ON READING LAWRENCE O’DONNELL IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

Chicago exorcists of the curse of Hue,

the children’s choice seemed so simple and so clear:

To purge and burn the stench of their parents’ sins

as voyeurs in Johnson/Nixon’s daisy chain.

Even as torrents of TV blood and horror

entombed the country’s slumbering shame and guilt

beneath accumulations of mud and silt,

they nurtured the nation’s worst hotel murders.

“So, whose side are you on?” A binary pick –

The side of the assassins or the martyrs.

And which will you be, the muck or the water?

Heedless moral passion or cowardly check?

Dump the Hump! Make Love Not War! Get Clean for Gene!

Tune In, Drop Out! Trust no one Over 30!

New! Improved! Eliminate Parental Dirt!

Alas. We knew not the problem’s in our genes.

-- Duane Vorhees