New poem

Monster in my garden

After yesterday
I’m afraid to go down there
Into my own garden.
I went down after sunset to water and
There it was, crouching
Like a gargoyle among the tomatoes.
I got a good look at it
As I stood there afraid to breathe
While a spray of water
From the hose soaked my shoes.
It had two heads
That look exactly like John Boehner,
Terrible to behold…

none

With great, sad boyscout-leader eyes. . .
And fretfully it soliloquized,
Its voices perfectly synchronized
Over the chirps of crickets in the field.
Its heads were turned in opposite directions
And, thankfully, neither one saw me
As I gathered my wits and retreated.
Now, I’m no lilly-livered alarmist.
I was raised on monsters:
Wall Street vampires
Sucking the blood of average Americans,
Hollow-eyed hypocritical chiefs
Sending young soldiers off to die for nothing.
Crab-stepping evangelists with pin-hole eyes
Sermonizing to invisible congregations,
Zombies with good hair
Giving each other man hugs between deals
While street people
Ask for pennies from well-dressed clowns.
Ideological freaks of every ilk,
Making laws to suit the freaks that voted for them,
Living statues striding the avenues,
Trying to find Rome.
Even the two-headed variety is nothing new.
In politics you vote somebody into office
And they start growing heads like mushroom kits
(Chicken-of-the-woods is very common in the capital
All the way to the top).
But how did the two-headed Boehner get here
So far from D.C.?
I shiver as the sun sets on my beloved Green Mountains.
Call me paranoid
But I just don’t feel safe up here any more.