I watched the Trump acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last night until it put me to sleep with its repetitious nonsense phrases like “No one has ever seen anything like it before.” How many times has he used that line? What does it mean? The rambling stream-of-consciousness parade of grievances and lies and non sequiturs finally drove me to turn off the television even as I futilely waited almost an hour, I think, to learn how he would conclude this oratorical meander through a maze of incoherent and dangerous assertions unsupported by any serious factual underpinnings or logical analysis.
Urged recently by some good friends to roll out a surrealistic poem I first published on this blog in September 2020, when the nation was at the same crossroads we face yet again, I am republishing what appears below. I had been thinking about it anyway, but last night settled the matter.
The Eyes Have It
I might have thought by now
you would have found the exit
from the hall of mirrors.
But no. You are mesmerized
by its dreamy distortions,
imprisoned by its illusions.
Perception arises from wave
lengths and shadows, reflections
against a shifting surface.
Tall becomes short, wide
becomes narrow. Eyes bulge,
then shrink into shocked sockets.
You must linger to feed the hunger.
Within the funhouse walls,
where the insecure, the paranoid,
the narcissistic control the asylum,
the Great Sphincter,
sustained by his Ras Putin coterie,
emits his daily surprises
to the surprise of no one
but the angry, the gleeful gullible,
the sheep led to COVID slaughter
while wildfires consume the hallways.
Is the funhouse aflame?
Now that changes the climate
amid the melting glass
of the deteriorating mirrors.
Alas.
Jim Schwab