Ozymandias Speaks, Again
With a dubious, ironic sense of humility and battered pride,
Feeling, at once, inevictably sheepish shame,
For the last-place status my nation has recently achieved,
And a wistful longing for its not-so-long-ago greatness,
When it saved the world from Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism,
In the name of pluralism, egalitarianism, democracy,
I cry, weep, grieve for myself and for my fellow countrymen,
Who, obvious to me, have yet to adequately assess
The distress their vote for George W. Bush, twice, has wrought,
The legacy of debt, distrust and cynicism toward public service
He and his fanatical, Draconian neocon cronies,
With their addiction to unbridled power
And predilection for covertness, opacity, nondisclosure,
Have left us, our children, our children's great-grandchildren,
As a result of their carelessness, recklessness, arrogance,
Their stupidity, cupidity, incompetence, disdain for decency...
I cry, weep, grieve, realizing that, once again, in 2008,
We might elect a president based on personality, not qualifications,
Not vote our hopelessly depleted pocketbooks,
Our intuitive sense that things aren't right, aren't going well,
But our evangelical, inerrantist Christian "morality,"
Which tells us, from beyond the pulpit, that "niggers" are different,
Inherently foreign, frightening (possibly Muslim terrorists),
Especially when their last name, Obama, is ominously African
And their middle name, Hussein,
Evokes the recently hanged leader of Shocked and Awed Iraq,
Instead vote for those who've christened the new USS Swiftboat.
This Tuesday evening,
Three weeks before the election of elections,
I drown in my cups, sip the last heeltap of my soured wine,
And ask myself not why but how
All this blight has come to infect a nation so blessed,
So privileged, so graced with humane possibilities,
And all I can conclude, like Shelley's Ozymandias, is this:
May America's mighty die with even less
Than those they've dispossessed by their avariciousness.
10/14/08 - (2)
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