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NOVEMBERS - NEW POEM

 NOVEMBERS

 

Sometimes with elections

They get so exciting

We all forget we’ll die.

There we are, riled up,

Jeering or elated,

Having lifted some stranger

Into temporary powers,

Like building a kite from red paper.

It isn’t fake. Artifice

Doesn’t pulse or quake quite like this.

This popcorn puke razzmatazz

Is life, this is what stinger it stings with:

 

Ignorant events, trombones, hot cries

In the angry morning.

Don’t fret at earthly delight.

Soon a new candidate will rise.

Campaign volunteers jig under balloons

Drifting down like war-ash.

Bunting in barns, banners, betrayal,

All shifting, afterwards, gathering

Some place only diligent post-Dillinger FBI

Archivists care to find, in boxettes marked Y

For Yore. To say it’s functionless is a lie –

It mattered when it did, to us, in the Then.

 

Time’s like a ballot box, empty, then filled

Importantly, then counted out then taken away,

Then empty all over again, for a while.

It’s annoyingly infinite, the ways to describe

What we shed by having to change daily,

Importance is a thing with sides

That constantly skew sideways, open

To an eternity that has no clear definitions.

Things get going, go useless, grow new planks.

Those ships with high white sails going fast

Are now autumn trees, replicas for bored tours,

Each one a losing victory, standing to be corrected.

 

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

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