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

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