Terry McCarty

CLASSIC TEXAS

I took a good look around my hometown

of vacant lots and empty buildings

but drove too slow and a policeman followed me

in a police SUV up to a stop sign

where the driver to the right

ran through another stop sign

and the policeman didn't chase that driver

but turned right after we turned left

we then drove to the family home

after passing by junior high

turned into eight-year school

because someone persuaded the town

to close the elementary school

and build what looked like converted trailers

on the junior high property

the billboards on the highway

paint my hometown

as a cozy place

where tourists can exit

and spend an hour or two

once upon a time,

until around 1969,

it qualified as that place

now take a good look around

then see the policeman behind you

and prepare to maybe get a ticket

so the town can have money

to keep breathing

 

THE SPOTS WON’T COME OUT

watched the Seymour Hersh documentary 

and admired his willingness to print truth

in spite of those in power:

My Lai, Abu Ghraib, CIA misdeeds

but when truth is out in public

the powerful object

everyday people look the other way 

the perpetrators only get light punishment 

America is still a contradiction 

less free for more and more people

profiteering more important 

than evil done in its name

while the Senate and House sleep

DONALD TRUMP COSPLAYS KILGORE IN APOCALYPSE NOW

Chicago doesn’t deserve this horrible stupid visual meme 

the city and state should be left alone to cope with crime, 

its root causes and fallout instead of being federally big footed 

One can be disgusted anew by how Donald Trump 

who called soldiers suckers and losers 

and chose to avoid Vietnam not out of principle but expedience 

makes the cobra brain decision to be exploitive 

and again counts on an unthinking unreflective core group 

to wave him through to the next outrage