WHAT T***P KNOWS

by Michael Collins

It’s not a question
of knowing it
in your bones:
It’s a question
of knowing it
in their bones—
Rule the mind and all
the rest follows:
Bend ignorance like a bow.
Grow and grow, tower:
Machiavelli said it centuries ago:
Be the giant of hypocrites,
the titan liars; be the giant
of seeming: cut the tree
of knowledge down
and build a stage; bring
your fingers down on the crowd’s great hurts
and know there is no other knowing;
For giants grow larger
in contradiction; they
multiply in lies.


Michael Collins has published one book of poems, one intellectual biography and many uncollected essays and poems.

A MASH NOTE TO HILLARY

by David Spicer

You’re an American pioneer.
A world warrior.
You scare the hell out of everybody.
Except your believers.

Why do you want this job?
Don’t give me patriotic bunk
You recite on Hardball.
You want what you want.

Is your ego the size of Texas and Ohio?
Are you Machiavelli’s spiritual great granddaughter?

Your lemon meringue pantsuit fails the fashion test.
That laugh could chop wood.
If I hear On Day One again,
I’ll yank out my bazooka and shoot the Milky Way.

You thought the job a divine right.
You owned the nomination.

Then along came Barack Obama,
Grinning like a llama.
A meteor that seduced a nation:
The Blessed Orator.
The Golden-Tongued Angel.
Smooth as peanut butter on fresh bread.
You'd  met your match.
You hated it.
Live with it.
               
You fight in the era of the last bastion
Of white males.
They resist, a phalanx poised
To confront and destroy you.
Don’t concede.

You’ve been reviled.
Caricatured. Pilloried.
You don’t care. You persevere.

You’re not our mother, our sister, our daughter,
Our girlfriend, our waitress, our opera escort,
But our leader.

And a cat with twenty lives.
Not in double digits yet.

Hillary, you’re my hero.
Tougher than the meanest missile in the world.

Answer this note.
Please.

What about Bill? you might ask.
Forget him, though you love the guy.
Divorce him on Day One.
(Remember, hell hath no fury . . .
He doesn’t want you President anyway.)
Throw him out on the steps with his humidor.

We’ll elope to the Ukraine.
The world our oyster.


David Spicer is  seeking a publisher crazy enough to print his manuscript American Maniac. He has had poems in The New Verse News, The Naugatuck River Review, Spudgun, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere.