[Newspoetry] Powell to the People

[Donald L Emerick]

Powell to the People: A Body-Blow Job

Topics of policy must argue credibly
by standing on both of their feet rationally
and yet not wildly wave their arms about at times
as if to signal the emptiness of their hands,
by the high and mightiness of their will to power
in clinched hands that would be swinging fists.

Every rational argument is i-am-bic-like,
(when c sounds as g-uns fire, k is silent),
for it has two things that carry its stresses,
that mind and hand may rightly unite,
and its argument is like a millipede,
having thousands of iambic pairs of feet
to carry its either-or alternatives
away to concluding destinations.

I can not imagine millipede coordination
except to think of some crew-shell
sailing out on the flowing river,
the wee elf of a coxswain barking,
always the same, like the river,
which is yet never itself twice again,
stroke for stroke, all striking away,
the crew itself all mindless muscle,
straining, pulling at yokes, stiff oars,
in total war, rapid rabid over-reaction,
a knee-jerk lightning war response
that has no eye-blinking option to it,
no right to dispute, debate, delay,
to ask what truth or beauty is,
or to admire such fine things.

Stress falls on right foot or arm,
to go forward, carrying its weight,
to assert a claim of why it is right,
to do as I want is what I ought to do;
then the alternating change echoes
in the stroking of the river world,
the gesturing to some evidence,
some claim of evidence of what is.

Blow by blow arguments pummel us,
hoping by their rain of blows on heads
to prove who has the mightier right
by proving it has the right of way,
whether by left hook or right crook,
by force it would rule us its way.

Powell showed us his fancy footing
dancing in the shining for shadows,
dancing in the palace of the wolves,
dancing around the global issues,
hoping to have the last dance
before the big-time shoot-out
down at the OK Corral Saloon.

His left foot was lame and weak,
looking club-footed, too much, I fear;
I was amazed that he stayed afoot,
but his right was a mighty whirlwind,
sweeping grandly in swirling cyclones:
whirling Tasmanian dervishes smile
and swell with devilish over-pride,
at truth being twisted and spun
so many times around the evil axis;
it wrapped itself so like a snake,
coiling to form a battery core, or
a battering ram, it was a battery
waiting assault charges to follow.

Enough is just enough when it wins
according to the standards for game,
that follow no rules for burying bodies
decently, beyond the city gates,
properly, outside decrees of state.
Powell thus blew the Thor-NY job,
blew a horn for a Masque of Red Death,
crept through encrypted silent rooms
and twice played with dice-played dead,
held out their splitting skulls cradled
in a cooked nook of a crooked Kook Book:
a Battery Croaker's HomeLand Reprise.

Thanks for listening,
Well, POW, to none.
Donald L Emerick
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