Matt Morris
Appalled & Aghast
thanks to the completion of the paradoxically long-
anticipated time machine the legendary
slavers who wrote the law in the first place
see the country they created as it is
today a monumental mistake
washington exclaims striking both
a gloved fist against phallic obelisk
& a pose showing off his area
of expertise to let any harry
dick & tom lunkhead buy
arms meant for armies
now at deep discounts see ad in sunday’s post the up-
shot pardon the pun making movies fast
food chains concerts schools malls night-
clubs the workplace mass
transit houses of worship our streets our homes
combat zones he pauses grimly
smiling as if in the midst of a campaign
if I may sir adams the elder offers all such quote
unquote unalienable rights depend part
& parcel upon owning lots
of things often less onerous than guns
or otherwise demonstrating one’s well-
to-do if not obscenely
rich half-crocked franklin opines
cleaning his bifocals by blowing hard & farting
loudly once wealthy enough to be president
of time-war-
ner let’s say then you are free
to kill for god country or whatever
you got a hard-on for pipes in hamilton
wrinkled brow sheltering eyes
that witnessed firsthand the horror
of gunplay not to mention eponymous
broadway play sitting by
the window in sweltering heat jefferson
furiously scribbles everything
down in a plain unornamented
style that all can understand
right before his head’s blown
off by a sniper
in the bell tower just
across liberty
plaza
Political Discourse
we need to talk less about wall street
oliver stone’s however well-intentioned
ultimately well boring flick the action
consisting primarily of numbers flashing
across the screen like so much digital
tickertape with white guys in grave suits
yelling buy sell bribe steal at phones & phonies
& talk instead about main street the satiric
novel of the early 20th century penned
by sinclair lewis who despite winning
the nobel prize in literature the first
american to do so is largely forgotten
like lagerlöf gjellerup & pontoppidan
whom few nowadays take time enough to know
how to pronounce the names of
much less read charlotte löwensköld
