OVERTLY POLITICAL

by David Dumouriez

in response to the announcement of the UK general election.

Link here to Xwitter.

Election sickness
is on us once more,
with a worse set of symptoms
than ever before.

There’s the hoard of campaigners
who will burst through the gate
intending to give us
the bullshit we hate;

there are more of them still
who will tramp till they bleed
to deliver those leaflets
we don’t want to read.

There’s our constituency member
whose job-losing fears
make him visit these parts
for the first time in years.

There are those who oppose him,
who want what he’s had;
they claim to be better

but they’ll be just as bad.

There are three party leaders
who each boast they’ll win
(though two of them know

that they’ll never get in).

There’s the phony sincerity,
the well-rehearsed lies;
there’s the promise of everything

under the skies.

There’s debating and speeches,
many words are received;
but it’s air and not action,

so there’s nothing achieved.

There are infantile adverts
meant to mask what’s unsound
about the party elites

and the guff they propound.

There’s the media coverage
where, with serious breath,
overpaid people
try to talk us to death.

There’s the collection of ‘experts’
from colleges wide,
who make duff predictions
then run off and hide.

There’s the feeling in voters,
drawn from years in the past,
that the parties betray them
when the votes have been cast.

So discuss all the options—
that won’t tax your jaws—
half think about stirring,
and then stay indoors.

David Dumouriez wouldn't be tempted to blow his own trumpet even if a) he had a trumpet or b) he knew how to play one.

KNOWING YOU ARE A POET (OUTSIDE WASHINGTON)

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

“Truth/Poetry,” a painting by Cameron Holmes.

There is nothing quite like knowing 

that poetry is your calling  

when you’re growing up in a Washington 

D.C. suburb where the word is power 

for in the nation’s capital no poem passes 

laws no verse crafts policy no poem ever 

delivered a constituency 

Poetry is a gesture so vital 

as to be without use 

it’s like telling the truth

about the deficit 

how we should curb our penchant 

for violence Poetry is a useless means 

of pulling bounties off wolf heads it is hardly

a writer’s rubber to hatred’s glue 

for nothing bounces off of me 

and sticks to you 

why write a poem to change the world 

when you could become a lawyer 

or banker 

a dynamite maker 

whose lucrative investments 

bear witness to capital’s power 

why write a poem when you could 

become a shield to the truncheon’s 

bludgeon hear 

a bomb’s whistle bullets over Baghdad 

or the silence that comes when there’s no one 

to listen to the words you’ve just written.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. New work appears this fall in Anti-Heroin Chic, Dissident Voice, So It Goes, Chiron Review, Bewildering Stories, The Last Leaves, Unlikely Stories, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Boog City, and Ginosko Review.