by Doris Henderson
The honorable gentleman of the Ways and Means Committee,
aware of the magnitude of the issue at hand,
after preliminary expostulation yields the balance of his time
to his esteemed colleague designated for the vital task
of commenting on the magnitude of the issue at hand,
and of earnestly seeking a bipartisan solution,
which task the esteemed colleague has designated
for relieving his loyal supporters of their burdensome taxes,
earnestly sought by partisans of the solution,
in the best tradition of incorporated American values
to relieve the unsupported taxpayers of their burdensome money
through the establishment of an ever-expanding economy
in the best tradition of high valued American corporations
to further the pursuit of accelerated prosperity
in the ever-expanding globalized proliferation
which must be avoided at all costs.
The senator having accelerated his pursuit of prosperity,
his political funding practices are currently under legal scrutiny,
the proliferation of which must be avoided at all costs,
as an obfuscation diverting from the issue in question,
the scrutiny of the illegal funding practices of the opposition,
in pursuance of which the speaker now yields the floor
for obfuscation of the question at issue now diverted.
Objection is raised by the architect of the original proposal,
pursued by the speaker on the floor now yielded
to the esteemed gentleman from the State of Inertia,
raising objection to the original architect of the proposal
obscured by the ensuing debate over the question.
The esteemed gentleman having reached the State of Inertia
yields the balance of his primary expostulation
to the ensuing debate obscured by the raised question
of the Ways and Means whereby the honorable gentleman can be committed.
Doris Henderson is a poet living in Danbury, Connecticut. This poem is a pantoum, a series of quatrains in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated (with variations) as the first and third lines of the following stanza. It’s very repetitious, but then --- did you ever watch Congress in action?