Why Obama, Why Trump

Our route

is

littered with

towns

from Illinois to New Jersey

rundown

broken

spirits crumbled

people-less homes

like

homeless people.

Committed to despair

by

man’s inattention

and

time’s impatience.

Paint peeling on

white picked fences

with rotten posts.

Rusty tractors

decaying in gardens

amidst wildflowers.

Signs reading

‘for sale’,

really saying

‘abandoned’.

Here

its seems

life is stripped down

to

its essence:

survival.

This dilapidation

of America

real

evident

indisputable

sad

revocable?

unplanned

is a crisis.

You ask why

Trump won

the election

The answer

self-evident

in this scape

of rural America.

Just as you had asked

years ago

why Obama had won?

and

I walked

with you thru

inner-city Paterson

with it’s

discarded

human forms

huddled in doorways,

Adult bars

the only businesses open

for commerce,

Fearful people

moving quickly

to comfort scared kids

looking out of keyholes

at

immortality

degeneracy

decline

decay.

There too,

the Signs that read

‘for sale’,

really mean

‘abandoned’.

That breakdown

of

America’s fabric

its promise

its contract…

That dissolution

of the

American dream

in the acid

of fermented racism

had

manifest

into the delusion

and celebration

of

“Yes, we can”!

And now

this dilapidated

American dream

festering

with poverty

and

seething with rage

has manifest

into the delusion

and celebration

of

“Make America great again”!

In his duty

to his most vulnerable

Obama didn’t succeed.

In the rescue

of his most fragile supporters

Trump likely won’t.