literature

Ode to Panama

Deviation Actions

Published: Apr 10, 2016

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Literature Text

I am forming a super pac,
And my lobby will be financed by poems and ink;
I don't imagine it will have much influence,
Because poetry is … well, poetry.

Nevertheless,
I will not waste what little I have to work with.

I am tired of silence.
I am tired of black bars
Concealing truth too painful for the news room edit.
Censorship is vandalism.

American politicians sell poems too.
At the surface they sound eloquent,
But I wouldn't pay a dollar for them.

When I turn on the news,
I feel like I’m watching Looney Toons.
The president is Bugs Bunny,
Ted Cruz is Elmer fudd,
Trump is Yosemite Sam,
And Clinton, Pepe Le Pew.

Every one of them is a cartoon.

I refuse to vote anymore,
Because america has nothing to say about the real corruption,
Because the news is a factory of manufactured realities,
Because half the world's money is hidden
Under the mattresses of Panama and Hong Kong,
Because those who initiate the wars sell the guns to fight them,
Because empires float like battleships on seas of tears,
Because those who own the world
Are the children of those who bought it,
Because communism and capitalism are both totalitarian regimes,
Because America is the land of the jailed.

O Panama, O banks of the tropical world,
I love your palm leaves made of euros and dollars,
I love your coconut corruption,
Your prostitutes who moonlight
In the parliaments of the world;
You create taxes on the poor
And give your fruit to the rich.

O Panama,
I want to be rich,
I want to bask in your ocean sunlight.

I should run for congress.
But I am only a powerless one in a book of numbers,
And my vote is a drop in the proverbial spittoon.

I will be rich one day.
I will have an army of supporters.
And their voices will be one loud poem
To censor the obscenities of the super powerful.