Richard Chetwynd
In Contrast With The New
I’m fond of the old-type dictatorships, the ones
You knew you were in by how quiet it suddenly
Gets on the street as the neighbors get hooded
And hurried into tax-payer vans; and the weakness
You felt for certain mustaches that hurt like hell
When they pulled them off one hair at a time.
In the old dictatorships there were tons of clues
That you yourself might be one of the captive
Minds, who silently agree with the honcho’s
Total stomp-down, his admin camp-town, detention
Facilities somewhere in a constitution-free zone
(No one likes a showoff, unless paid through
The nose; a morbid fatality separates the cretin
Environs into soap and hands and bowl) where one
Vital element of membership must always avoid
Careless wording, dubious opinions blabbed
At a party of climbers, off-hand remarks to end
The mother of social evenings—curtain-calls
Out of nowhere, the other shoe, awkward smiling.
Crowds disperse in the old (and new) dictatorships
While you pretend to be unfazed, a pink flamingo
In a prison yard. You listen to the jokes all night
And don’t stop laughing until you’re sure no one
Cares. It’s a well-known fact they laughed more
In the old dictatorships. In the new ones, you’re
Never sure you’re really in one with all the voting
Taking place, all the boxes to stuff your opinion.
In the old dictatorships it was a one-puppet system,
Having two’s no better (which one to cheer?)
While both look no more scarier than the other.
In the old just like the new dictatorships you are
Always uninvolved to the max, a passive consumer
With a pauper’s windfall while the wealthy get
Fitted for halos. In the old, as in the new, you have
To do a lot of forgetting, and not taking it personally,
Just going where they tell you to. They know best.
Richard Chetwynd is the author of Heroic Age (BookLocker, 2017) and Turkeys & Peacocks (BookLocker, 2018). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Cape Rock, and Blue Collar Review, among other journals. Chetwynd holds a BFA from Emerson College and an MFA from the University of Iowa.
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