The last time Trump was elected, my first written reaction was poetry, was the below.
I didn’t share it or try to publish it at the time, because I thought it was too much. But probably it wasn’t enough.
There is no attempt at neatness here. And it’s not strictly rational, because rationality seemed to fail to address what had happened. The end is obscene.
I have not made any changes.
I might now choose another year for ‘1936’.
9.11.16, 10am
How shall we wear our despair?
I ask you, very simply –
because I don’t know how I
figure.
*
I am as helpless as you are
I know as little as you do
I was as wrong, as often,
as they were
as often and as completely
*
There were accords, during my childhood,
leaf settled on leaf and several
boring men martialled us through
times that might have become interesting.
*
There were false accords, when I was young,
and clear political hatreds
that threatened every creature
but in a calibrated manner.
*
The rainbow is there again,
the fucker
out of the window above the desk
Eloquence is not the problem
Elegance is not the solution
*
To be a politic dormouse and play guitar
fingerstyle while others deal with
social fretwork –
I echo you
*
‘I trust in the good sense of the American people’
said with no irony, at the time –
banners and applause, rage and hair.
How shall we wear?
*
Fame has come, has spunked
all over the flag
the sound of rutting from men who hunt.
Do not call him what you want to call him.
*
And what do I say to my sons
about what is worth doing
and what you shouldn’t do because
people like that
because people like that
who do things like that
end up
because the right thing to do is
always
and only
the right thing to do
which is –
how fucking feeble –
be kind
*
as 1931 becomes, overnight, 1936
*
what can I say to my sons
about how the world is
that people act out of fear
that if you can understand people’s fear
you can understand people
that if you can understand people
you can use their fear to make
a safe place for yourself and for those like you
(you think)
*
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