Poem for Today: November 9, 2016

Not writing about pop culture today. I felt it was important to put some thoughts down about election results and our future. Everyone else is writing long, painful, sometimes smart and insightful, essays so I decided to just write a poem.

November 9, 2016

Another date that lives on in infamy

Like December 7, 1941, and 9/11.

81 percent of Americans live in urban areas

19 percent in rural areas.

How could there be enough old, rural, poor and uneducated

To be taken in by the orange pirate?

While the urban, young, diverse future of America

Protests “Not my president”

On the streets of our cities.

Is this “America the mean,” as my friend Charles wrote today?

Now I fear for the future of my grandsons and nieces,

All the young people who woke up today to find

They’d been abandoned by their grands,

Just like the Brexit orphans in Britain.

The question is, how much damage

Can he do in four years?

Is our Bill of Rights in danger?

Most of the world’s despots started out

Being elected to office.

Is the only date we can look forward to

November 2, 2020?

PS to the Founding Fathers:

All respect to you, Sirs, but your idea

For the electoral college should have been left

In the inkpot, never to besmirch your parchment

And our futures.