For Bill Costley
The speakers are all talking
about
themselves: me, me, me;
How I made it by myself,
how great it is to be me,
And with an example like me
Someday you become the destined
you.
When New Jersey Boss Chris
Christie says
What’s needed is leadership,
I’m surprised: I didn’t know I
asked for a new boss –
Ding, ding!
– To keep my kids out of the
schools and hospitals
To neglect the roads I drive,
To make it easier for the corp
lords to
Reduce my pay or cut my job,
To build the black, wrought iron
fence
‘Round Christie’s house with a
Healthy, stealthy electric
charge.
Ding, ding!.
The Ninety-Nine Percent bell
rings in my head once more.
Yet when I think about the
present alternatives,
I can barely breath. A public meeting at the
Library, whose moldy air sets the
stage
For dark coffins of paper to drop
Off the edge of the age’s edifice,
Treasures to trash, a handy
metaphor
For our own marginalization.
We enter the meeting,
Arms full with gifts, voices, and
money,
And leave by the red exit,
Our hearts vacuumed out, our
hands empty.
Standing on the margins
Of a new edifice of power,
I know I’m a Ninety-Nine
Percenter,
And when I hear Chris Christie
say
What’s needed is leadership,
I suspect I have much more to
lose,
And muse that connecting
With my community
May be the only prayer
Ever to be heard.
Karl Kadie has poems in The New Verse News, The Santa Clara Review, Haiku Headlines, and poetry blogs, and featured at Poetry in Song and Cupertino Winter Light. Karl is a native Californian, and holds an MA in English from San Francisco State University.
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