Doug Van Hooser
Politician
What he said he meant to say
when you weren’t listening.
Just an echo that would fade.
All march to the money drummer.
Fair means you have something I want.
Free means there is a hand in your pocket.
Trillion is the new billion
which once was the new million.
Twitter is a news conference.
Reporters are manikins.
The truth is never black and white,
it’s red and blue.
Gray is in solitary confinement.
Speech is clarified butter on their tongue,
the course of history a dry riverbed.
Legislation requires chess moves
so the pols play checkers.
The goal: get kinged.
Always reorganizing their bankruptcy
they never emerge from Chapter Eleven.
Simply borrow from their heirs
and park in the handicap spot
with someone else’s placard.
Their wisdom measured in bluster,
a wind that ransacks common sense’s pockets.
They mint one-sided coins that never land face down.
The past and the future have no roof, live in regret.
The algorithm never searches there.
Some define election as choice
but it is a cherry orchard
on a bright, sunlit day
in the middle of winter
when one stays inside eating summer’s preserves.
Doug Van Hooser‘s poetry has appeared in Chariton Review, Split Rock Review, Manhattanville Review, and Poetry Quarterly, among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Crack the Spine, and Light and Dark. Doug is a playwright active at Three Cat Productions and Chicago Dramatists Theatre.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.