THE ELECTION IS RIGGED

by Llyn Clague





THE ELECTION IS RIGGED
blares the hand-painted sign beside the road
for every passing 4X4, SUV, BMW.

THE ELECTION IS
RIGGED—a neighbor, living on my street,
screams scam!  Every time I pass,
scam! . . . scam! . . . scam! . . .

Man—I want to say—
you don’t even know me
and you insist we cannot play fair.

THE ELECTION, you cry, IS RIGGED
even before the first whistle
in the raucous, unruly, Saturday-celebrating stadium.

2

Remember the games we played as kids?
Throw an elbow, give a furtive kick, scratch—
sure, we wanted to win.
But, say it aloud or not,
we knew, victory “earned” by cheating
was a sham.

THE ELECTION IS RIGGED
Have the adults, in their games, lost
what we had as kids?
Are the rewards so rich,
they’re willing to “win” at any cost?

And you, neighbor, before you roar . . . RIGGED
to every passing semi, RV, antique classic,
don’t you realize, if you are right,
our entire American “democracy”
is a sham?

Of course you do.
Out of the many, there is no shazam,
no will of the governed,
no “voice of the people.”

No voice of you and me.

3

THE ELECTION IS RIGGED
And maybe, my neighbor down the street,
whom I don’t know, you are right—THE ELECTION
IS RIGGED, though maybe not
how you think.

Nobody is bribing the refs,
nor paying off rogue players in the stadium.

Long before the soft whistle
in the teeth of the first volunteer
opening the precinct door,
all across this wide continent
federal, state, and local elections
ARE being rigged—

by precise gerrymandering,
by particular ID cards,
by cascades of designated cash.

RIGGED, at the very least,
to the very best of their manipulative ability,
by our election-selecteds
and their precise, particular, dedicated minions.

You grieve me, neighbor, living on our street,
screaming at every passerby
THE ELECTION IS RIGGED,
not because you are wrong,
but because you may be right.

And if you are, in the stampede
after the shout of Fire! in our national theater,
we will be crushed, you and I together.

Llyn Clague is a poet based in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.  His poems have been published widely, including in Ibbetson Street, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly.  His seventh book Hard-Edged and Childlike was published by Main Street Rag in September, 2014.

THE DONALD SONNETS

by Llyn Clague

IMAGE OF OUTFIT VIA DEAGOSTINI / GETTY; PHOTOGRAPH OF TRUMP BY JOHN TAGGART / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY. Detail of photgraphic result published in The New Yorker, Daily Shouts, October 28, 2015.

Sonnet LXXI

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than flitting across your screen you see my obit
Announcing I am gone.  No smarmy op-ed
Will weep that I have left this hypocrite
World.  No, if you peruse these lines, do not think
Of me who wrote them: so great is your love
Of self I would not give them cause to wink
At you for my shortcomings, and so shove
You off the cliff of their so precious hauteur.
If, I say, you look back upon this verse,
My smallness must not reduce your superior
Vision of greatness, of better, not worse.
Let not the wise world mock your glory
By tying you to my too ordinary story.

Sonnet XCI

Some glory in their birth, some in their wealth,
Some in their cleverness, or in a pretty face,
Some in bodily strength or personal health,
Or cars and yachts boosted in this rat race.
Every type has its particular niche
Where it finds its special gratification.
But these trifles – even, Donald, your riches,
to me but means to ever greater action –
Are nothing: with your love of self you trump
Smooth cleverness,  a beauty-pageant chest,
The bulge of biceps, and arrogant assump-
Tions of birth certificates. I boast I’ve the best:      
Wretched in this alone, that, losing, you take
Self-love away, and wretched my heart will break.

Sonnet XXIX

When, disgraced by boss, society, and fate,
Along with others filled with helpless rage,
I cry to heaven with my unbounded hate
And look upon myself as a rat in a cage,
Haply, Donald, I think on thee, and my heart,
Like hope in a gambler in your casino,
Leaps up into a sweet realm apart,
Made magic by almighty, endless ego.
When I revel in the inebriation
Of your inspired take-downs, smears and sneers
And abandon myself to the elation
Spreading far and wide with all your cheers,
Then, bathed in the glow of your Caesarian
Narcissism, I scorn compassion from any man.

Llyn Clague is a poet based in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.  His poems have been published widely, including in Ibbetson Street, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly.  His seventh book, Hard-Edged and Childlike, was published by Main Street Rag in September, 2014.  

UP CLOSE AND NUCLEAR

by Llyn Clague

Cagle Cartoons via The Tennessean

1

My heart leaps up and clangs
against a ceramic roof curved like the sky
and chunks fall down with loud bangs
when I read about the anti-’s willing to use any factoid or lie
as artillery, to shoot down
Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

I too was, and still am, at heart an anti- –
a gunner aiming at high-flying authority
since early childhood, when images of ack-ack against the bombers
flaking in the night sky
burned on my memory.  I became
an outright oppo, sometimes even frantic
over power, ever suspicious of the Bargain
made over my head, by Them, with muscularity.

But one thing my anti- was, and is – is
implacably (if belligerently) anti-war – is
never against reaching across the divide
to try, however hard, to make peace with the Enemy –
Communist or Cong, Chinese or Cheney –
who was, and is, also, always, inside.

In my heart as well (if paradoxically) I yearned,
and still yearn, to find
that, in the Other, beyond No –
a possible basis
for a collaborative Yes.

2

Tricky Dick to Beijing, Sunny Ronnie with Moscow,
but it’s Nervous Neville to Prague
that gives the anti’s their analogue.
The Iranians just might lie and cheat
like Hitler.

With their history    
of subterfuge about centrifuges,
of hiding and deceit,
I must admit
the obvious: not all pacts work out.

Adamantly I am anti- those anti-’s –
from the know-nothing yahoo
to mad Netanyahu
to the more reasoned (if political) oppo’s and sidewalk vigilantes –
who bluster, better no deal than this;
who insist, to compromise with Them is to appease;
who, if war we must – well, better sooner!

But there is, beyond rumor,
a chance they are right.

3

My heart leaps up and plinks
against a flat plaster ceiling
and flakes drift down, falling
silently as snow in sand bins.

The specter of my anti-
weakening … of losing certainty
haunts me.

Up close,
Obama’s nuclear maneuver
is not personal, like loss
of face, or fighting the self-crippling demons
you or I try to suppress, even (if dishonestly) deny.

But his, and Khamenei’s, willingness
to reach across ocean and mountain,
past each other’s “Great Satan,”
above their own intense, entrenched resistance,
to make a pact
over the defining radical of our epoch,
speaks to a personal belief, in each,
of, in the other, a humanity
that proclaims an affirming Yes.


Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Ibbetson Street, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, and other magazines.  His seventh book, Hard-Edged and Childlike, was published by Main Street Rag in September, 2014.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

by Llyn Clague





Friends, Americans, countrymen, hear me out.
I come to praise Christie, not criticize him.
The good that men do lives on after them,
While their mistakes typically die with them.
He is an honorable man, who has at heart
The welfare of the people.  His critics cry,       
He has ambition.  But did he not embrace
Even Obama, prince of the other party,
After Sandy?  Ambition should be made
Of sterner stuff.  Did he not excoriate –
Excoriate, I tell you – John Boehner,
Leader of his own party?  This is not
A man who puts his own ambition Ahead
Of the people’s weal.  His enemies complain
He’s costing the state $24 million
For two special elections to fill Lautenberg’s
Senate seat.  To save the people’s money,
Did he not cut pensions and health benefits,
Slash $8 million in college tuition subsidies,
$10 million in after-school programs
And $12 million more in charity care?
Would a man of overweening ambition so flaunt           
The common people’s needs?  Just to “win big”
In his own re-election and impress the fat cats             
Who dominate presidential politics?
Chris Christie, my friends, has the people’s good
At heart, and he is an honorable man.


Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, Ibbetson Street.  His sixth book, The I in India and US, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.

WAYNE LA PIERRE

by Llyn Clague



The only thing, sings Wayne La Pierre,
“that stops a bad guy with a gun
is a good guy with a gun” –
a song of good and bad that’s certainly fun
at the Cineplex, but less so in open air

EVP of the NRA is WLP,
an intense, insistent man whose voice
promotes utterly unrestricted choice
of weaponry, but leaves us the invoice
for the cost, in lives, love, and therapy.

What you see in Wayne La Pierre
is the balladeer of bullet and bandoleer,
with rhetoric uncompromisingly clear
and a mask-like, macho veneer –
an apostle of assault-gun laissez-faire.

What you don’t see is his terrible fear –
of demons in a streetlight’s glare,                     
of crackling conspiracies everywhere,              
and of himself, open, laid bare  –                     
a terrible, debilitating, soul-destroying fear.


Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, Ibbetson Street.  His sixth book, The I in India and US, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.

THE BEN NELSON

by Llyn Clague

"Former Sen. Ben Nelson . . . the holdout who eventually provided the key vote for President Barack Obama’s health care law, will head up the nonpartisan National Association of Insurance Commissioners . . . As CEO, earning nearly $1 million a year, Nelson will be a leading intermediary between the states and Washington." -- Politico, January 23, 2012

Image source: Mario Piperni dot Com

In wrestling, a full nelson is against the rules
because you could break the fucker’s neck.
When I competed, back in middle school,
the rules, applied to all, kept us in check.

In politics, we now have the “ben nelson,”
which says, there is one rule for me and mine,
and a different one for every one else:
a plum for my state, but not the other 49.

The deal that Ben Nelson struck was a bear:               
in return for his vote on the Senate floor
he demanded the Feds pay Nebraska ’s share
of Medicaid – costs all states bear for the poor.

That morsel was not as-usual earmark stew –
a military base for him, a prison for her,
a highway for me, maybe a bridge for you –
swaps, trade-offs, a bite for every cur.            

Nor was it made on principle or conscience,
like opposition to taxes or abortion,
or deeply held personal values: it shunts
all that aside:  it was naked extortion.

In curt terms, it was a raw grab,
taking me-ism to a new level,  
and part of what made it so bad –
it was to go on forever,

leaving every single other state
paying its own, plus Nebraska’s, aid
“in perpetuity.”  Oh, there is so much to hate
with yet another tranche of trust betrayed.
                                  
But it takes two to do dirty deals,
one to sell, and the other to buy.
Men from his own party concocted this sleaze,
using “historic ends” as their alibi.

Will the ben nelson itself break the neck
of the body politic?  No, probably not.
This particular piece of dreck
is only one year’s stink in the overall rot.

Yet ben nelson does deserve a special place
in the long, checkered history of public service.
It imagined a wholly new hold to debase
wrestling, making our life distinctly worse,

and his name, Ben Nelson, shall forever stand
as the utter opposite of Nathan Hale,
who gave his young life for our young land –
for a man, body and soul, up for sale.


Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, Ibbetson Street.  His sixth book, The I in India and US, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.