The Perfidy Report

Day 34: Ninth Circle

Claim you are the Party of Family Values,
and ban abortion
but rob the funds
for prenatal care, school lunches,
food stamps, teacher salaries,
college financial aid.
Get ‘em born
and forget ‘em, or better,
keep ‘em poor so
they become
the ultimate resource:
more fodder for your army.

Then dedicate your platform
to soldiers going to war for your greed,
but keep your own children
from the front, and
turn a blind eye
to the maimed, the homeless,
those your wars wounded
invisibly, who can no longer sleep
for fear that followed them home.
If they survived your war,
let them kill themselves.

 Say you are believers
in the American Dream
then deny it to anyone
who does not look like you
or comes fleeing some country
you can’t find on a map.
Or rob those already here
who thought they had achieved it
when you revolve back to your
pillaging corporate job.

Mouth the words freedom
of religion and conscience
but show no mercy
no justice,
no love.

You are
the worst kind of liars,
warping words
into unintelligible contradictions,
deceiving with fear,
and harming those who trusted you
while you prosper.

So many places in Hell for you.

–February 23, 2017, Harlem, New York

Day 33: Stolen

Days of Perfidy
Day 33: Stolen

Trumpacabra, like his namesake,
is a thief.

We have been robbed
of even the slightest sense
that the government belongs to
all the people,
of belief that it just might
be working
to make our lives better.
Worse, we have been robbed
of a fundamental right—
to pursue happiness:

To wake up and read the paper
without dread
of what new perfidy
we might find there.
To go to work without wondering
if what we do is of value
or if we should be
in the streets carrying signs, instead.
To not wonder if we should
get a gun
and learn to use it.
To not question whether
the art we make is frivolous or
not political enough.
To lie in bed and read novels,
go see a movie,
make love,
binge watch something other
than “The West Wing,” “Homeland,”
or worse, “24.”
To send our students abroad and
welcome others here.
To not have to examine
every fucking thing
our government does
to protect ourselves
and those we love.

This is his goal: to suck us dry
of joy, of security, of life,
leaving us as hollow
as Liberty’s crown
after 9/11.

–February 22, 2017, Harlem, NY

Day 31: What Matters

What matters to us
are all the things you fear:
whatever might mock you,
whatever you don’t understand,
whatever is not explicitly about money
            or your penis,
whatever shames your behavior,
whatever contradicts you,
whatever denies you
what you want
            whether others want it
            or not:

Women having the right
to say “fuck off” to you
and your grabby hands and laws.
Artists making art
you don’t understand.
The free practice of a religion
you don’t subscribe to
or no religion at all.
Welcoming arms at the borders
for those fleeing in fear
or just wanting another chance.
Wilderness uncolonized by
golf courses and hotels.
The free exchange of ideas.
The preeminence of facts.
Drugs that don’t bankrupt
or maim us.
An education
that doesn’t leave us enslaved
to banks or corporations
for the rest of our lives,
and teaches us to question everything,
especially authority,
especially your authority.
Air and water
that don’t poison us.
A climate that won’t kill us.
A future for those
not born yet.

–President’s Day, 2017, Harlem, NY

Posting for the following meme:

From Linda Kennedy via Marcia Morgan.

I would like to start a little ripple of resistance today. Tomorrow is February 20th, and Mr. Trump will have been in office for one month.

#NotMyPresidentsDay

I would like people to show what really matters to them: the arts, the environment, their family, their immigrant neighbors, healthcare. Share a picture tomorrow. Heck share it today!

Tomorrow I am hiking in a forest while I still can. I am going to post a picture with the hashtag above and #ThisIsWhatMattersToMeMrTrump

I would like to encourage us all to show, on President's Day, what is really important to US for those running our country.

 

Day 25: Enemies of the State—A Love Letter

“People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
–Alan Moore, “V for Vendetta,” after Thomas Jefferson

Run, all you cowards
from the People
at the town halls
you thought would be friendly, adulatory chats
and instead turned into
satirical sketches starring you and directed by
Midwestern elementary school teachers
and mothers of children
who already know how to discipline
bullies and get what their kids need
from the State.

Run from the People you duped
into thinking some commie
was coming for their prescriptions
and killing their grannies,
and that the doctors and services provided,
the ones that saved them
from bankruptcy and death
by gouging, were somehow something different
that you now want to take back.

Run from the People
who’ve worked all their lives
only to see thieving bankers
walk away with their savings and homes
with your blessing and conniving,
while you threaten to also give them the money
saved from workers’ paychecks
for forty years
as though that belonged
to you and not the People.

Run, you bastards, like your ass is on fire.
If you fear the People’s harsh words
telling you to do your job or
it’s your last term,
just wait.
We are no longer a nation of farmers
with sharp tools in our barns,
but the last president,
despite your lies,
never came for the People’s guns.

–Valentine's Day, 2017, Harlem, New York—

Day 21: What’s Next?

“God, what's next? Liquor with the guns in school?”
–Kathrine Schwartman

Whatever it is,
we probably won’t see it coming —
most of us.
Like we didn’t see his
slither into power —
most of us.
Like we didn’t see
the closing of borders —
most of us.
Like we didn’t see
the end of taking care of the poor
and the sick —
most of us.
Like we didn’t see
the marsh of greed expanding,
drowning us all —
most of us.

Nothing is beyond them,
if there is power in it
for a few of them
and none of us.

–February 10, 2017, Harlem, New York

Day 15: Fortnight’s Accounting

Already it seems like years
not a mere two weeks.
But the blitzkrieg has not stopped
(I use that term intentionally)
and already we are heartsore
and footsore and weary
of the threats to everyone we love,
everything decent people desire:
a culture that reflects not just the few
but all of us in our infinite variety
and commonality.

With it, the list of crimes and failings grows, too,
the ammunition against the Bigot-in-Chief:
the undissolved business ties,
the swindles,
the disconnect from reality,
threats to allies and foes equally,
dragging us into his paranoid world
where he is the only good guy
and the world stands against him.

Let’s make that last bit
the truth.

–February 3, 2017, Harlem, NY

Day 1: Don't Fucking Forget What's Normal

The Perfidy Report is back. This blog originated in the early days of the W Administration, when Dick Cheney et al. opened Guantanamo Bay and began to use torture and disappearance as a method of "security." It operated up until the time that Obama was elected and was then, optimistically, deleted.

I'm bringing it back now because there needs to be both a record of the awful things the new T-Rump (also known as the Orange Cheeto, although I feel this maligns a perfectly fine snack food, and the Bigot in Chief or Liar in Chief, or Trumpacabra) administration is trying to normalize, and a place for my own resistance that is not on Facebook. I'm starting with the following running tally, and this will be pinned to the top of the blog and added to every damn day he cocks something up, because that's what it's going to be like: new perfidy every damn day.

In addition, I'm using this as another place to post one of my own activist responses, which is the writing of political poetry. It's shaping up to be a collection called Days of Perfidy, so this is a perfect place for it. No doubt there will be other response to the outrageousness here too. Feel free to share, but I've turned off comments, because I'm not interested in the comments of trolls. If you want to interact, find me on Facebook. It's pretty easy. I'm the only Lee Kottner on it.