The Perfidy Report

Day 346: The New Year

2018.

Twenty days and it will be a year

of your pillaging, rape, and burning

of the economy, citizens, and our Constitution.

Your bilious shadow

hangs over our heads like

a toxic cloud

we watched roll in from the election-night horizon

in horror,

its momentum seemingly unstoppable,

hope gasping in its wake.

The stench, since it arrived,

is unbearable,

the effects, corrosive.

Lady Liberty’s robes are pitted

with the acid of your bigoted breath, smeared

with the smuts of your fascism.

Your EPA advisor declares

the air too clean for human health,

so you destroy the agency that protects it.

Record fires scorch California

where the seeds of a new republic

are rooting,

the smoke of your lies about climate change

suffocating science and progress.

In the cold of the rest of the country,

we see our words of protest come out as hoarfrost,

nature trying to freeze you into silence,

save Florida and Texas,

strongholds of the whirlwind of your hot air.

And even they have seen themselves

under dirty water

filled with the shit of deregulation

and greed.

 

Nature rebels at you,

as we should do.

Only earth itself is waiting,

of the four elements,

to shake you off

like filth from a wet dog.

 

-January 1, 2018

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

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

Day 250: Outrage Fatigue

 “Drink a can of Fuck Those Guys and keep going.”

–@Ali_Davis

 

It’s all gone downhill
so quickly,
water running from a sieve.

SCROTUS has alienated our allies
and inflamed our enemies.
His screwball North Korean counterpart,
like another third
of the Three Stooges,
threatens to shower us with radiation,
while the Russians,
fed up, threaten him
with golden shower kompromat
if he doesn’t give them
what they want.
He gives new meaning
to the words
loose cannon,
shooting off his mouth indiscriminately
with more lies
than all the rugs in a Middle Eastern bazaar
since taking office.
The independent investigation
drags on, threats of Mueller’s firing
like the sword of Damocles over us.
We hang on every tidbit of hope, while
each day brings new chaos, new fear.

Even the stalwart among us are flagging.

Yet so little has changed.
Campaign promises are just as fungible
as reality. We are governed
by those who cannot govern,
who sat on their thumbs for eight years
obstructing our every move
until there was suddenly nothing
to push against
and they all fell down.
Leaderless, demoralized,
the other side dithers, endlessly
Monday-morning-quarterbacking
the lost election
while SCROTUS holds another rally
for the next one.

What now? What next?

Wake me when it’s over.
This sitcom sucks.

–September 7, 2017

Day 249: Hurricane Donnie

Fire in West.
Earthquakes in Idaho.
Hurricanes in Texas; southeast.
Trump wants to cut disaster aid.
FEMA running out of $.
It’s September.

–@sarahkendzior

 

Houston’s as far underwater
as you are
and all you can say
is it’s been great
for the world to watch the city suffer.
You autograph a wall in a shelter,
hand out some fucking hats,
tell shattered people they’re doing great, but
make no promises of aid,
and offer no comfort.

This hurricane was all for you,
about you.
All the world is your chew toy,
its disasters your amusement,
like some despicable villain
in a B movie.
You are
a whirling wall of water
full of sharks,
a disaster
still happening.

–September 6, 2017

Day 138: Non Non-Stick Don

Did you think it was okay

—just business—

you know, just the two of us

to ask the head of the FBI,

the CIA, and National Intelligence

to just fahgettaboudit,

that little matter

of your Security Advisor

being on the Turkish payroll

and pals with the Ruskies?

That Mike Flynn,

he’s a great guy,

loves his country so much

he’ll shill

for a foreign nation’s interests

so they think

they can beat up American citizens

on our own soil.

Just lay off him, will ya?

 

John Gotti you ain’t, sir.

More like Vincent Gigante

but one step away

from the real bathrobe stroll,

not feigning at all,

not smart enough

to fool the experts.

The shaky empire you’ve got

is mired in debt

to the real thing,

the kind who

make offers

you can’t refuse.

 

You thought firing Comey

would save your ass,

but there’s no non-stick coating

on that frying pan of yours

and we’re turning up the fire.

 

-June 7, 2017, Harlem

 

 

Day 100: Dumpster Fire Recap

By now, fifty percent

of the country thinks

you’re doing an awful job.

They’re not wrong.

 

Scandals and violations follow you

like stray cats,

pissing in your footsteps

crapping on the White House lawn:

your minions colluding with Russians and

possible treason

to fix an election you couldn’t win,

the Emoluments Clause

hanging over your head

like some gold-plated sword,

your children

moving into the People’s House

rent free,

exempt from all the rules,

—and you, acting like some penny ante dictator

with absolute power

and a magic pen.

 

Your appointees are on a revolving door—

in one day, out the next

either by whim

or avoiding the Law.

Few of them

have ever been anything other

than capitalist dictators

in their own fiefdoms.

The rest of the seats

are still vacant.

It’s a wonder

we have a government at all.

Thank goodness, or the Founding Fathers

who thought this all out,

for all those bureaucrats you hate

who soldier on

without leaders,

doing the right thing,

smoothing ruffled foreign feathers,

translating your word salad,

putting out your fires,

mailing checks.

 

Like your minions,

you have no idea what you’re doing,

or that you’re

no longer your own man and

have no golden parachute.

We should strip you of that pension, too.

Your tweets to your base

show only what a blowhard

and a showboater you are.

And vision? Make America Great

Again is just a slogan.

There is no plan, apparently.

 

And your only musing

on what you’ve wrought is

I thought it would be easier.

 

-Lee Kottner, Harlem, April 30, 2017

Day 74: Winners Write History

 

 

If you don’t like it

change it.

If it doesn’t suit your purposes

lie about it

Make shit up

and call it “alternative facts.”

Pull it out of your ass

and tell us how sweet

it smells.

Hitler never gassed his people

—true, from a certain point of view;

what good Nazi would claim a Jew,

a Roma, homosexuals, Poles, Serbs, freemasons, Slovenes,

Jehovah's Witnesses, socialists, or the disabled

are people,

let alone their people?

Does it matter

if T-Rump insists

he had the largest inauguration crowd

ever, confusing his predecessor’s

with his own?

That he believes so many popular votes

were cast by frauds?

That in his mind, refugees

just hop on a plane

from whatever war-torn land they’re fleeing

and walk right into America?

That his henchmen, his minions

perpetuate it all?

 

Your own history

is disappearing

into the maw of his lies:

where you came from,

who you are,

what rights you have,

what our country

used to be,

the plans we had for it

in the future.

 

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Trump is president.

 

Remember.

 

–Harlem, New York, April 11, 2017

Day 36: Thought Experiment

–Hat tip to Millicent Accardi

When it is routine
to hold hostage
a domestic flight
to check the papers
of ordinary citizens,
when you have made it
legal to seize the assets of those
who speak out or gather
in groups of more than two
for fear we might contradict you
or plan some protest,
and shut the press down
for printing truth,
because you can’t bear to be wrong
or challenged—

When you make us
make art furtively
as though it were wrong
and dangerous (O it is, yes!)—

When you and your cronies have
stolen our wages
through bad schedules
and punch-clock shenanigans
and right to work for less laws,
stripped us of what little
we make
through exorbitant taxes
that subsidize your businesses,
given the bosses permission
to use our time and our bodies
as they like
without regard for our
humanity or safety,
no matter how many of us
are maimed or killed,
dumped us out
of the skimpy, fraying safety net
without arms, legs, or lungs,
poisoned the air and water
then sold it back to us, bottled,
like the whole country is
a company town,
neglected unto ruin
the bridges we cross
to work each day
and dug up the parks we cherish when we’re not,
disappeared the buses and trains we ride
so we have to all buy your cars
or walk to your jobs,
enslaved us with debt
for an advanced education you require
to work in the goddam mailroom,
made us so poor
we have to wager our lives
in your wars
to even begin to get ahead,
then send our children
to countries we’ve no business being in
and abandon them when they come home
without limbs or minds or sleep,
pawn off the excess equipment
to police and give them the power
they should never have
to decide who lives
and who dies for expressing themselves
or just walking down the street,
enforcing harsh laws that send more of us
(mostly Black and brown)
than in any other nation
to jails where we still work like slaves—

When you have reduced us
from a free(ish) nation
of free(ish) people
pursuing happiness
to utterly oppressed masses,
when you are huddled in your compounds
with your paid servants
and paid security,
unsure of their loyalty,
behind razor wire and laser beams,
as much prisoners
as those in your jails—

This ends two ways:
in misery for all of us
or death for you and rebirth for us.

Stop now, while you still can.
We are already
sharpening our tools.

–February 25, 2017, Harlem, New York

Day 35: Reflection

After the Mỹ Lai massacre

my father, World War II veteran

of belly guns and Berlin Airlift

and the afterthought in Korea,

turned away from Chet Huntly’s report

and muttered,

“How do you shave every morning, you shit?”

—not at Huntly

because Dad believed in a free press,

and free speech, dissent, and voting—

but at Calley, executioner

of women and children and old people.

 

Same question, different decade.

 

No point asking the SCROTUS

(So-Called Ruler of the United States).

We know he sees only

his own orange visage,

like the Wicked Queen,

as fairest in the land.

 

But you, voter, supposed patriot

and “good person,”

do you see the anguished face of

deported mothers, who were

working as hard as you are,

separated

from their citizen children

after 20 years,

or the woman denied brain surgery,

snatched from the hospital,

handcuffed and hogtied,

her nose bleeding from the pressure

of the growth in her head?

Do you see the fear of green card holders

who made the mistake

of visiting their elderly parents

while SCROTUS and his posse of bigots

were machinating?

Do you see the misery

of young people

forced to be someone they’re not

just to use the toilet?

Do you see hopelessness

in the faces of refugees

running for their lives

with only the clothes on their back

when we tell them

how frightened we are of them

and lock them out?

Do you see the despair

of your fellow citizens

facing the loss of affordable doctors

that kept them from losing

each other and everything else?

Do you see the grief

in the young student,

who must drop out

because college is too expensive

or because, despite her fine mind,

she never made it there from her

underfunded school to begin with?

Is the grayness of the world

without art or music or story or dance

there in your own face?

 

Or are you capable

of seeing only

yourself?

 

–February 24, 2017, Harlem, New York