The Perfidy Report

Day 329: Gag Order (Seven Words)

Hard to talk about 
the effects of 
poverty, old age, and disability
or the state of the nation
under Trumpacabra
and his minions
when you can’t say the word
Vulnerable.

Hard to talk about 
either the need for Social Security
(though it’s not one, dammit. We
paid for it.)
or the attitude of 
too many rich folks
when you can’t say the word
Entitlement.

Hard to revel in 
the beauty of who we are
and demand more variety
in representation everywhere
when you can’t say the word
Diversity.

Hard to recognize, let alone
make someone
welcome in the world
when the way they
look at their own body
can’t be spoken: 
Transgender.

Hard to warn women
about the effects of Zika
or the myriad other dangers
to life in her womb
when you can’t say the word
Fetus, 
and harder still to choose
to end a pregnancy
when every stage of growth
is a baby.

And all too easy
to delegitimize the work
of researchers everywhere
who make your greedy actions 
and false morals 
inconveniently stupid,
and to promote your own
“alternative facts,”
when we can’t use the words 
Evidence-based or 
Science-based.

English has almost a half million words
and synonyms for nearly everything.
It is the glory of our multi-ethnic
hybrid language, its sources
Germanic, Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon,
terms stolen from nearly every tongue
in existence.
They fall in an out of usage
all the time, new ones added
to increase our word-hoard,
each one with its own truth,
its own power
no government can erase.
Use the ones now forbidden
or lose your voice
entire.

–December 15, 2017

Day 319: Alabama

We wonder 
how it can even be close,
the choice between
a man who “courts” 
young teenage girls
when twice their age
and a man who prosecutes
their murderers;
one who’s been removed from the bench
not once, but twice,
for disregarding Federal statutes
and one awarded for pursuing justice doggedly,
goading others to do the same;
one extraordinary in his hate
of freedom for women and Black people and 
anyone not like him
and one who could still probably 
do some work being woke
but isn’t actually threatened
by the progress of others.

How hard is it, we ask,
to see others—
African-Americans, pregnant women, 
anyone who sees love
everywhere in others
or differently than you, 
anyone who sees the body
as mutable—
as a fellow human being?
Impossible for some, apparently,
until your daughter
comes out queer
and your words
kill her.
Until then, there is no shame
so great 
as not voting 
to keep non-people down.

But no matter how hard
white folks try
to keep the polls unreachable
for anyone whose ancestors
backs were whipped raw
and bloodied the soil
still they rise and
the arc bends toward justice.

Be glad
the rolling tide is not crimson
with your blood.

–December 12, Alabama Special Election day

 

 

 

Save the Internet!

Day 316: Various and Sundry Treasons

1. Animal Farm

 

In the morning,

Mueller catches a big fish,

one that’s been fighting

for a long time.

Finally, exhausted by the firmly set hook

he pleads guilty

to a much lesser charge

and turns from fish

to foul, singing like a canary.

His former boss Tweets Who? Who?

Some former Obama staffer

of no consequence.

But no one is fooled.

Son-in-law is in the chute

to the slaughterhouse now,

then perhaps our parroting VP,

and Boss Hog

Mad King Donald himself,

and more, until, perhaps

we’re down to Hatch

and a Constitutional crisis.

 

2. Guy Fawkes

 

In the evening,

when good citizens should be in bed

and the work of good government

over for the day, perhaps

seeing the end coming,

Congress votes yea

to giving the hard-earned wages

of the poor and middle class

to them that’s got already

despite the outcry

of those they’ll be robbing.

 

This is what comes

of a poor education:

forgetting history,

ignoring literature.

Someday, our own children will sing,

Remember, remember

the first of December,

the Tax reform treason and plot.

 

Care for a Molotov cocktail?

 

–December 1, 2017