[Newspoetry] Plebian Plebiscites Placebos: Flaws in the Ointments

[Donald L Emerick]

New York Times 21 March 2002
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The reforms passed today,
while flawed in some areas,
still improve the current system over all,
and I will sign them into law." 
PRESIDENT BUSH,
on the campaign finance reform bill.

<<Anon: No day's a total loss (write-off)
if there's something "there" to quote.>>

PLEBIAN PLEBISCITES PLACEBOS:
Flaws-in-the-Ointments Processional

I went to the neighborhood store, and
Nearly got sideswiped by a flawed driver,
Nearly got killed by another flawed car,
Nearly tore up my own on a flawed road,
Nearly got robbed by a flawed merchant,
Nearly got sick and died from flawed food I bought,
Nearly got a competent attorney at a flawed law clinic,
Nearly got some justice from a flawed legal system,
Nearly went broke trying to pay flawed billing agents
(Next to whom Shylock looks a revered saint,
And Bluebeard looks like a doddering old fool).

Overcome by federal flaws,
These scoff-flaws of feudal laws,
Hang scaffolding for Potemkin town,
Not to build it up, but to hang it up,
An icon in the eye connivery.

I became as one of the flawed,
Shaking in delirium tremens,
Believing all flaws were transient,
Curable by best possible flawed efforts
Flawed performatives of flawed conditions.
I went to my flawed physician,
He gave me a flawed medicine.
My sickness worsened and I nearly died.

"Flaw, flaw, flaw," cry the crows
Pecking at roadside kills,
Nuzzling the innards spilled,
Feasting on the meals on wheels,
Collateral damages are free on board,
Only external diseconomy makes you rich:
One man pleasures another man's bitch.

Justice is only blind and dead,
Like Teresias talking to Ulysses,
Over pools of spilled blood,
Of fatal consequences past,
But also avoidable evils ahead:
Embrace no ways of flaws he said.

Bush must think us his flawed fool.
Would Bush to his (flawed) soldiers say:
It may be a flawed weapon, but better than none?
Why is second-best (or even worse) democracy
Good enough for you and me, when sold to us by
A second-best (at best), second-place president?
A second-hand president hands out seconds,
Flawed instances of flawed logic in flawed laws.

The flaws are not in the stars, Dear Brutus,
But in Ourselves that We are such Plebeians,
Willing to buy flawed foods in flawed markets,
Rather than heroically starve to death in protest,
As Brother Ghandhi tried to teach us justice,
Begins at home, alone, and stays near home,
Bringing home the lonely meaning of desert words:
Man shall not live by moldy bread, alone.

Every buying and selling is a plebiscite
Of a free will to swallow swill-flawed placebos:
Proving that no flaw breaks any camel's back.

<<"Write-ons!" rewrite millennial history
As Trojan Ger-mania's War-fare State.>>

Thanks for listening to my tears,
Donald L Emerick, aka Jeremiah
Encyclical-Pedia 2002, Marx 25:12