Worse than Buchanan

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Worse than Buchanan

 

Worse than Buchanan

Worse than Franklin Pierce

His defenders were none

His opposition remained fierce

 

Buchanan, Pierce and Fillmore

Paved the road to Civil War

As colossal failures to the union

You could hardly ask for more

 

Historians know the value

Of a president’s true worth

They chose our number 45

As the nation’s very worst

 

He betrayed our democracy

He failed to build his wall

He divided all Americans

As he fulfilled treason’s call

 

His followers stand by him

Despite his fatal flaws

His ego and his ignorance

His defiance of the law

 

No one could be worse than him

He’s as bad as it gets

Will the nation have him back again?

Who knows? Place your bets

 

Teaching True History

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

Teaching True History

 

In Carolina the Underground Railroad

Was a smuggling operation

In Florida slavery was job training

In Alabama the Civil War was fought

Over economic differences

In Mississippi (goddamn) Strange Fruit

Were Kiwis and Kumquats

In Tennessee the Trail has no Tears

In Oklahoma Tulsa has no ghosts

In Texas the Rangers never killed Mexicans

In North Dakota Wounded Knee was a battle

In California we teach the truth

We didn’t always but we do now

 

If a child does not know where he came

From she will not know where to go

If a child does not know true history

He will not be prepared for the world

If a child is raised on mythology as if

It were the truth that child is condemned

To a future of disappointment

 

You cannot hide the truth forever

You can ban books but you cannot banish reading

You can bend facts but you cannot revise the truth

When you lie to your children over and

Over you guarantee disenchantment

And you will never win their trust

 

Teach your children the truth or

They will grow to resent you

And they will be right

 

A Modern Mussolini

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

A Modern Mussolini

 

He sounds a lot like Hitler

But he is not the same

Hitler was an orator

Who had a feel for art

The Don is a pretender

Whose speeches fall apart

He’s more like Mussolini

The Italiano beast

They both hold their girth

And hailed from the east

The original fascista

As everybody knows

Wherever Hitler points

Mussolini goes

Like Vlad and the Don

We know who’s on top

If Vlad is the chief

The Don is the cop

He’ll do Putin’s bidding

Without question or doubt

In the end he’ll ask Vlad:

Can you help a poor boy out?

He’s a modern Mussolini

But he never read the story

If he had he would know

The end is pretty gory

 

White Flag

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: ISRAEL AT WAR

White Flag

 

Black Kettle camped under a flag of peace

Where the white man told him to

At Big Sandy Creek

 

Few warriors remained at his camp

Of mostly Cheyenne and Arapaho

Old men, women and children

 

Colonel Chivington and his Colorado

Volunteers attacked at daybreak

Slaughtering people like cattle

Taking scalps and body parts

To commemorate the carnage

 

The volunteers were hailed as heroes

Until the true story was told

Black Kettle survived

 

Four years later almost to the day

A cold day November 1868

The Washita River Massacre

Completed his tragic fate

Killed by Colonel Custer

Under a white flag of peace

 

Eight years later Custer’s

Story was also complete

When he and his Seventh Cavalry

Were slaughtered in defeat

 

The white flag has no meaning

To those with murder in their hearts

As long as leaders have no honor

They will rip this world apart

 

(Note: Israeli soldiers mistakenly kill

three Israeli hostages carrying a white

flag.)

Tears for Henry

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

Tears for Henry

 

The man who toppled Salvador Allende

The man who championed dictatorship

The man who won a Nobel Peace Prize

For carpet bombing Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam

The man who never saw a strongman he didn’t love

The man who held Nixon’s hand through

The sorry days of Watergate

The man who said we should never let an election

Stand in the way of our interests

The man who was in love with power

The man who tried to forge an empire

 

He died today at the round age of one hundred

One wonders if he negotiated a deal with the reaper

How many lives for one old man?

Shall we shed a tear for Henry?

How many tears did he shed for Chile?

How many for Argentina?

How many tears for Southeast Asia?

How many for the innocents lost?

 

I am sorry for his family

I’m sorry for those who loved him

I’m sorry for those who fell to his diplomatic sword

But I have no tears for Henry

He was and always will be a war criminal

A man without a heart

Dust Bowl Emigre

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN HISTORY

Dust Bowl Émigré

 

This rich and fertile valley

Was made on the backs of émigré

Not from somewhere below the border

Nor from Ireland or Eastern Europe

Not from Canada or Germany

Nor Australia or the Far East

The ones who answered the call

To work the orchards and fields

To till the soil and work the land

To pick the peaches, oranges and nuts

To bring the crops to market

Were the poor white folks of Oklahoma

The tenant farmer of the Dust Bowl

As hard a worker who ever lived

They came by hard luck highways

Their belongings packed on old cars

That broke down along the way

 

When they overcame all hardships

And finally arrived in the Golden State

They were called disgraceful names

Okies and Arkies and dirt farmers

Who came to take our good jobs

To steal our women and commit mayhem

To ruin the state the gold diggers built

But they didn’t take our good jobs

They took what others wouldn’t do

They didn’t steal our women

They didn’t crimes or mayhem

Any more than anyone else did

They were good hard-working people

Poor as dirt but grim determined

They had no place else to go

They became the good citizens

Of the great central valley

Along with others of darker skin

Also good hard-working people

Together they built the foundations

Of the great state of Golden Gate

 

Ironic ain’t it? that the very same people

Who were derided and abused yesterday

Deride and abuse others today

Glorifying Killers

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GENOCIDE

 

Glorifying Killers

 

When you glorify a killer

You guarantee the killing will go on

When you turn your back on genocide

The ghosts of genocide remain

Waiting for a chance to rise from the dead

When you rewrite history with lies

History will rise to write the future

Bosnia / Darfur / Rwanda / Cambodia

Each time we are horrified

Each time we swear: Never again!

Yet we return to bear witness

Again and again

 

We return with our promises

We return with our tears

We return with our rage

We return with our fears

 

Yet we allow the glorification of killers

We allow the falsification of history

The promise of never again

Begins with the truth

No matter how painful

No matter how hard to bear

The children must learn the truth

My Lai / Sand Creek / Wounded Knee

The truth

The unvarnished truth

Twenty-Two Years

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

Twenty-two Years (IXXI)

 

Twenty-two years

We remember clearly

What happened that day

Where we were

What we were doing

How it was first relayed

A plane flew into the World Trade Center

I once lived just down the avenue

Took the elevator to the top

Top of the world, ma!

Top of the world!

There was a transparent walkway

Connecting the two towers

Like the walkway over Grand Canyon

A sight so inspired you could

Hear the heartbeat of God

 

It was a mystery at first

A horribly tragic mystery

How could anyone fly into the tower?

Then it happened again

A plane hit the second tower

That’s when we knew

This tragedy – unlike so many others –

Would alter the fabric of our world

 

Twenty-two years later

We bear witness to what happened

That dreadful imprinted day

And all the horrors that followed

The mistakes that we made

 

Twenty-two years later

We know the Saudis were responsible

Not Iraq, not Iran, not Afghanistan

But the Saudis were our allies

Our oil buddies

Someone else had to take the blame

 

Twenty-two years later

We live with the consequences of

Decisions made that day

For those who do and those who do not

We bow our heads and pray

 

(For all the heroes of that fateful day

and all the days that followed.)