure into the story
Who are bent over fields as if part of the landscape
Whose hands are too mangled to raise fists
The third person’s world
That woman at the party screaming
Because the recovered alcoholic was drinking again
They maneuvered her out onto the porch
Soothed her found someone to walk her home
The drinking continued
She, the only living person at the party,
Had marked herself as a mad woman
The rest of us submerged in formaldehyde
Rotating slowly to the empty music
Rigor mortis grins eyes open
Suspended
She was the one who was conscious, struggling
And needed to be removed from the swimming pool
of bobbing corpses
Some kind of sentence
It might be declarative
Or a question
I’m the subject of it
Like some kind of subject, actor
I do and say nothing
I tried to elect a different president
But a different president was elected
I may or may not have voted
But afterward did and said nothing
Maybe there’s nothing new
Wrong
Maybe this is human
Nature
In The Middle Ages
War used to be fought by hand
And the executions
Were inexpensive but uncivilized
But economic disparity was the same
Anyone
Can not make music
But nobody is allowed
Not to listen to music
You can care
As little as you please but
Nobody is allowed
Not to know
Who the president is
Even very young children
Must memorize this insult
It’s not about America but its consequences
It’s about the fact that it’s not about you
It’s about the third person
Without precise language it is nothing at all
And so you will never know
Where you end
And the president begins
Whether you can work within the system
To change the system
You are safer within the system
The poet writes short lines of code for a brokerage
Click
The painter paints a pretty picture from a podium
Click
The speedmetal freak writes about corporate ownership of the local media
Click
The Marxist joins the Democratic party
Click
Everything tipping to the right
Inside the train where
You can’t tell whether
The train next to you is moving or you are
The only indication your sensitivity
To your own motion sickness
After the President took office
Click
2002