[Newspoetry] NEWSpoem

[William Gillespie]

Elegant (by comparison)

Even Nixon was a smoother criminal. Justice Scalia has countered with
the precedent that the American people have never had right of suffrage
in an American election. It being necessary for any free and democratic
society to bail out Savings and Loans, the tax burden ought now to be
shifted to the electoral college, the supreme court, and a Simi Valley
concert hall filled with Frank Sinatra fans. When, in an unprecedented
television appearance of a candidate during an election, Rutherford B.
Hayes explains that, reliable exit polls notwithstanding, he is going to
win the state of Florida, I find myself wanting to change the channel to
Nader's speech, but my landlord, at the other end of the bar, refuses to
concede the remote control. The ghost of Trotsky keeps trying to tell me
that this evidence of a division among the bourgeoisie clearly signals
that conditions are ideal for a proletariat revolution, but 20,000
jobless former GM employees, unable to decipher question 2 out of 100 on
the State of California's application for foodstamps, think it's just
politics as usual. To those who think in terms of gush and bore, I plead
"but I wanted the October Surprise, not Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford.
Couldn't we at least have a coup with a little class?" Jimmy Carter's
speech on campaign financing reform is drowned out by a formation of
2-million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missiles en route to Baghdad, seeking
an opportunity to defend themselves against anthrax, a lilting Santoor,
autonomy, journalism, a thrown bottle, a speck of dust, or a blowjob
someone had the audacity to try to avoid talking about on TV, still
sticky from all the duct tape used to repair the Asian financial crisis.
He glances at the teleprompter trying to remember whether he's the liar
or the dumb guy. If you are a non-citizen applying for Medi-Cal and you
are not (a) LPR, (b) an amnesty alien with a valid and current I-688, or
(c) PRUCOL (an alien permanently residing in the U.S., under the color
of law), please do not fill in the shaded box for "Birthplace." The
contradictions between slavery and wage labor were of necessity replaced
by the contradictions between labor and capital: the Republican
revolution. From the Wormley House Hotel to the Bohemian Grove, where
the justice's son's boss is the lawyer for the plaintiff, the justice's
wife the plaintiff's employee, the secretary of state the campaign
chairman, and the father is the brother is the son.  Excuse me, but your
oil platform is standing on my foot. When Newt Gingrich gets his own
radio show, we will come to understand the necessity to read between the
lines of riot troops, so let's tune the radio to static and chant
together: "The first step is admitting you have a problem." The second
step is refusing to cede the election to a higher power. "You liberals
are just nuts about Chomsky," the waitress says, popping her gum, but
you don't look up.