Today the President

Today the president pronounced another good woman too ugly to fuck.
Today he buddied up to another world-class tyrant.
He lied his way through cake today.

And I thought how hard it must have been in New York City in 1863
when the yellow newspapers used the poor
who couldn’t pay their way out of war
as matches for lighting buildings, black babies,
Lincoln supporters, and the draft board ablaze.

Over in Pennsylvania they’d just interred the last of the Gettysburg dead.

On Broadway and in Union Square they scared up Lincoln-hating mobs
whose coffee was cut with sawdust whose sugar was half sand
who were informed as to how if they let themselves be dragged into Lincoln’s war
big strong stolen slaves, menacing and beautiful, would steal their jobs (though few actually had jobs),
seduce their wives, and rape their daughters.

With no one there to stop them,
inflamed mobs consumed four days in murderous riot,
transportation lines,
freed men,
the buildings where they lived.