Subterranean Homesick Blues (Again)

Dan’s on the mezzanine

asking where the mayor lives

I’m on the dole line,

wondrin bout conservatives

The man with the leg cramps

boot camps wheel clamps

says they cut his food stamps.

Look out son,

I’m packin a gun:

God knows why

Pat Boone, full moon

someone’s gonna die soon.

 

Del’s on welfare,

Donald Trump is real pissed:

give ‘em all health care?

What are we?  Socialists?

Think like Harry Lime:

street crime, sub-prime,

now you’re working part-time.

Look out boy,

you’re only a goy:

don’t revere teachers,

don’t obey no preachers.

 

Jen’s on Fox News

talkin bout the bank crash

wanna get some real views?

What about the trailer trash?

Read about Goldilocks

Botox bobbysocks

modeled by Amanda Knox.

Look out, Joe,

you’re spoiling the show.

Don’t watch features,

don’t dance in the bleachers.

 

Get hired, get fired

get rich, get stitched

get tired, get wired

get hitched, get ditched.

They got cops at backstop,

Al Gore keeping score

tween the Poors

and Dirt-Poors,

tween the Haves

and Have-Mores.

 

John Wayne’s vanished.

He’s gone to learn Spanish.

Author's Note

(1) Dan’s on the mezzanine: On November 27, 1978, San Francisco city supervisor Dan White shot and killed mayor George Moscone and colleague Harvey Milk over some imagined slight. He stands as a symbol of inchoate, inarticulate white male aggression.
(2) In the wake of President Obama’s re-election in November 2012, a certain Donald Trump (he of the ruthless wealth acquisition and the bizarre hairstyle) ranted to the world, via Twitter, about this appalling (as he saw it) outrage. How dare the American people have the bare-faced gall to choose a president that he didn’t happen to like?
(3) Modeled by Amanda Knox: Foxy Knoxy, as she named herself, was an American student convicted of the murder (November 1, 2007) of fellow student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Knox was 20 years old at the time. Her beauty has ensured intense media interest in her, and ... well, celebrity is celebrity, no matter how achieved.
(4) Don’t dance in the bleachers: The 1978 hit movie “Grease” included a very popular musical number (“Summer Lovin’”), set in the spectator stand of a high school football field. Maybe that celebration of our remembered innocence no longer cuts it in the post-Columbine, post-Virginia Tech climate?
(5) Have Mores: George W Bush, during his presidency, referred to the well-heeled audience listening to his after-dinner speech (Alfred E Smith Memorial Dinner, 2000) as “the haves and the have mores”. No better image of the callous smugness of wealthy people is known to this author.
(6) off to learn Spanish: Can America’s traditional certainties survive the multicultural era?