Robert Cooperman

Hang Up

Exhausted from this latest election,
from calls pleading, demanding
that the fate of our republic
is on my slumping shoulders,

I’ve developed a new tactic: I hang up
fast when charities, causes, and candidates
I’ve supported before call, and go back
to reading.  Now that the election’s over

you’d think everyone would stop for a while,
but the importunings come faster and faster;
not a moment to lose, if we’re to battle
Mitch McConnell and his agents of darkness.  

But I just hang up, though I confess
I’m a bit disappointed the Tea Party
no longer calls, nor Koch Brothers’ minions.
Now, for those scum sucking pigs,

I always have time and some choice words,
beginning with, “You’re traitors waging war
against our democracy, so if it were up to me,
you’d be stood against a wall and shot.”

But failing their calls and my rage, I just hang up.

Merry Christmas

“Merry Christmas, asshole!”  I shout at the guy
who cuts me off in the post office parking lot,
after I’ve stood and stood and stood on line,

not that he’ll hear me or care, but Christmas
has finally gotten to me like a burst blister,
so yes, I’m a bastard; even worse, I’m Jewish,

thus guilty of everything bad that’s ever happened.
But all I want is to punch out the next asshole
who does something incredibly inconsiderate,

and smiles and peels out.  I used to love this time
of year: everyone nice to everyone else, but now
religious blowhards shout there’s a war against Christmas;

distraught maniacs shoot children; and terrorists murder
everyone who doesn’t believe exactly what they do,
whose god is a pussy, so they foam, “Blasphemy,”

and blow up everyone near their rage. 
As for me, I’ll watch A Christmas Carol
for the hundredth time and blubber my eyes out,

for the way things should be.

 

Robert Cooperman drove a cab in New York in the 1970s. His latest collections are Little Timothy in Heaven (March Street Press) and The Lily of the West (Wind Publications).