USA Election Poem ~ October 30, 2024
Served with a ramekin of zesty ranch,
a human arm. This is the city
of big butts and bigger gyatts.
Of the sunrise over Gyatt Mountain
I taste baby powder, sulfur, regret.
“How long did it take to get here?”
“How long has the clock been stuck
at 3:07 PM?”
Pew says “about two-thirds (66%)
of the voting-eligible population
turned out for the 2020 presidential
election.” Yet somehow we’re divided
perfectly in half like a clay spaghetti
tennis court?!
From space your broken toe looks
terrible, and your heartache worse,
and your piñata full of lukewarm
bile, bluegray Kisses and ill-
conceived haiku is exploding
errant syllables everywhere and a moral ~
a moral is an egg
on a green enchilada flopped
over easy.
PS: “Only a creative mind can make use of hope” – Jericho Brown
~~~
USA Election Poem 2 ~ November 3, 2024
Out in the desert I found a TRUMP sign
beside Pat Garrett’s death site.
Immediately came the metaphor making:
TRUMP’s the lawman that killed Billy the Kid.
Which makes Billy the Kid the Kamala.
Which makes me the one
on the high ground,
top of the hill, who killed Sheriff Pat Garrett.
Suzanne said the man
who put the TRUMP sign there
wasn’t making a metaphor, but if he was,
TRUMP would be Billy the Kid haunting his killer, dancing on the cross
carved into concrete, singing lawmen die,
outlaws never do.
In a stroke of switcheroo,
I pulled the TRUMP sign
from Pat Garrett’s death site
and placed it on the nearest abandoned car:
a modern sport coup in sparkly blue,
blown out from the inside,
a cartel job or something worse,
the windshield glittering like a magic carpet
across the dash, the frontend chopped
completely off.
Maybe the man who put the TRUMP sign
beside Pat Garrett’s death site
is the island of trees, some up to 30 feet,
standing out in a circuitry of arroyos
and offroads
and powerline service roads,
and maybe these 2 roadrunners
scrambling across the trail are you and me,
and maybe the creosote
rattled by the breeze
remains undecided.
~~~
USA Election Poem 3 ~ November 4, 2024
I’m just writing this poem instead of eating highlighters, chewing gum foil, raisins, or Sylvia’s halloween candy.
This afternoon I wrote “environment”, “change”, and “open border” on a piece of scratch paper in a column labeled BIG. I wrote in pen so it’s permanent.
Most Americans vote for their team, despite this season’s roster. Team captains come and go, mascots are always silly, it’s the score that counts.
Ronald Reagan played right guard for the O AND the D. Yes, he played for Eureka from 1929 to 1931 but none of the plays were of his design.
How could my poem ride a bike up a steep hill and benefit your heart? We don’t need to argue anymore about whether the songbird is pleased with its singing. Sylvia says ants have more brain cells than any other insect.
My student said “coach said if you don’t cheat, are you really trying to win?” A plastic drinking straw, a missing screwdriver with a long silver shaft, boxes of dead batteries and blown bulbs atop the fridges overflowing.
PS: Coach said he doesn’t like Hail Mary.
~~~
USA Election Poem 4 “the donkaphant” ~ approximately 9 PM, November 5, 2024
The donkaphant’s middle finger is so tall it comes all the way around
to make a circle
of middle-finger-fellowship.
I tried getting away from the donkaphant, as soon as I started crossing ~ the bright upright
red hand of halt!!
write enough poems
economics stop
driving your vote.
I saw a man leaving Albertsons today, staring at a single red rose, utterly dumbfounded ~ he had the telltale gait and demeanor of the donkaphant.
I let the donkaphant rumble with dust bunnies, let it tussle with sourdough crumbs, then I let it out with the dogs and mopped the kitchen with vinegar, lukewarm tap and cobalt qualms.
you can let the donkaphant kiss you good night, but no tongue!
~~~
USA Election Poem 5 “I always forget that u in fabulous” ~ November 8,2024
What’s supply and demand have to do with the dead Mediterranean gecko on the key card reader to get into my school?
The little baby froze to death with his eyes wide open last night, the mountains are dusted with snow, how cute.
You want me to care about all the dead people everywhere else when somehow, this little Mediterranean gecko is stiff with his black onyx eyes wide-open, dull enough to reflect my silhouette. I touched its tail. It did not move.
I walked to the library, but it was closed. I wanted coffee, not books, not words, just the liquid oubliette of drug.
What’s supply and demand got to do with all this dying? Why do I feel like crying, when it’s just a dumb old Mediterranean gecko ~ you can tell by his name he doesn’t belong here.
I voted. I got a little sticker for voting. I put the sticker in my car’s cup holder. When my team lost, I put the sticker on my dumpster ~ supply and demand ~ how poetic.
~~~
poet’s note ~ 1 PM, November 11, 2024 : I’ve been wondering what it was about this 2024 presidential election that inspired so many poems from me and also, what inspired me to so feverishly share them on social media? I write everyday but rarely post my poems. Perhaps it was that many people had the election on their minds, and I wanted to capitalize on that possible interested audience? Did I finally have a built-in audience like a Grateful Dead cover band? Perhaps the thought of another 4 years of Trump scared me, and then when it was made clear that most of our country voted Republican, I went from scared to empty. 2 of my poetry heroes, James Tate and Anne Waldman, both say that writing while exhausted can bring about sometimes great but typically surprising work as it bypasses ego; perhaps that’s what happened with me, perhaps my tiredness of all things Trump led to an explosion of poetry that superseded ego.
I wrote the first poem with my students throughout the day, and it came about automatically and was brimming with joy. I trusted the automatic and joyful nature of it immediately. When a poem comes fast, a poet feels it may be a gift from the poetry gods. What’s the old adage, never look a gift poem in the mouth? This poem wasn’t edited or revised for meaning or sound or any of that.
The second poem is one that has been brewing for over a year. What I mean is I have been wanting to finish a poem about the Pat Garret death site ever since I first visited it last year. It really is 2 miles directly South of my school, out in the desert. I went back to the site this year on November 3, and saw the Trump sign, and I really did remove it and place it in a destroyed vehicle. After the first draft, I returned to my journal from a year ago to see if I could cherry pick some lines about my first visit to the death site, which I did. Finally I had enough components to play with in a poem and I went for it. I made a few changes and them posted. I didn’t fiddle with it forever, like I do most my other poems, because election poems are urgent, and will rot and fester in the sun if left unattended.
The third poem was a way for me to push my idea that we only vote for our team. As an artist who feels shit, as someone who roots for the losers, how else can I rationalize the majority of my country’s electorate without separating Trump from the Republican party? Americans handle their political party the same way they handle their favorite NFL team; for example, most Americans only care about football during football season, see how easy the comparison?
The forth poem came on the evening of voting day. Results were not in yet, and I didn’t know that Trump was winning. This poem was an escape from waiting, as perhaps, all poems are. I thought the AI image of the donkaphant was funny. Instead of pulling away into hateful division, I went the other direction. Instead of using heated hyperbole (which was a common move by other social media poets), I used trippy, and hopefully humorous, juxtaposition. I didn’t want to write anything I would feel embarrassed about with my community members, coworkers and students if Trump won.
After I learned Trump won I withdrew into my non-poetic self. I got numb and tired and irritable and had zero energy for students, and even less for loved ones. I did not write one word from Wednesday morning to Friday morning, which is rare for me. I wondered at the time, why? Mary Ruefle talks about how we write poems when we are distressed but sometimes we don’t; why do we sometimes write when distressed and sometimes shut down our writing when distressed? Perhaps I was empty somehow emotionally, especially after having written 4 poems already that week. Was I too sad, too shocked, too incredulous, too mad, too disappointed to write? I walked into school Friday and saw that dead lizard by the door and became very emotional about it. I couldn’t handle that dead lizard. Then I was in my classroom before school doing my daily meditation and core strengthening and I was asked to spell “fabulous”, I kept spelling it in my head with 7 letters, forgetting that “u” in the middle. WOW. I always forget the u (u = you) in fabulous. That was the spark and then whole poem just poured out. So even though I wan’t writing on Wednesday and Thursday my subconscious never unplugged the hotplate, and once I met some requisite number of poetic ingredients (images, ideas, good lines) I just mixed it quickly and served cold.
I share these 2024 election day poems on my personal site today so we can remember what went down according to one human’s inner life. That’s what poetry is, the inner life. When it comes to someone’s inner life, you have nothing but your own to compare it to. Elections are the outer life. We, you and me, are the gray area stuck in-between but with poetry we can grease ourselves up to slip the shackle of boring old polarization.
Tim Staley, poet 