in terms of being a weatherman
he is wearing the coat of a flash
of lightning through
the fleeing window
this isn’t the weather
he meant when he told everyone nothing
was coming so
prepare to wear
next to nothing
that is the going to be left
his sense of fashion
was always the ridiculous, but this
isn’t funny now
it is cold cold hearted
and bloody wet in his hands
in his hands the umbrellas of handling
their trumpets blown inside out
like lilies lying across the sky
the golden caskets of days coming up
false. you thought you knew
how to parlay a no good into
something better you thought that
is what we all are
capable you were
wrong. in the wrong hands
little greedy red incapable as they are
the covering capped over an unaddressed head-
covering filling with the red
rain of his grab-assing hurricane.
this simple, yet very complicated thing
someone who can
get they jollies
off someone else they loves being happy
getting they own jolly in that
together
someone who can withhold within the complication of
that themselves as the lovers
of love in that is
is
the love we expect of our
leaders who if they love us
expect
of us love and they vote
if it is of us their love.
a Senecan speech
some white people seem to have openings
but no lips they have tongues which
some other people have experienced
as split
some evangelicals have spoken widely
about this
which they yet cannot see themselves
as.
some people vote not with their own mouth
but with what other tongues have french-kissed them with
into office served haute cuisine
some people eat shit
some people hating the darkness of crow
will eat and speak an unanswerable and chilling fire.
what we may have
what we may have for a future
is what we have now
this awful and diminishing
now as all our future to be had
that much less that
this may be all we meant as
a future all we were able to see
when we said
what is this ahead about
meant so much more
but what is this —
mess oh shit
now that we have elected ourselves to
to be
be as our future
that for four more years we will have
maybe to understand our choices as.
to be no less
Copyright © 2025 by Ed Roberson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April, 6, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.