It’s like that echo that hangs in the air after big fireworks…when your ears are still shocked by the blasts and silence hasn’t quite recovered. Adrenaline pumps as if your hearing has something to do with your breathing, your heartbeat . Your chest thumps, my chest thumps, from those big blasts and we hear it with our whole body and suddenly…it’s gone and no sound wants to rush in to fill the vacuum. So it seems like an echo…fading…fading…all the way to fucking Florida, where it whispers through palm trees and over sun filled fairways to the weeds where alligators wait for pampered pets with Rhinestone collars. Rich white dragons sip gin and botox cocktails wearing scarlet sequinned MAGA caps (so cute ).
A stuffed Elvis impersonator , unzipped to the waist , sweaty in a white, fake leather, jumpsuit, snarls, mumbles and shimmies on a small stage trimmed in bunting, lip syncing to a raggedy assed tape of the king. Platinum ladies fresh from the body shop or the neck spa, sanded and filled and buffed and repainted like vintage Cadillacs, sail into the club house, eager for a peek at you know who…”that poor man who did so much and tried so hard for his country…only to have it stolen at the last minute…by honest to god motherfuckers”…and they’re waving kevlar chequebooks and wondering…where did it all go wrong?
Back in the bar, under humming ceiling fans that windmill clouds of Cohiba smoke, the husbands, ripe with perspiration and that Aqua di Parma that all the secretaries love, are drinking bourbon in crystal glasses, sitting at high tables, wrinkling their pants and staring stupid at the mirror on the wall . Their mistresses are bingeing Netflix in apartments all over town. Smoking weed and waiting for the cool priest to appear , they know the score , they know the clock is ticking down .
Bottles , cans, plastic cups and scraps of pizza boxes, trampled signs and trampled flags and trampled rags, crumpled clumps of stolen notes from desks inside the capitol, littered, scattered and blown like drifts of debris from a storm. The peppery burn of tear gas whisps linger on the lawn. Ten thousand soldiers shiver in the parking lot, arriving just in time to find the circus had all gone.
Nero and the entourage march like royal refugees from the chopper to the plane, well upholstered women and their weasel tailored men, clutching bags of artifacts and souvenirs and the precious family jewels. “We’ll be back” the dark lord said…”See ya later then” the audience replied.
A new and roaring silence slips over Washington as the twitter shriek dies down and the clown cars have chased the big black pickup trucks back to Tennessee or Georgia or Nebraska, back to some dismal swamp where the the KKK are chopping wood for bonfires because…by god… just as soon as the barbecue is over and the beer starts running low…they’ll all get down to planning for the next great minstrel show…just as soon as the boss wakes up from his daily nap and gets his hair just right and calls them all to go looking for a fight .
Reporters stand in clusters on corners, corridors and parks sharing masks and cigarettes dreaming up new sound bites and remembering…what’s his name? And all we want to do is go to sleep and wake up in the morning and try to turn the page…and to turn the T.V. on and not to see his face.
It’s cold here in the north and there’s a pandemic in the land…forgive us but we’re tired and this bullshit makes it worse.
January was a bitch…but it got a little better.
Chagal4's Blog 
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