American Quartet

      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