Baptisms and Bar Mitzvahs...

 © 25 September 2020, the Griot Poet

Executive orders for preexisting conditions,

Sounds like the right prescription,

For already existing Affordable Care Acts,

You’re trying to eliminate

During a pandemic,

Eliminating preexisting conditions,

That could be things like diabetes, hypertension; complications from the Coronavirus,

When your chances are more heightened,

To get struck by lightning,

Than re-election for president.

 

He’s “pledging” to make Juneteenth a federal holiday,

(Beyond his Article II powers)

 

And designate the KKK domestic terrorists,

The same he referred to as “very fine fellows,”

Because of his meditation,

Is on the inclination,

Of SDNY, State District Attorney, and Manhattan DA

To bring about several indictments,

For state crimes, he cannot pardon,

Himself from,

For his crimes against humanity,

And violation of emoluments,

“Orange is the new black.”

 

He started his carnage campaign in birtherism,

Questioning the legitimacy of the country’s first black president,

Jealous of his intelligence, lovely family, and Melanin,

Telling Michael Cohen,

That our ancestry,

Originated from shit hole countries,

 

Not a student of anthropology,

Biology,

Or migratory patterns of humanity:

200,000 years ago,

Africa is where Adam originated,

Now a grim statistic:

200,000 lives lost in America is sixty-seven 9/11s!

 

“Reading is fundamental,”

His is at the third-grade level,

He chooses to take in information,

From the most passive-aggressive persuasion,

Affectionately called: “the boob tube,”

 

Which he spends an inordinate amount of time in front of,

Absorbing Fox propaganda garbage,

Like the median age of its viewers,

He doesn’t want his archaic worldview challenged,

Or, women with autonomy,

Over their own bodies,

 

A black president,

Same-sex equality precedent,

Equal Rights Amendment

Phyllis Schlafly meant

All white women to be unemployed, married, barefoot and pregnant,

Darth Vader to anything progressive,

Fairing to share white supremacy powers

As long as everyone else remains caste pariahs.

 

He’s promising baptisms and bar mitzvahs,

Two things he cannot deliver,

Epitomizing all of the seven deadly sins,

Whether theist or agnostic,

 

We’re all Alice Through the Looking Glass,

Musing Mad Hatters and Cheshire Cats,

Seemingly,

Jared Kushner’s strategy,

“Ride the chaos and absurdity,”

Seeing where everything lands,

The spaghetti or feces hits the wall, or chopped in the fan,

Either fix, deny, or dismiss it,

In the aftermath of a tragedy,

 

The only resurrection,

Or, a rite of passage foreseen,

Is democracy to fascism,

A republic (Ben Franklin said: “if you can keep it”),

Or proletariat serfdom.

Flimflam...

Twitter

 © 27 September 2020, the Griot Poet

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

 

-Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.”

“Platinum plans” for the black man,

After defending Confederate monuments,

Calling the birthplace of humanity,

A continent of shit hole countries,

After attacking the first black president

As illegitimate,

Promoting birtherism, demanding his birth certificate,

 

Short-form suddenly not enough: then demanding the long-form, then his Harvard grades,

Surreptitiously keeping decades of his income taxes,

Like his “great brain” grades

From scrutiny

By US citizens,

 

Putin has more insight to his net worth,

Than the rest of us,

Russian harlot pee tapes HAVE to exist,

Because of Billy Bush and Access Hollywood precedents,

 

What remains unprecedented,

Is how quickly

The party formerly of “family values,”

Capitulated,

To well-worn tropes and antecedents,

With a shoulder-shrug: eh!

 

They never really meant it.

White robes are substituted with red hats,

You see:

White supremacy is anxiously numerical.

The hysteria is clinical:

 

Mulatto children may be too ecumenical,

Looking for middle ground politically and spiritually less cynical,

 

Same-sex couples cannot make children,

Without biological insemination,

Of a surrogate,

No difference in outcomes seen between comparable parents,

 

They also must be blocked from adopting foster children,

Even though that will reduce the possibility of sexual exploitation and abuse,

Because what dismantles totalitarian rule,

Is “the threat of a good example,”

Counter to the propaganda narrative,

 

The GOP has conceded,

It is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party,

It is no longer competing,

To convince the electorate of anything, really.

 

They have no new ideas to motivate,

Newer generations of citizens,

Beyond the time-honored tropes of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and stupidity,

Beyond tax cuts for the wealthy,

And deregulation,

That will magically “trickledown”

To the rest of the nation,

 

The fact that it hasn’t,

Doesn’t matter,

Voter purges, voter suppression, polls closed on college campuses and neighborhoods of color,

Poll taxes on exonerated prisoners,

In Florida,

 

Their only motivation is to keep power,

By Malcolm X’s “any means necessary,”

Karl Rove wanted a “permanent Republican majority,”

Which sounded more like fascism than republican democracy,

 

Reducing The Constitution to a facade,

Apart from the ideal of its former self,

107 nations no longer welcome the citizens of the United States,

We’ve never been so isolated,

Think a minute,

Forget “again”:

How does our current state of affairs make us at ALL: great?

Slap...

WDRB.com

 © 23 September 2020, the Griot Poet

“(The police) are a very real menace to every Black cat alive in this country. And no matter how many people say, ‘You’re being paranoid when you talk about police brutality’ – I know what I’m talking about. I survived those streets and those precinct basements and I know. And I’ll tell you this – I know what it was like when I was really helpless, how many beatings I got. And I know what happens now because I’m not really helpless. But I know, too, that if he (police) don’t know that this is Jimmy Baldwin and not just some other N***** he’s gonna blow my head off just like he blows off everybody else’s head. It could happen to my mother in the morning, to my sister, to my brother… For me this has always been a violent country – it has never been a democracy.”

 

-- James Baldwin (1969)

194 days later, after a murder during a pandemic:

One officer - Brett Hankerson

Charged with reckless endangerment,

Of Breonna’s neighbors,

In other words: fault found for not shooting straight!

Her fault was being asleep in her own bed,

“Sleeping while black” can leave you dead!

 

The other two were apparently justified

In their malicious homicide,

No aid rendered,

As Breonna staggered bleeding out,

 

A 12-million-dollar taxpayer bribe is a poor resurrection,

Daniel Cameron genuflected, preached about,

“Law and order,”

Deplorable,

After breaking the Hatch Act law,

On the White House lawn,

For his illegitimate, Putin-installed puppet president,

 

1,000+ people a day are dying,

From a pandemic,

Breonna as an EMT was a first responder,

Her fellows did not render aid,

After a botched, no-knock raid,

Because Breonna’s LIFE didn’t matter!

 

“Atlas Shrugged” isn’t an Ayn Rand tome

It’s the name of the Fox TV radiologist,

Unqualified to be an epidemiologist,

Instead of Fauci and Birx,

Who tell him the worst,

Because sometimes, the truth in life hurts!

We’re under Bill Barr’s Department of Injustice,

Like Flava Flav said: “can’t trust it!”

Justice only looks like,

A living, breathing Breonna Taylor,

And the arrest of her assailants!

 

I am tired of “saying their names!”

Fame

Should not be at the price

Of a rally,

Or a hashtag,

There’s efficacy in BREATHING!

 

The only conclusion that has me reeling,

Is he’s trying to kill me,

And all of us in this democracy,

Like Steppenwolf for Darkseid,

He’s peppered the landscape with tear gas, flash bombs and racial fire pits,

Smashing 240 years of self-governance,

Into his twisted, authoritarian Apocalypse,

 

Converting American citizens to “lowlies”

Orange Judas Iscariot,

Fosters a proletariat,

From democracy to kingdom come slavery,

 

The reality of who Antichrist is,

Is he who is antithetical to what Christ did,

He’s fulfilled every single one of the 7 deadly sins,

Support from white evangelical supremacists, henceforth known as anti-Christians,

The “meek who will inherit the earth,”

Probably wear masks, and

Don’t possess AR-15 clips!

 

From citizens to serfdom,

Weary of his fantasies,

Zoning out with streaming online movies,

Citizens will begin tuning out, post

Coup de tat,

The Washington Post says:

“Democracy dies in darkness,”

And sadly, exhausted apathy.

Unmasked...

101.5 KNUE

 © 16 September 2020, the Griot Poet

Wearing masks doesn’t appear in the US Constitution,

Neither does “no shirt, no shoes: NO SERVICE.”

 

It was a small step from anti-vaxxers,

To anti-maskers,

The same tinfoil hats,

That think the earth is flat,

 

Instead of metal insulation,

The mark of the beast,

Upon their heads

Is red with the stencil letters: MAGA,

 

Ironically manufactured in China,

Not a preponderance of Melanin,

But Carotene is close enough!

 

The same follower

Blew cigarette smoke at my mask

Because he knows his embers will whiff past

That had a positive message:

“We’re all in this together.”

 

Quoting Eugene Gu, MD on Twitter:

“To achieve a herd immunity of 60%, around 200 million Americans need to catch the coronavirus, and 3 million Americans need to die. Herd mentality believes this all needs to happen because it is too hard to wear a mask, stay 6 feet away from others, and listen to scientists.”

 

Whether my red hat

Friend is on Twitter,

His attitude and demeanor figure

Into the demographic

Launched 40 years ago by The Gipper

In Philadelphia, Mississippi.

 

Not sure where it is?

It was the site

Of the KKK murders

Of Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner,

Two Jewish Americans and a Black Man

Executed for the audacity

Of registering minorities

For the voting franchise,

 

The “wink and nod.”

Gave cover to Dixiecrats

To become Reagan Democrats,

They are the grandparents

 

Of the same human bile

Showing up with guns at faux “free the state” rallies,

Who are climate change and science deniers,

That think systemic racism doesn’t exist,

Except for uneducated, white “Christians.”

Who’s great lament

Is, they couldn’t practice,

Their bigotry openly,

“Make America ‘great’ again,”

Until they raised

A graven Orange image

In a demographic desert,

 

Helped by the same corporate forces,

Attacking science, arts, and education,

That muddied the dangers,

Of smoking, environment, segregation,

And climate change: for-profit,

Propping up false prophets,

Russian demons,

And rambling, Twitter beasts,

 

Without intention,

My red hat friend’s cigarette smoke,

Into my mask,

Unknown to him, unmasked is the real source of his consternation!

Panic...

 © 13 September 2020, the Griot Poet

The Orange maniac,

Screaming about caravans

Of brown immigrants fleeing drug cartels

And corrupt governments

Propped up by moribund

U.S. policies;

 

ANTIFA, which means,

All together now: ANTI-fascist!

The stock market crashes if he loses,

The end of white Levittown suburbia,

Invaded by the scary brown people,

Led by the Rhodes Scholar Senator

Cory Booker (did you notice, he’s black?),

 

Is now saying

After Bob Woodward’s revelations,

After 19 hours of interviews,

That HE solicited,

He lied,

Knowing full well the severity,

Of the pandemic,

Because he didn’t want to cause a panic!

 

If We the People,

Are personified by

The Statue of Liberty,

We are in an abusive relationship,

With a malevolent narcissist,

Subjecting the nation to PTSD,

 

There IS no bottom,

For a soul that has never known poetry,

Humor, laughter, song, or camaraderie,

The only thing pleasing such a cosmic black hole is cruelty,

 

Spaghettifying

Into oblivion,

Anyone and anything

Coming in proximity

Of his event horizon,

Manafort, Flynn, Stone, Cohen,

Et al. found guilty and prosecuted,

 

Putin’s orders to his puppet:

Due to exponential investment

In the military-industrial complex,

Warned on Ike’s farewell address,

Spending has never relented,

The U.S. is greater militarily than 12 nations combined,

It’s in Putin’s interest to weaken us from within,

We can’t fight, vote, or win if we’re sick, fighting each other, or dying,

 

This pandemic is a 100-year event,

Not designed in a Wuhan lab,

The catastrophe maliciously nabbed,

But the results of malignant capitalism and hubris,

And a master KGB spy,

Throwing a Hail Mary,

In 2016,

At a piss-stained, “useful idiot,”

That really had NO intention of winning,

 

His former consigliere Michael Cohen said it was a “branding strategy,”

For another self-named ziggurat vanity,

He had no second-term agenda for Sean Hannity’s,

Softball question,

Since he didn’t have any for the first one,

 

Just Tweeting,

Lying 20,000+ times,

As people are dying,

Of Coronavirus, depression, and suicide,

Separated from humanity,

Parents suddenly appreciating teachers,

Hungover by Zoom meetings,

Taking un-readout calls from a Master Manipulator from the KGB,

 

He lied,

Knowing full well the severity,

Of the pandemic,

Because he didn’t want to cause a panic!

Systemic...

 © 10 September 2020, the Griot Poet

“You really drank the Kool-Aid,”

 

Should forever preface,

The logical fallacy,

Of asking a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

About his birthright privilege,

Laced Kool-Aid offered

By another cult leader, Jim Jones in Guyana,

To his follower’s abrupt departure to Nirvana,

 

He’s used to his privilege like oxygen,

And, couldn’t see living without it,

 

Packed with Pringle’s, Bill Barr,

Sat on his stuffed, comfortable ass

Snide as ever, flippant and crass,

Lying to Wolf Blitzer on CNN,

Captain of his own version of “jackbooted thugs,”

Can afford to answer so smug,

Since his headmaster pedophilic father,

Never had to give him “The Talk.”

Growing up in East Manhattan,

 

What do you expect,

From a criminal president,

That said:

“I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue,” and get away with it,

 

Getting away is something he’s done,

For 1,330 days since

“American carnage” inauguration,

That turned out to be

Both projection and promise,

Seven months into a once in a century pandemic,

 

Forget about his taxes:

I want the readout of his,

Sixteen conversions with Vladimir Putin,

From January 2020 to the present,

That Orange Satan said “wasn’t our business,”

 

Apocalypse means “revealing,”

Coronavirus has stripped the veneer,

Away from our long-held myths,

California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington are burning,

Thinking climate change is solved by raking,

The “exceptional” nation,

Can give no quarter between,

Democracy and fascism,

 

The nation cannot be “Christian,”

Nor have a First Amendment,

Where the people can redress their government for its grievances,

And enable such cruelty,

As seen in city streets,

By ambiguous, unidentifiable paramilitaries,

You’re treating the citizenry,

As if we were enemies,

 

“No man is an island,

entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

as well as if a promontory were.

as well as if a manor of thy friend’s

or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind;

and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.”

 

John Donne’s Meditation 17,

Speaks to this moment for me,

We are our sisters and brothers’ keepers,

Every single being IS essential!

Nihilistic Narcissist...

 

© 9 September 2020, the Griot Poet

We are unique in western civilization,

We have the highest Coronavirus infection rates and fatalities of any nation,

Sturgis biker and sardine-packed, non-social-distanced political rallies,

 

Now: A slap in the national face,

To all that occupied his self-aggrandizing spaces:

He knew how deadly this pandemic,

Would be

From Bob Woodward,

In February:

He just didn’t give a shit.

 

He is a nihilistic narcissist:

It’s all about him and no one else,

His pathological lies caused multiple deaths,

He’s UNFIT for this office,

“He failed to do his job: ON PURPOSE!”

“I wanted to always play it down,”

This Gotham Joker clown,

Has sealed our fate,

Costing 190,000+ lives,

9.6 times the influenza rate,

Gaslighting to cover his incompetence,

 

Conmen are optimistic pessimists,

Confident that they can dupe the mark with vacuous, superficial charm,

Once the mark falls for the con,

The criminal loses ALL respect,

“Suckers and losers” his epithets,

To soldiers, sailors, airmen and governments,

 

He didn’t MEAN to win it,

According to his consigliere,

This was marketing, reality TV bullshit,

To build a modern Babylon Ziggurat,

A graven-image tower in Moscow,

 

Awakening from the dream,

Of devotion to a cult regime,

Michael Cohen,

Through his father,

Was reminded of European pogroms,

That brought his Jewish family

To these shores,

 

He learned to find what he did abhorrent,

For “Individual One,”

He traded his Jim Jones, Guyana estrangement,

For department of corrections containment,

 

He made arrangements,

For clandestine payments,

To Karen McDougal,

And Stormy Daniels,

Not because of embarrassment,

But because of he and Melania’s

Prenuptial arrangements,

 

She raked him over hot coals,

For his sexual peccadilloes,

Six months, successfully renegotiating,

Boomeranging back,

His own criminality,

 

Betrayal results in loveless marriages,

Pragmatically separated,

Living with her parents and Barron

In Maryland,

 

She was his affair on Marla Maples,

Who had been his affair on Ivana,

He lives in government housing,

Has three baby mammas,

Raw dogs

Playboy bunnies and adult film stars,

Has a plethora of criminal charges:

And has the GALL to call the black community Ghetto?

 

He is a nihilistic narcissist:

A leader who doesn’t give a flip,

About the culture war fires he lights,

Pouring kerosene on the fires,

A political pyromaniac,

 

“Better to rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven,”

John Milton’s,

Psychoanalysis of Satan,

Points a malignant narcissist,

That would rather his golden gilded, toilet throne,

Be set atop a former nation’s dung heap, now smoldering ruin.