Author Archives: le garage

Taking The Homeless Census by Alexis Ivy

“Taking The Homeless Census by Alexis Ivy: ISBN: 978-1-947817-14-2; Published by Saturnalia Press and Winner of Saturnalia Books Editor’s Prize.”

I read this marvelous book of poetry three times upon receiving it. It’s no wonder to me that her Crown of Sonnets named “The A-Street Shelter: A Crown of Sonnets” won the 2018 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship In Poetry prize.

“Taking The Homeless Census” brings the reader into the world of homelessness with a jolt. One can tell that Alexis Ivy has been in this world in more ways than one. As a worker in the Albany Street Shelter, her heart was touched deeply by what she experienced.

We’ll let her own words speak for her, direct from this award winning book.


1.

Past their home, I came to poetry,
their home where I shout Female on the floor
whenever I enter, I have come to see
who’s turned blue, turned dead, where there’s a fight
to de-escalate. If someone’s feet
stink, there’ll be blood, and I don’t want
to circle “guest assault”, write out neat
and tidy Restriction with my name. Taunted
Troublemaker gets high, Medicine Taker
breathes unevenly in bed ten, the leaden
light stays on, bed no one wants. Tyler,
shit-kicked for the way he snores. New beds
given each day, Pick a chip from the tin.
No one’s at home here: No one’s in.

2.

No one’s at home here: No one’s in.
The cook thinks, they can only get one plate, it’s
the drunks who try for two, bread stuffed in
their pockets ‘cause she starves us. Dinner is
served early-bird with outbursts: that was my
seat, everyone pushing to the front of the line,
one man’s face pressed into the greens and fried
mashed potatoes she’s undercooked. For lunch,
donated sandwiches. She’ll wait a day so
she can serve them stale. One table of men
are given okra and corn, pie. She’ll slice a whole
smiling melon into six pieces for them.
Their afros, cut the same: so statuesque
as clean as their cocaine. They deal the best.

3.

As clean as their cocaine. They deal the best
on the first of the month—street queen Gail buys
it all for her pimp with her SSI check,
smiles until the last hit then her eyes
are hungry again. And here comes Pete
robbed a market when he opens up
his backpack, drunk on Vodka, he sleeps
it off in a chair. The girl they call Trollop
signed up for Disability. I knew
her bloating was from Hep C. She leaves
the mice her bread crumbs, it’s their home too.
Mice in the male room, mice in the beef’s grease.
So much for free when you are living in
the shelter. Paying for every minute of it.


That’s just the first three pieces of her Crown of Sonnets; if you want the next 12 pieces, you’ll have to buy Alexis Ivy’s book. I’ve seen it on Amazon but with the ISBN I’ve provided you can order it at one of your local bookstores such as the Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Booksellers, or Trident Books which is on Newbury Street. Alexis Ivy has traveled the Homeless Road from many directions. She no longer needs a street map; she’s paid for every minute of it. She’s the co-dependent angel of the streets and her poems are the wings on her back. Ivy grows in heaven; but her wings are singed from the fires of hell.

Taking The Homeless Census is the best book of poetry I’ve read in years. Alexis Ivy walks with Lew Welch and his book Ring of Bone; travels with poet Jack Spicer, the man who’s dying words were, “My vocabulary did this to me.” Spicer also said that “poets are the dictation machine of the gods.” Alexis Ivy could be that and also the dictation machine of the devil. If you are a lover of Martin Espada’s poetry, you will dance to the tune of Alexis Ivy’s poetry in both of her books: Romance With Small Time Crooks and her award winning book Taking The Homeless Census.

And I’ll let the words of Alexis Ivy finish this review.


The Poem, an Ars Poetica

Poems come to me smelling of trashcan fire
and whiskey. The smell I am to launder
off. And I give each a bed roll. It’s my
life. Full-time. I live in this smell. I conjure
this smell, sleep with this smell. I can’t
write another sonnet. These poems, homier,
like to camp with a blanket on public cement.
Poems believe in no rules. Ruleless is cozier,
and so the poems stay with me, where they’re
not held accountable for making my bed, being
responsible. I thought I could write them
asleep in my unmade bed. Every evening
they strike my last match—burnt, sulphury,
needy. I need them to revise the fire in me.


But I’m a poet too so I’m also a liar. Alexis Ivy’s poems are valuable gems; will they buy her a ring? Will they fill her bank account? Probably not, unless every one who loves poetry, in this world, buys her book. She gave me one book; I’ll buy two; one for me; one for you. Taking The Homeless Census is the best book on the street. I ought to know; I’m not only a poet—I come from the streets Alexis Ivy writes about.

All We Are Saying

The world we live in has been rocked by crisis after crisis. First the Coronavirus slipped in amongst us, taking, at first, the most vulnerable populations from our nursing homes, Veterans’ Homes, Senior Living Facilities and then attacking the people who have the least access to medical care because they are financially stressed, Black and Latino, and many of them are on the front lines of our essential work force.

Workers in the food industry, nurse’s aides, nurses, Emt’s and even, yes, I’ll say it—the police. Despite the blue wall, I believe that most of the police really care about what they are doing. This is a strange period where the police and the people they are tasked to protect have found themselves at odds with each other. These are strange times indeed.

Now we have the brazen, thoughtless, sociopathic killing of George Floyd, caught on camera. A white police officer kneeling on his neck while he cried out, “I Can’t Breathe,” for close to nine long minutes. I watched this on my computer at first and I could not believe my eyes, yet I know my eyes were not lying to me.

The United States of America went wild! Because the police officer wasn’t arrested right away, as he should have been, and his 3 fellow officers went free when they should have been arrested for complicity in this horrendous murder which took place on camera for all to see. The four police were fired but big deal!

When is enough enough? How many Black citizens have to die before a broken system is altered to make it possible for Black men and women to feel safe in our country? Obviously, I am not the only one who feels this way because the people of our land took to the streets in protest.

Yes, there was violence. But the majority of the people protesting were peaceful and many of them engaged in public prayer on their knees for the 8 and ½ minutes that it took one sociopathic police officer to slowly, on film, choke the life out of George Floyd while he begged for him to stop and called desperately for his mother in between his statement, “I Can’t Breathe.”

When this happens to one Black man, then it is happening to all sentient beings across the land and it is our duty to speak up and pray and protest because next “they” will be coming for us. Unfortunately, at this time, we have a President who cares only for himself and has no compassion for the people of our fine land.

He says, “Make America Great Again,” yet our country, flawed though it is, has always been sown with greatness. Yet through our land are people who feel that they are more entitled than others because of the color of their skin. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?

There are the Amy Coopers’ of our land, walking her dog without a leash in Central Park, which is against the law, and when a Black man asks her politely to “leash the dog” she threatens him and calls the police saying that a Black man is threatening to attack her. The Black man was lucky that he was a well-known “birder” who was often seen in the park. Just lucky instead of shot dead!

Now the streets of our cities are full of people of all races, religions, ethnic background, from Black to white to yellow to red; who are marching in our cities and towns because they have seen this horror of police brutality of our Black and dark skinned folks be struck down over and over.

George Floyd is just the tip of the iceberg. There was Breonna Taylor, executed by gunshot, while resting in her own home due to a mistaken “no knock warrant,” killed because the police went to the wrong address. The list of names of Black men and women killed unjustly is endless. The police almost always escape unscathed. In 2019, data from the National Academy of Sciences showed that Blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be slain by police than whites.

I have a Black friend, who wishes to remain nameless, who went out to get a pizza, wearing a mask as the law requires, and when he came out of the pizzeria there were two police vehicles parked by his car on this quiet suburban business district. Nothing happened but it could have gone deadly had the wrong police been in those cars.

The people are in the streets calling desperately for change while our red-headed idiot of a president tweets, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” and calls for the authorities to get the vicious dogs ready to attack the demonstrators, peaceful or not.

The times are ripe for change and for our country to recognize the rights of Blacks, Latino’s and others who are just trying to survive in a place where a minority of Nationalist’s exist and think they are more entitled than others and can kill with impunity. Some of them are police, unfortunately.

So the good people of America march and pray, while a minority of them attack police, loot stores and throw Molotov cocktails. This is not the message that the people desire. As John Lennon said, before a gunman cut him down, “All we are saying, is Give Peace A Chance—All we are saying, is Give Peace A Chance.”

We can’t say it enough. Will the horrific event, the killing of George Floyd by someone who was tasked to protect us be the final straw that breaks the back of the inbred racism of our country? Pay attention please. “All we are saying, is Give Peace A Chance.”

Stolen Lives

 

“For George Floyd: The whole World was watching”*

Shawn Mottram, killed dead on October 12, 1998 by
what Trooper Joseph Stone said was an accidental
shot when he slipped while climbing a chain
link fence with gun in hand. A kill shot.
Stone shoots so well by accident that he can split
a bullet in the air with a second bullet fired
from the same gun. A spokesman for the State
Police, Lieutenant Maloney, that sounds a lot
like baloney, said the shoot was unintended,
an “unintentional discharge”, not to give unwanted
life, but to take that life. Like, he didn’t mean to do it.
Now the officer, a stone of a man, is distraught
and needs counsel so he can go on.
Go on with his life, which he still has.

Fred Mottram, the father of he who was accidentally
direct-kill-shot-dead asks, “Why was the trooper’s gun
out?” Answer. Guns work better when
removed from holster. Shawn, unarmed, shot dead in the
heart through his back, had nothing to say.
The Mass Stated Police will investigate,
giving Officer Stone three days off, with pay.

Joseph Sanchez, 15, killed June 21, 1996 by police
from CRASH unit in Los Angeles. Shot in the back.

Hong Byong Chul, 40, killed May 10, 1996 by LAPD for making
noise, banging on signs, and yelling while
running in the street. After being beaten,
drop-kicked in the neck by police, he died of what a police spokes,
another Public Relations Lieutenant, said was natural causes.

Abner Louima, 30, not dead yet but not for lack
of police effort, had the wooden rod of a toilet
plunger rammed up his rectum by Brooklyn
Police. Everyone denied everything but the shit
was on the plunger.

Antonio “Tony” Gutierrez, 14, killed dead on
July 29, 1995 by one Officer Falvo, shot in
the back. The eternal-omni-present Police
Spokes said the boy pointed a gun
at the police and then threw it away when
the bullets were flying yet there were no finger
prints on the gun and, since he was shot in the back,
it was obvious he was pointing it
at them from over his shoulder, an old
party trick he had learned from hanging with
William Tell, Wild Bill Hickok, and William
Burroughs. Tony was buried, the investigation
was buried; Officer Falvo, after a thorough internal
investigation, was promoted.

Leon Fisher, 23, shot twice and pepper-sprayed
by police while hand-cuffed in Nashville, Tennessee
for running from a traffic stop, died
of his injuries while police stood by and chatted.
Leon, a Black man, spilled his hand-cuffed life
Into the street.
The Nashville mayor denied any racial component to the kill. No cops
were disciplined and the Police Spokes was seen smiling and nodding
as the video tapes were spinning.

There was a man in Baltimore
shot dead while standing still.
There was a man in Springfield, Mass kicked
in the head while cuffed.
There was a woman in Los Angeles shot
twice in the chest and seven times
in the back. Some of the bullets
had mushroomed.
This means those bullets had been fired at her
while she was lying on her face.

There was a man, there was a woman,
there was a man, there was another man,
there was a woman, all dead, all Black, and the police
just walk away and the results of the investigations
are always the same. Always the same.

Spoked Maloney, in Massachusetts, after
Officer Stone killed Shawn Mottram, said
there were other officers nearby. He declined
to say what they saw. There will be

an investigation and then, as usual,
the police will get away with murder.

*published in 2011 in Liberation Poetry, An Anthology edited by Tontongi and Jill Netchinsky—showing this has been going on a long long time.”

Resiliency: A Moment In An Addict’s Time

If I made funny noises and ran around the room, I wouldn’t have to tell the therapist anything. I know my mother told him I wet the bed all the time. But no one else knows about the boy who said he would play doctor and stuck the stick up my rectum. And no one else knows about the baby sitter who had a boyfriend who did things to me with a banana. I was only nine and I lived in my head. It wasn’t safe. My mother went to therapy too. When I asked her why, she told me it was because I was sick. She told me I hated my father. I remember crying when she told me that and I made up my mind that I would hate her too. But most of all, it was me. It was me that I hated most of all. I just wanted to shut my mind off but the dials were inside my head. It was 1954.

If someone had said to me, in June of the year of my graduation from high school, that I would have a rat’s chance at being alive in the year 2005 I might have swished my tail at them, pulled at my whiskers and said, “The life span of a junkie, dipped in a vat of heated depression molasses, struck hard with a severe anxiety disorder that simulated heart attacks is guaranteed to be shorter than a man with a heart condition shoveling snow while gasping for breath in between drags of a Camel non-filter cigarette who’s idea of a rest break is a quick shot of cocaine and heroin administered intravenously, and then back at it again.” So then, the question is, “what kinds of events have been most stressful for me,” has many answers.There is a knock at the door. I go to it, see that it is a policeman, run to the bathroom with my two grams of pure amphetamine, think about flushing them because I am already wired tighter than Harry Harlow’s dangling monkey in the pit of despair, but snort them rapidly instead. Two hours later I am hooked to an intravenous flow of Valium. I sleep 36 hours, eat for the first time in days, then fall back asleep again. I wake up 20 hours later, they tell me I need to go to a drug program, I sign AMA papers and leave. Customers have been waiting.

Angela is a big dyke. She is loaded on codeine based cough syrup and Doriden, just like me. We are sitting on stools at a diner in West Orange, New Jersey. I watch her as she eats two more Doriden. Suddenly she falls off her stool, she can’t stand up, everyone in the diner is watching us, she is attempting to tell me something but I can’t understand her, a string of drool spills from one corner of her mouth onto my shirt as I lurch for the door of the diner, bearing her weight is a terrible chore, I can barely bear my own, I drop her, she giggles as I hoist her up on my shoulder again, we are almost at the door, I stumble and Angela pulls some more pills out of her pocket and attempts to eat them, I say “hey, you’re going to get us busted” and just then the plainclothes dicks burst into the diner with a bunch of bluecoats. I try to explain that my girlfriend just got sick and we’re going home, we just need help to get to the car and all of a sudden the handcuffs are on both of us, Angela is calling the cops “a bunch of pig-mother-fuckers” and I realize that we’re not going to be able to talk our way out of this. I have been eighteen years old for three days but I’ve been high on pills and cough syrup and heroin for almost a year and a half without missing a day. Seven bottles of Robitussin-A-C, a blank stolen pad of prescriptions and a pocket full of seconals and Doriden and all I’m going to get is a back-room beating and a phone call seven hours later. Angela lights her mattress on fire in her cell. It is 1964.

I’m weaving down Interstate 91 with 70 bags of heroin and 9 bottles of methadone with 90 milligrams in me in my pick-up truck. I side-swipe a car and I hear the horn blowing and I’m wide-awake now with my foot pressed to the gas pedal. I can’t even look at the speedometer because I’m swerving in and out of the traffic so fast. I’m in the moment because I know that if I get caught I’m going to back to jail faster than you can say, “you’re busted mother-fucker” and I’m still in Connecticut but I’m turning off 91 onto Interstate 84 and I slow down to the speed limit and I’m so frightened that my foot on the gas pedal is doing the bounce-bounce beyond my control. I’m not high anymore, or if I am I’m not aware of it. I pull into a rest area and run in, piss, grab a coffee, and head into Peterborough, New Hampshire, where my wife works the night shift at a group home. The four older women, they called them retarded back then, are asleep and my “buddy” Ritchie is waiting in his truck outside. I told him not to wait, that I would call him, but you know how it is, I had asked him to keep me company for the ride to New York City, but he had other things to do but he’s been waiting for me right there for hours. 20 of the bags are his, he gave me the money in advance, his money paid for his twenty and twenty of mine. The women are sleeping and Sascha tells us to keep it down; everybody is dumping dope in the cookers, I tell them to only do one because the dope is killer, the best on the streets of the city and now the best in Peterborough. Sascha sneaks a second bag into the cooker, and I’m feeling the rush and finally leaning back to relax, when I hear the death rattle and Sascha drops to the floor. “Richie, Richie, help me,” I yell, and I pick Sascha up and she’s not breathing as Richie grabs his dope off the table, looks at me with heavy-lidded pinned eyes and says, “I’m outta here,” and he is. Cold showers, beating on her chest, wiping the puke she’s choking on from her mouth and trying to get a breath in her; she wakes up, says I’m all right and her eyes roll up all white as she drops to the floor again. I pick her up and shake her, throw the door open and drop her in the snow; she jumps up, she’s knows she’s in trouble and starts to run around with a wild expression on her face but then she drops again like a beheaded chicken and I drag her back in, I don’t even notice the cement walk is ripping her nails out of her bare feet until later, I do CPR and pray; I can’t call for help with fifty bags of heroin and I’m not gonna flush them. It’s three hours later and she’s breathing normally. She looks at her feet and says, “Fuck, what the hell did you do?” and I just look at her and tell her “I told you to only do one, but you never listen.” “Why didn’t you just let me die, it would’ve been easier,” she says and I tell her “You didn’t act like you wanted to die.” It’s 1984 now.

I skipped the part in 1986 where, twisted on methadone and benzo’s, I flipped my pick-up truck and Sascha broke her back. I had a major head injury but that’s what I started with since I was a child.

In 1998 on December 7th, no one was there to bring Sascha back. They found her alone in a bathroom with the needle still in her arm. On December 8th I turned 53 years old.

I didn’t skip 1991 where I got hit by the pickup truck doing 65 miles an hour on the shoulder lane while I worked on my motorcycle. That’s in another story I call Getting Fixed in South Carolina.. The guy holding the flashlight for me died instantly. I smoked a Camel non-filter while I waited for the ambulance when I wasn’t blacked out.

I’ve had one or two really good counselors, quite a few that didn’t really measure up and some that just filled the room. I’m a counselor myself now. There are those that say I’m good. I don’t know what they say behind my back. I hope I help.

I still remember what I used to think when I was sick. Actually that helps me as a counselor because when you say you’re not ready to quit shooting dope, I know exactly what you mean.

The biggest obstacle I ever faced was my mind.

What makes me hopeful about the future is how much I have changed in the face of adversity. What scares me most about the future is what I can’t see yet.

I can count on my fingers. I can count on my teachers. I can count on myself, but only if I’m there. It’s 2005 now. It’s almost 2006, but I’m not there yet.

When God Blinks

When God Blinks*

“taken from records kept by Nazi’s at the Death Camps”

I

In A Jewish Home in Poland, 1942

It is I Moishe, hiding under the stairs. Those men
they search the house. Bruce, whom I told to stay
hidden no matter what, is only five and did not
listen. He has crept out from under the stairs,
a young boy, his tears are enough to show
me that, for him, the game has gone on
long enough. One man, a German who
worked at their medical clinic has
taken Bruce by the arm, walking
him away like one would do
with bad boys, takes out
his gun and presses it
cold and deadly to
my brother’s neck,
fires it, then
I, Moishe,
ten years
old, I cry
out with
tears.

II

I Search For Jews, Poland 1942

You ask how I could do this, do these deeds
every day? Take for example the young
Jew, you say only a boy, just five years
old. But little boys grow up to be Jews,
men of strange clothes and habits, it
only looks like a boy, but it is less
than human, so I take it by the
arm, walk the Jew away from
the stairs, take the gun
out, press the barrel
to the Jew’s neck,
fire once, wipe
the blood
from my
gun.

III

The Jewish Gravedigger, Lomazy, Poland 1942

The heat is oppressive on this day in Lomazy.
I dig this giant pit with others while my wife
and son wait, guarded by Germans on the
athletic field, where we once ran and
played. The Germans have brought
us all out and they stand and walk
about, posturing and posing for
photos. I know they mean to
kill us, but perhaps if I dig
this grave for my friends
and relatives they will
let me and my family
live. Perhaps if I dig
they won’t kill us
all. I will pray
as I dig that
God will
not let
this
be.

IV

The Jews In The Pit, Lomazy Poland 1942

The damned Ukrainians have become too drunk to shoot
straight so now the lot of shooting the filthy Jews in
the pit has fallen to us. We have been ordered to
climb down into the pit where the Jews lay with
heads shattered like melons by those bullets
of the Hiwis, some of them still thrashing
about because the drunken bastards
have not shot well. We’re too good
to climb about in the blood and the
muck. We have decided to make
the Jews just climb in and stand
against each wall inside the pit
while we stand on opposite
sides and kill them with
our crossfire. Every
half-hour we will
change and give
our comrades
a turn to
kill the
Jews.

V

The Old Man’s Prayer

Dear God, I am old and have served well, I have kept
the Sabbath and the High Holy Days, fasted on Yom
Kippur, eaten unleavened bread on Pesach, why do
you make me run under a gauntlet of German
clubs to a pit dug by my sons where I will be
forced to lie face down on my brethren,
fellow Jews dead or screaming, to have
the cold gun placed to the back
of my head. Maybe to
die well, Lord,
that is all I
can ask.
Amen.

*First published in Jewish Affairs, Winter 1999. “After The Holocaust” Print Media Association of South Africa

Cane, Step, Cane

for Mary Esther, A resurrection

She walks on the beach
alone, a solitary walk. The cane
is in her right hand. She bends

close to the water, picks something
out of the sand. She is out of
my clear vision now, blurred

with my glasses off, I still know
it is her. The cane is a part
of her. It was a part of

her mother too. Sometimes
when she walks ahead of me
I can see her mother

appear suddenly, then she
becomes my wife again, yet something
has shifted, in time, this place

is new for the both of us. In the
villages of Viet Nam family members
die, but they never leave. I stare

out at the ocean. There are
shadows on the water, spirits
walk the beach, step, cane, step.

Breaking The Piano


For Princess Diana, R.I.P.

Things don’t always break
up as easy as anticipated. The metal,
the metal springs at the heart
of it cause all the trouble. Or the wood,
or the keys, not the hammer or
the instrument of destruction. Killing
what we don’t want anymore, or killing
what we want so much, even the
photographers keep a record of the
dying of the music. Running

her to ground in a tunnel
screaming fly motorcycles or sledgehammers
in the underground of some unknown
cellar, things never break up like
we thought they would. How many
to build a piano, how long, how
many to build a kingdom, the keys
of ivory will not play this
tune. A piano song

for the princess, just this piano,
sledgehammers on ivory, this is
how we break, not easy but
hard under the earth, dark tunnels
dark basements dark minds. No one
knew this was coming, not the piano,
for her it was all a surprise, the crash
is the last tune she plays. The sound
of it will ring in dark places forever
long after it is gone. Memory

plays the heart like a hammer, this
is how we play the piano. Hard,
in the dark place, wanting it we break
it down into shatters, then carry
the pieces off into places, put them
in memories where the dust
falls like snow.

By The Throat

“for my mother, who was still alive”

My addiction has me by the throat
in the neck of my mind. Do crime,
do crime, it says, get some money.
My therapist tells me that’s the voice
of my father. What I want to know
is why the fuck is he walking
around in my head? I’d like to stick
a gun in my ear, pull the trigger,
blow him out the other ear
but the bullet will take me
instead. I can see him smiling
right now, sitting with his dumb
bimbo bitch by the side of the pool
at the condo. I have to remember
what the truth is, the truth is
it’s all in my head, when I take
heroin the voice shuts up for a while
but the shouting really begins
when the dope wears off. Then my
addiction has me by the throat, but
this time I’ll stick my finger down
my throat, gag that mother-fucker
right up, puke his punked piss-ass
onto the sidewalk and walk on
down the road like he was never there.
Wear him off like the dope that he is.

An Average Day in an American Court

There were 38 people in court
for failure to insure, unregistered
vehicle, false plates. Economic
crimes. At one point a person
stood in front of the judge on a
revise and revoke. Means to have
your sentence reduced on the grounds
it was unfair. He had a dump
truck for a lawyer. That’s a prison
term for public defender. You

figure it out. The guy, in cuffs
before the judge, asked, “Your
honour, I would like to speak
with my attorney before we proceed.
I haven’t had a chance to talk
with him yet.” The judge, turned
to the attorney and asked, “Would
you like to speak with your client?”
The dump truck

replied, “Why would I want to?”
There were 38 people in court
for failure to insure, unregistered
vehicle, false plates. Economic crimes.

It was like a stage
show. Everyone knew their parts.
We were told to be there promptly
at 9AM. At 10:20 the judge strolled
in. Every bench filled with people
waiting. The court personnel doing
the dance of the powerful in front
of the American
peasants. Preening their badges,
rattling papers like sabers, the judge
in black robes like a medieval priest
chanting the litany of oppression. They
made over 20,000 dollars in fines in one
mourning. The judge

will retire to his back
room for lunch, lift his robes high over his
varicosed veined legs, expose his miniature
penis and do a slow dance for the American
people in front of a shuttered window. He knows

the system is in default. It does not matter.
The clerk of the court comes in, tells
the judge it is time to return
to the courtroom. The judge smiles, points
to his penis and, as the clerk
gets to his knees, the judge says,

“Let them wait.”