Nation of the Walking Dead

I am so outraged by what has happened in the aftermath of Katrina in particular and this perpetually “bad news” presidency that I have written the following poem:


Nation of the Walking Dead

Light a candle,
hold it high,
lament for the this nation of the
walking dead.

Hail to the Chief
a man with about as much capability
as a garden ornament,
as much presence of mind as a bookshelf.

A man who straddles the bodies
of thousands of the drowned and decaying corpses
of Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s poorest
without the slightest suggestion of the recognition
of his own monumental and deadly incompetence.

A man who like a petulant little boy
put on the vestments of Commander-in-Chief,
played with his soldiers as if they were toys and
led the nation into war’s howling vortex.

A man who like a crazed mortician
attempts to put a smiling face on the
tens of thousands of innocent
Iraqi and American dead.

A man who like a mentally deficient child monarch
is manipulated to dance to the
woeful song of the powerful,
who care nothing for the plight of human beings.

Light a candle,
hold it high,
lament for the this nation of the
walking dead.

Hail to the Senators and Congressmen
who have been corrupted by
the feel of money and scent of power,
who care little for the future.

Hail to the people who
move through their lives like zombies and
support those who actively
undermine their own security.

Light a candle,
hold it high,
lament for the this nation of the
walking dead.

Pay homage to the future
for the emotional and environmental
wasteland,
where needless death is merely the
price of poverty and the unavoidable contingency of
progress and the accumulation of wealth.

Light a candle,
hold it high,
send a hopeful dream skyward that
we might awaken from our hapless delusions.