The Perfidy Report

Day 281: Let Justice Roll

“But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” 
–Amos 5:24, New American Standard Version

The avalanche
begins with one pebble,
the torrent
with a raindrop,
Trumpacabra’s fall
with one indictment.
Who will it be?
There are so many likely candidates 
to choose from:
Good Guy Flynn,
Venal Jared of the Flak Jacket,
Martial Manafort the Money Launderer,
Junior the Rotten Apple
—a Who’s Who of corruption
in a swamp of mud
spattering the People’s House.

Let justice roll down indeed
and wash them all
away.

–October 27, 2017

Day 278: Decency

“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” 
–Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings, 1954

You’re no Joseph Welch,
Mr. Flake.
You talk a good game 
about sacrificing your career 
for principles
but you cannot condemn 
the monster 
in the Oval Office.
Reckless, outrageous, and undignified,
anomalous,
is the best you can do.
Is that all that disgusts you?
Trumpacabra’s coarsness,
his lack of respect
or humility?
His corruption of the spirit, and weakness,
the degradation of our politics?
True, but there is so much
more.

This is not just about 
our grand experiment
in self-governance,
not just about
our place
on the world’s stage,
not just about
who we are as a nation,
or what we might be.

It’s about our humanity, our decency
or lack of it
in consenting to be led
not just by a buffoon
but someone 
far, far worse.

Say the words.
Speak the truth.
The man is a racist
white supremacist, 
a sexist misogynist, 
serial sexual criminal, 
a fascist, a 
liar. 
Say any of those words. 
Any of them.

Bring down the fire.

–October 24, 2017

Day 268: This Machine Kills

This is a couple of days late because it originally went to my personal wall, sparked by the death of my friend and colleague, Miranda Merklein, who was an adjunct, organizer, badass, and shitkicker who took no prisoners. And now she's gone. this is for her.

 

 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

 

 “There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that … you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop!”

 

–Mario Savio

 

This machine kills women

with coathangers and bitter herbs and

fists to the belly

with bottles and dishes upside the head

with poverty and rape

with wealth and rape

with rape and overdoses of

Hey baby, you should smile

and Hey baby, gimme your number

and not a doctor in sight

of their bank account balance

not a man in sight

who will stop it

 

This machine kills children

with the acrid smell of roaches

and fumes of chemicals

in underfunded hospitals and

overcrowded schools

and unsafe neighborhoods

by taking all hope of anything better

away

and blaming them

for being less than perfect

for being Black

or not-white of some other kind

or female

or without citizen-parents

or without papers of their own

because it thinks they

should earn their keep

once they’re born

 

This machine killed my friend Miranda

with lies about the American Dream

and the Yellow Brick Road

of education

with dangled carrots of a good job

just out of reach

with a back-breaking load of irredeemable debt

and a cohort of colleagues

in exactly the same boat

unable to help

—by first taking her job

then her home

then her animals

sending her daughter into the army

in desperation

dragging her across the country

from one coast to the other

with more lies

and discarding her

like so much snot-filled tissue

 

This machine kills anyone

not rich enough

to help themselves

unlucky enough

to suffer fire flood hurricane

cancer crippling or preexisting conditions

foolish enough

to stand up

against it

 

Kill it

before it kills us all

 

–October 14, 2017

Day 267: Emperors’ New Clothes

“We are going to bury them with our words.” –Rebecca Solnit

 

First, the beloved Father, Cosby,

not convicted despite our testimony,

image overcoming his own admissions.

Then the not-so-beloved fuhrer, SCROTUS,

who also admits

he likes assaulting women,

thinks he has that right, and

whose sychophants

threatened the one brave enough

to bring him to judgement,

until it’s she who had to run,

while he’s handed the presidency.

Now Weinstein, Emperor of Entertainment,

Friend-of-Hilary and Democrats,

rapist and harasser of actresses,

brought low at last,

with an avalanche of voices

of women who became

more powerful themselves

by grinning and bearing it

no more.

 

Just the most visible of despoilers,

the most powerful and public.

They sit in every boardroom,

every boss’s office,

every professor’s lab and classroom.

What? No! Not me! you say?

Yet they walk through your world,

stripped bare of humanity, decency, respect

for others, kindness, empathy

—unchallenged, admired

by the Nice Guys, the Good Guys, the Decent Guys.

 

You are none of those things

and just as naked

of humanity

if you are silent.

Speak up

or fall with them.

 

–October 13, 2017

Day 265: Make Hate Great

It’s a first, all right,
one only you could revel in:
being asked to speak...
for the fourth time
to an officially designated
hate group
that thinks the deaths of homosexuals
might be a good thing,
and don’t know what to do
with the fact that het and homo
ain’t all there is.
No other sitting president has done so,
but you have so much
in common with them.
Both of you lie
like rugs
about people you hate
and you hate
just about everyone
who’s not like you.

Great leadership by example.

No wonder
the Nazis were back in Charlottesville
with their tiki torches
like it was some
goddam barbecue
where the main course
on the grill
might be human flesh.

–October 11, 2017

Day 262: In T-Rump’s America

In T-Rump’s America, we wake
to the news of a mass shooting
worse than any other...
until the next one
and no talk of how the perp
got weapons of war
intended only for soldiers,
or how they were hidden
in a hotel room because
what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or
of how 58 dead and 500 injured is terrorism
no matter what color or how many
the shooter,
while SCROTUS sends
his “warmest” condolences
and the NRA
sends excuses.

In other news:

In T-Rump’s America, we make
any show of protest
against killing or beating Black people
with impunity, stealing their wages, their chances
for a good life in a good neighborhood
or a good education
all about a song, troops, and a flag
that the same people complaining
wear as bikinis and underwear,
leaving piss and cum and streaks of shit on it.
But somehow kneeling silently, arms locked
in solidarity against the national betrayal
of our ideals of equality for all
is disrespectful.

In T-Rump’s America, patriotism
is a dirty word
spelled F-A-S-C-I-S-T,
spelled R-A-C-I-S-T,
spelled N-A-Z-I.

In T-Rump’s America, we let
nine million children
go without the means to get medical care
because making sure the richest
pay as little as possible
to support all you freeloaders
and your roads and dams and electricity
and airports and bridges
is a more important item
on the agenda.

In T-Rump’s America, SCROTUS
and his evil minions,
strip the budget of our first stab
at universal healthcare
and shut down the sign-up site
during the enrollment period
because undoing the work
of a competent, educated Black man
who dared be uppity enough
to be elected president before you
and more beloved
is more important
than the health and welfare
of hundreds of millions of people

In T-Rump’s America, we say
to hell with the brown people
in our forgotten colony,
their lives swept away, under water,
dark, cold, starving, thirsty
teetering on the edge of cholera,
dying in darkened ICUs
and nursing homes,
out of insulin, cancer drugs,
fucking oxygen,
while SCROTUS spars on Twitter
with a woman trying to save her city by
wading through chest-deep water with a bullhorn
to find survivors,
while sending all the aid we can
to the people in the great states
of Texas and Florida,
because, you know, it’s an island.
There’s an ocean,
and the Devil
can’t cross running water.

–2 October 2017

Image by D.Jenks