The poet of the day was an angry, 
black, lesbian
who had the guts 
to call out just about everybody 
including black men 
for hurting 
     the cause
for their sometime irresponsible,
		sometime wretched
			behavior. Well, she could.
I am a sometime angry, straight, 
old, white guy, calling  
out other old, white guys for 
our sophomoric self-image, 
our whining mouths as we lose political 
	and, at some inevitable point in time, 
		economic power,
our ignorance of Know Thyself, Knowledge 
	Is Power and the only power that 
		lasts -- Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu 
			self-sacrificial,
 			suffering with 
				and for power, 
our incessant finger-pointing, like Dubya 
	defiantly jabbing a finger into Matt 
		Lauer’s shoulder while 
			trying to justify the unjustifiable,
our misogyny, homophobia and racism, 
                                   racism,  
                                      racism.
our omnipresent denial of reality,
our near-sighted omniscience,
our impotent omnipotence,
our destitute Manifest Destiny, 
our mamby, pamby, little, baby boy behavior,
our thumb-sucking, eye squinting, pinched 
	faced facade,
our scrunched-up underwear,
our bullying, weak-knee bravado, 
our last but not least, last resort 
	(and I don’t mean on a tropical isle 
		where the one percent of the one percent 
                                         keep their tax-free money)
	and first response to FEAR,
our violence.