Something in That John Kerry Smile Leads Me to Believe …

you spend evenings bourbonizing

fast debates on neoliberalism

united fruit, the Pemex corruption

slugs for tongues

you gilded Ivy league tent caterpillars

sucking chlorophyll from anything

you touch

with algorithms, boxed up

jobs, sweat bands for racket ball

fun, you date cousins, lip

interns, and flog old socialists

laugh at homeless

spit in the eyes of the seventy percent

 

muscles made for fast curves

21 speed touring through lava

beds, your very breath is toxic

acid rain falling on minds

you privatize taking a shit

making hay of learning

each decibel you tax, some

excise thing, a penny a nanosecond

you hedge fund impresario

soiled capitalist, winner

take     all

 

you laugh in French, suck beers with

the boys in the press box

watch towering blacks push on

basketball courts all dressed

up    in     your   Madison   Avenue

logos

you are tattooed for a new technology

somehow called creative

class, you punt soccer balls

stitched in Bangladesh

triangle shirtwaist something

deep inside, externality

cost of doing business

collateral    damage  those people

just should genuflect in your

shadow, the melting black

silhouette of Ivy Leaguer

red necker, slim

pickens, Bush and Bush, and

bush league, you deride

angelic children

for growing up on the wrong side

of the coal blast

why they even remind you

of animals

in the way, the imperial way

of strays stuck because

the DNA was divvied out

of dead-for-the-world

mamma and papa

 

you make hay with pseudo mind warp

MBA from Harvard, you

know TV and fund the arts

every Zero Dark Thirty

twenty more millions

banked, the business of usury

Mahatma a joke

seven sins of mankind, ha-ha-ha

soiling pants after

you franchise heart-attack burgers

invent new HFCS delivery

sack, preventive colostomy

the marketing possibilities

Google goggles, Radio Frequency

sleep, every child watched

every code uploaded

your yacht in Cayman

equipped with lasers,  Zodiac

Navy SEALs

 

pornography is amortized

write off on 1040 long form

the very thought of history

seizes you like Viagra headache

so you invest in scrubbers

make money on trash

fully load coke machines with

nanoparticles of iridium

perfect hippocampus

drainers, perfect in yellow dye #-five

macaroni, perfect for Cheetos

each bite the scrub of

memory, more leftovers for Homo

Consumopithecus, we slowly

percolate into endless

holograms, detritus of marketing

oh holy Ivy Leaguer

we wait for your breath

to sterilize the land

we hold each long defecation

holy, like the white

smoke of a new pope

we hope for your next billion

smile when we see $10.95 an hour

oh holy MBA, please, please

spare us a dime

Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.