POLITICAL Poem: We Shoulda Known, by Eric Hoch

We shoulda known in ‘63 when they killed the President.

We shoulda known in ‘68 when they killed his brother and the King.

We shoulda known in ’70 when they sent thousands to death in ‘Nam.

We shoulda known in ‘80 when they killed John and sucked the heart out of the City.

We shoulda known in ‘03 when Baby Bush destroyed Baghdad and made his buddy Cheney even richer.

We shoulda known America was on its deathbed.

And now there’s a heartless bully in the White House to finish the job.

Our Nero plays golf while millions live in want and fear. (But there are so many people…what is a few million more or less, anyway?)

And the natural world….? Fuck the children. Who cares where they will play?

Lincoln looks out from his memorial, surrounded by his potent and compassionate words engraved on its walls.

He looks over the Washington Monument, to the Capitol building in dismay. They killed him, too.

The faded, fragile originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are still on display under glass in the National Archives. (They might as well burn
them.)

Oh America, my country ‘tis of thee, what have you become?

Black lives don’t matter anymore. What do the Blacks want anyway? They got a museum on the Mall!

And the native peoples…Broken treaties, broken treaties, broken treaties….Those dumbasses believed all of the lies!!! They are just museum pieces now in the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall.

Might as well put ‘em all in the Natural History Museum–such interesting specimens of life they are!

And we, what about us?

Like insects we are: all we need is cars and our phones.

Who needs people when you have cars and the internet?

Who needs to think?

We shoulda known.