THE NEW AMERICAN CREDO

1
I will believe that politicians
Are far more honest than they seem;
That all of them have high ambitions;
That none of them would ever scheme
To help a plague of corporations
Achieve their dreams of dominations
To be the worlds first parasites
That sucked the life from human rights.
That freedom is the harmonizing
Of rights and duties to a brand
However it may rape the land
So long as it serves merchandising.
All this and more I will believe…
Is someone laughing up their sleeve?
2
As well, I think, pending revision,
That freedom is what presidents
Must claim it is. It’s their decision
Who should be tortured for their bents.
A citizen should be a vassal
To presidents, though s/he’s an asshole,
Until the next election year
When, no doubt, s/he’ll sound the “all clear.”
Unless, of course, the next election
Might challenge what in policy
Is not considered good PC,
And takes it in the wrong direction-
For PC is the right or wrong
Of s/he who is, of all, most strong.
3
That government is never harmful-
Except perhaps when now and then
A citizen becomes an armful.
But they’re sent to a federal pen
To undergo the revelations
That makes them follow regulations.
Before this if they should trespass,
They’re taught with hard ones up the ass.
If prisoners are harshly treated
And that shows culture too hardnosed,
As Dostoyevsky once supposed,
Then government here should be feted
At least in Texas where a brute
Whom they can’t change, they execute.
4
We must have faith financial markets
Are saviors for the average man,
If only we would heed and hark its
Advice to save the pension plan
Of CEOs who are clutch hitters,
Although they can be orn’ry critters,
At least you know they’d never cheat
Or how could they survive Wall Street?
That they are free of regulation
Must certainly be de rigueur
Else they will be so insecure
They’ll never risk the litigation
Brought on by some investors’ suits;
Or Spitzer, prior prostitutes.

( to be continued )

NO TRUCE

Will any candidate elected
Be hostile to big business or
Are pols and business so connected
That only snarling civil war
Can separate the two? Dissension
Leads crookedly to intervention
When we, who are not worth two cents,
Have acted on our discontents.
And fighting off their exploitation
We throw off what we have repressed
And take in charge their treasure chest.
For don’t expect their abdication-
They’ve fattened too much off the goose
That lays their golden eggs. No truce.

WHOSE TREASON?

1
On every Sunday right wing preachers
Will preach that we should overthrow
The government because these screechers
Say god has damned Wade vs. Roe.
Because of this some are rewarded,
For standing up for lives aborted,
By lunching with the President
(And stirring right wing discontent).
And yet when Senator Obama’s
Black preacher says that god should damn
The likes of racist Uncle Sam,
Obama’s smeared with causing traumas
And charged with treason by the Right
As ballyhoo for its white knight.
2
It’s not that I’d endorse Obama;
But in the interests of fair play
The US suffers racial trauma
(Though right wing talk show hosts say “Nay”)
Completely out of all proportion
To what it suffers from abortion-
Aborted fetuses are dead
While Blacks must live whole lives in dread.
If anything needs more dilation
Than self-identity in race,
And I believe this is the case,
It is the fact of exploitation.
And here Obama surely fails-
Defending it for rich, white males.

FOR MIKE LLOYD

Our public schools and Catholic churches
Are running out of hope because,
As any know who’ve done researches,
They’re run by men and women scuzz.
When Cardinal Roger Mahony
And David Brewer get so stony
At scandals, both involving sex,
You wonder at their intellects.
Both try and hide administrators
Who see a kid, think s/he’s a beaut
And snatch what is forbidden fruit.
But back to church and school these nadirs
Of humankind again are placed
With children they’ve not yet disgraced.

THE MORALITY OF PROSTITUTION

What’s wrong, I ask, with prostitution
Except the fact that prostitutes
Will mostly suffer destitution
From selling their forbidden fruits?
With communist socialization,
They might escape their exploitation-
As first appropriators of
What’s offered for the price of “love.”
If women who have reached majority
Decide to sell it a la carte
And not as in “till death us part,”
Who are we that we claim authority
To make sex workers understand
That they’re producing contraband.

THE CULTURE WARS I

The culture wars as fought in college,
At Harvard, Stanford, Duke or Yale,
Produce a kind of civil knowledge-
With both sides at it tooth and nail-
While arguing the dark- complected
Cultures should always be respected.
Respect, it should be evident,
Won’t cost us rich folks one red cent.
We never speak of inequality
(The kind that keeps these peoples poor)
For that would make us insecure.
Would absolutely throw the polity,
That’s mostly poor, in such turmoil
They’d want our stock in Standard Oil.

ACCOUNTABILITY ?

If not so sad, it might be funny
To see a corporate CEO
Lose all the corporation’s money;
But when s/he gets the old heave-ho
S/he takes away a hundred million
And builds a Xanadu pavilion,
Retiring there to take a rest
Before s/he ventures her next quest.
What happened to accountability
That all the rest of us must face
Or live our lives in such disgrace
We can’t retire in sweet tranquility?
But look. The devil when he fell
Was sent by God to reign in Hell.