The Government is Lying to You and Trying to Kill You (or, I Tried to Write an Aubade but Wrote This Instead)
If the government doesn’t kill me
I’ll choke on my own bile
Alone, forsaken, reviled.
In the Springtime of My Dystopia
There were signs. There were warnings.
We were too in love to pay much attention.
It was merely some background noise,
some clatter, inconvenient clutter.
What were those politicians droning on about?
Overly made-up talk show hosts harping on about
nonsense, trivialities, invented crises.
Grown men wearing the flag like a toga
or burning it in acts of performance art largesse.
If you ever want the Ellis Island experience circa 1907, swing into the Chicago City Clerk’s office in Portage Park. The number of different accents is loads of fun and reminds you of the shared American Experience, which is that city bureaucracy is no fun for any of us.