Wednesday, April 20, 2016

OCTOBER SURPRISE

by Ed Goodell



Photo: Susan Walsh/AP/Corbis via New York Magazine


a dramatic dialogue
dedicated to "Lyin’" Ted Cruz
and that "Sniveling Coward," Donald Trump


Speaker 1

Did Jupiter blink when the sun slid low
In the fall of a savage year?
Or was it something else, a weight, I fear,
That subdued what truths we did know?

Speaker 2 
Your concerns are of no concern to me,
Less real than an effervescence.
This purchase you seek bespeaks no presence –
Let us trust in fortuity!

Speaker 1

I never questioned the unintended,
Nor held certainty above chance;
But this is head-knocking, not providence:
Little fists, duress, lies tendered.

Speaker 2 
Trifles trifling! Change inevitable!
These old gods – we’d never progress!
From a future of ease you would digress,
Your plaints most plainly pitiful.

Chorus

New alliances forming, landscapes shifting,
Nestlings stay nested as trees take wing;
For November winds bring indefinite things
When the leaves are adrift and drifting.


Ed Goodell is a teacher of English and Journalism at Jakarta Intercultural School in Indonesia. When not in Jakarta, he makes his home in Olympia, Wa.