Liberal Elite

Shad Hasley

He
wonders, gripping the shoulder-straps
of his skewed black backpack, walking
to the station, brow mapping his
indignation, lips half-mouthing
his thoughts, ears and forehead inclined
to the pavement
like a radar
dish tuned to the inscrutable
EM static of the planet,

Where the hell he is headed, and

What this fucking country is, but
some transient self-styled hero
like a small time football player
who ends up selling used guzzlers
to senile seniors and sixteens –
obese in midst of mid-life,
reminiscing the victories,
hopped up on a heady cocktail of
daily dose Cialis, men’s hair
dye, and truth/dare millionaire game shows:

Genius,
original sprung from the romantic
minds of immaculate fathers.

He
grins, musing momentarily
about escape
from the vertigo
fatigue he feels, witness to the
flash-frames of twenty-four hour globe-
wide media and the ghost image
etchings they crap on his cortex;

Tonight when he tunes in auto,
manic, to Stewart and Colbert
and laughs
like some macho jack
cheering a fist fight, to avoid
plucking out his own tail feathers.

He
quickly though, returns to furrows,
when he recollects the spotlight
on logical fallacies, like:
the notion REAL America
exists where most people don’t go
and town-hall-style debates kill smear
campaigns and if gays legally
marry then parents won’t have rights,

Merely fuels his blood-shot madness.

And as he
steps on the bus rattling his skull
to the sounds of a too loud cell
conversation about how, “he
said, she said, oh MY god,
Really?”
and whose undergarments ended up
where,
his reflection cast, encased
as he is by tinted glass, the
familiar glare, seems alien,

Makes him feel like a terrorist