The Perfidy Report

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

 

 

 

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

Day 76: Other/Murder

“Those people”

are the two most dangerous words

in any language.

Any two people

from anywhere

can create a child together,

who combines the best and worst

of both

into someone not seen before

but wholly familiar

if only we

do not pronounce those words,

do not call them

Other.

The Other

is always one of “those people”—

an Other color, Other sex, Other gender,

from an Other country

or an Other neighborhood, an Other religion,

an Other way of seeing the world.

The Other, Those People,

Not Like Us

Not

Human.

 

If you hold the idea of

The Other

anywhere in your heart,

there is Murder

sitting right next to it.

 

–Harlem, New York, 13 April 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

Day 30: Papers, Mein Herr

How quickly it has come to this.

Amidst the lies of their non-existence
the papers surface,
a draft waiting to be numbered, dated, and signed:
eleven pages of White Nationalist
send-‘em-back-where-they-came-from
hate and what amounts to
ethnic cleansing,
turning a hundred thousand
National Guardsmen
on their own people.
How many of those
first- and second-generation immigrants
wearing their new country’s cammo
do you think would comply
with such an order, Mein Herr?
We’ve done this before,
in my lifetime
and yours,
when threatened by challenges
to the status quo.
Four young people
ended up dead
at a college in Ohio,
shot by other kids their own age.
And you would do that to us
again, Mein Herr?

There is no national emergency
involving immigrants,
no plot to blow up the White House or
even Target (no, white male citizens
who look a lot like you are doing that).
No need for the well regulated militia
necessary to the security of a free State
to participate in knocking on doors
asking for papers, Mein Herr,
and rounding up women and children,
fathers or sons
going to work and school each day
—unless you don’t like their color,
their accent, their food, their voices,
their music and art, their existence,
their right to freedom and opportunity
on a level playing field
that includes you,
Mein Herr.

Days 28 & 29: Setting the Tone 2. Excellent Genes

“Trump’s run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man’s country.”
–Mark Potok, Senior Fellow, Southern Poverty Law Center

He surrounds himself
with wife-beaters braggarts racists
the delusional the hateful
the not just uncaring
but openly selfish
I-got-mine-to-hell-with-you
money grubbers masquerading
as entrepreneurs and job creators —
white, almost exclusively. Men, almost
exclusively. Wannabes.
Just like him.

In his world, there are still deviants,
but he is not one of them.
No, even his love of young girls
is Completely Normal.
Sex and gender are the same
one or the other on or off
Tab A in Slot B
missionary position and force
no choices no identity
but his
or what reflects him.

In his world, brown skin is a crime.
Black skin is automatically violent.
Mexicans are rapists.
Muslims are all terrorists.
And the Blacks —
no matter how they protest
silently, loudly, on their knees,
with fire and rage —
they should all
just
die.

It’s so simple to be him.
Always right.
Always good.
Always manly.
Our Glorious Leader
bred in the Fatherland.

–February 18, 2017, Harlem, NY