In the classroom beneath the stairs
Along the hallway near the doors
Stands the substitute teacher
And all hell has broken loose.
Despite the texting of bad news
He still lectures all with bland glares
He spins the globe in his hands
-- He’s proudest of foreign lands --
But the weary world turns its back 
Wiping chalk dust from its shoes.

Listen up, pupils, open wide
Today I have restored science
To its rightful and lovely place

A spitball is launched from North Korea
China throws milk cartons at the blackboard
Over Persia soars a middle finger
And beneath the metallic ticking clock
Russia gives America an atomic wedgie.
“Marijuana, Tijuana!” shouts a
Blue-haired boy in oily Caracas jeans
“It was an inside job,” sneers the bitter jock
(With all due nine-eleven certainty)
And they all think they’re cleverly daring and edgy.

The substitute never strays from
His teleprompted lesson plan
Picked safe from a cool Blackberry
He lectures all without blinking
About old Churchill and the Brits
About climate change and stem cells
About the vices of earmarks
The vile voices of talk radio
And all the wrong ways of thinking
(Ignoring certain sleeper cells)

But the class cannot listen well 
Mired in economic hell
They’d rather see the principle
Paid on irreducible debt
Than ever show interest
In their always tired mid-terms
Hopeless for the day’s closing bell.


©2009/Bill Gnade

I welcome you to my newest effort -- political poetry or Political Pundoetry. I hope you find it meaningful, helpful, potent, important and, at times, fun.

I have written poetry before, elsewhere, for other reasons. Poetry has often been political, especially in the cafés, the academies, and the more rarefied salons of the political left; also in the lyrics of countless songs played throughout pop-culture. But rarely is political poetry presented as frankly as it is here, especially from a conservative point of view.

A friend of mine, a lesbian liberal poet holding a MFA from one of America's best writing schools, remarked a couple of years ago that the main problem in American poetry is that it is being ruined by the very thing she represents: Unless a poet is homosexual or transgendered, or, ideally, gay, transgendered and Hispanic or Black or Red, getting published is near impossible. And she may be right. But the fact is that poetry is an important medium through which culture is both protected and reformed; that gays and lesbians and minorities are favored by many purveyors of poetry speaks precisely to this fact.

My goal here is to challenge, in part, the current trends in American poetry. I am not admitting in any sense that what I do here is literature: there is a poetry that I prefer to write that leans more to fine art than what will be presented in Political Pundoetry. But I will aim high: I promise that what you find here will not be a waste of words. Or so is my hope.

Let me know what you think. Please.

Peace to you.

Bill Gnade

(also Contratimes.blogspot.com)

Email contact: Contratimes@hotmail.com

A little girl
Barely old enough to dress herself
Or to know evil
Is stolen from her bed

And then raped through the night and
The next day, and then is freed
To the grave, her bogeyman burying
Her alive to smother in muffled
Hope the monster has gone

The family panics, despairs, reels
Lists
Her name and face posted
Waved, distributed to Justice
Everywhere alert
But nothing from the President
The Supreme Court
The compassionate Congress

Someone posts a website
Find The Little Girl Dot Com
All Proceeds Go To The Tireless
Search, We Promise

And Justice finds out it is a fraud
The love of stolen charity

Beneath the posters
The have-you-seen-my-child pleas
Tacked to the board at Wal-Mart
Where no one stops
To look for anything
That doesn’t resemble a bargain
Beneath the Amber signs
Stapled to curbside poles
Holding phone lines full of
Chatter about anything else
From room to room

We hear that there are more
Important things that call us
To attention
Than the trivialities of
Gay marriage
Abortion
Government Spending
Bailouts of imbalanced
Budgets and Graspers
Taking credit for what
They do not deserve

But never, NEVER
Is the abduction of
Children, the rape and
Murder and Live-interment
Of little girls
The MOST IMPORTANT THING
Tell a gay marriage activist
That gay marriage is NOT important
Go ahead, I dare you
And you’ll see that Amber is not
A color anyone cares to see
But they’ll see red over your
Alleged homophobia

And they’ll see green if you bring up
Tax cuts
They’ll see red, white, blue if
You mention the expansion of
War in Afghanistan
They’ll see hate if you aver
Child abuse and abortion
Are interbred “If I could kill
You then why can’t I smack you now?”
The despised offspring of moral incest

They’ll see blue states if
You cede them control of the
Census
And if you don’t see black
The right way then
You’re the wrong color white
Ignoring The Highest Virtue
In All The Land

They’ll trump YOUR BIG ISSUE --
Whatever it is --
With Poverty, with The Increasing Gap
Between Rich and Poor– the be all and end all
Of Social Vices – rebuking your provincial
Greed, your millionaire capitalist indifference
To Ghettos and Slums
Forgetting the savior said
“The poor you’ll always
Have with you.”

But little girls and women
Are not always with us
Shackled, stolen, sent off
To sex camps and consigned
To the Holocaust of the porn
Industry, slaves in some tropical
Paradise for men swollen, turgid
With Cash
Or buried alive with a Teddy
Or Pooh Bear
Or given a necklace of blood or
Gripped by fingers smudging life
With casual forensic evidence

This is never important enough
To fill the President’s teleprompter
He’ll talk about $$$ and $$$
And more $$$
And never EVER mention that
ANOTHER little girl (or boy)
Has met the monster under the bed that
We dismiss with a kiss
It’s only a dream
I have a dream, Mommy
Mommy’s right here
The nightlight never
Bright enough


©Bill Gnade/2009. All rights reserved.

Contratimes

Barney Frankly requests more spending
Fearing the day his King will deny
The petition
On the Hill, they’re all Baracknophobic
Frightened into quiescence by
The Baracktagon;
By the eight-legged stimulus
Stool distended like the Octomom
More kits than teats
To suckle on the wet nurse of
The borrowing State
Re-distributing your hard-earned milk money
But Frank’s constityouwants know
How to shed Barackodile tears
To get their tireless way

Olbermann and Matthews
-- both
Manifestly Sclerotic Newsmen Beneath Contempt
Masking Sedition Naming Barack Caesar
Making Sure Nobody Brings Clarity to the
Obfuscating habits of their Zeit-christ --

Epitomize the News Bending Capacity of
Loyal subjects enamored of their
Own astonishing goodness --
A trickle-down-the-leg Barackonomics –
The best persons in the world!
True believers in their own profoundly Barackative
Thoughts (and Olbermann becomes
Obaman with much self-flattery)

There need not be Obambastic rhetoric
(They’ll say)
Or biting Czarcasm
In this error of change
In the Barackalypse of hope
(Despite the expanding fronts
In northwest Barackistan
And the redeploying of troops
Down to east Yeswecan)

(They’ll say)
Enjoy the Barackanalian orgy
Of spending
Ignore the Barackollapse of
Markets
All’s well that polls well
And it’s all just one big
Party in hell

(He’ll say)

“We shall restore science
to its rightful place”
Which means science will become
Obamastrology – guiding the nation
By the Hollywood Stars  --
and Baracket Science -- the gaseous
Launching of fact toward Algoreisgon
(And we recoil in Algoreaphobia
Or
The fear of the vast space inside
Al Gore’s head)

And then no one will be left
To descry Hussein and who isn’t
(Except perhaps the Weatherman
Who talks of patriotism
But only puts on Ayres)


©Bill Gnade/2009