What Rough Beast | Poem for November 23, 2017

Michael Mackin O’Mara
The Facebook Is Screaming

When people thought I was Good Ole Boy
—it’s horrifying what people say or do when they think they are among the “like minded”
When people thought I was Straight White Male…
When people thought I was Straight White Male Negative…
People – we process like mainframes:
Threat Yes/No, Consequential Yes/No
When we tire of political correctness
We’re just doing what people do
When we succumb to compassion fatigue
We’re doing what people do

We take “Suffer the little children” as a complete thought
We take “Thems that got’ll get” as justified, though woefully out of context
and the “Blab and Grab” Preachers, with their billion dollar homes
and the “Post Fact” Politicians and their mother of all bombs, we take and take and take

(chorus singing) We take the good, we take the bad, we take them both and then we have…

No.

In grade school we learned Blood Red for valor, Lily White for innocence, True Blue for justice
but never did we learn that kneeling was anything but respectful
O, We the People, Pennsylvania Avenue needs your help
Pennsylvania Avenue’s moral compass could use a reset, so in the interest
of public service: Nazis, bad; Child Molesters, bad; KKK, bad,
Open Season on P.O.C.’s, or anyone that doesn’t look like you, talk like you, dress like you,
act like you, smooch like you, pee like you…

O, Pennsylvania Avenue, we know evil in the world predates you
still you’ve managed to make these gay bashers yours
these goose-stepping, Neo-Nazi, Holocaust deniers,
these white sheeted, Birther, South-Shall-Rise-Again, lynch mobs…

(chorus softly singing) what the hey, what the hey, what the hey, Dixieland…

How beauty falls for specious lies; red carpet walks of fame
O purple people beating travesties among macadam blood stains
Hamerica, Hamerica, the planet gasps at thee
While bloated kin with bitty hands send hateful midnight tweets
Hamerica, Hamerica, these are red letter days
Your crosses heil the burning night; O mend thy foolish ways
Hamerica, Hamerica, O mend thine every flaw
O tweet, O stream, fake film at eleven, 🙂emoji, ☹️emoji, bla-blah

 

Michael Mackin O’Mara is the managing editor of the South Florida Poetry Journal. He lives and works in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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