What I’d say if I could to a Trump voter, failing miserably

I’m afraid I’ll need to apologize for being one of the people

who is able to see what’s going on

better than you. I used to say “other than you,” but I’m done with that.

I’ve tried to live a life of jerky parallel lines, but I kept wanting to

push the spike of until until it sparked against the other;

I’ve been called a pyromaniac for that, the milder of the names

you fling against me, as if I’m a stripped banana

and you’re dangling the right peel to make me decent again,

by which I think you mean “ashamed.”

As a “libtard,” as you like to call me, I’d have been the first

to question whether I could rightly claim to have the better claim.

Then you chose a leader so unprecedented, so monstrous,

this thing you’d created out of your I-must-shut-my-people-pool

to-what-I-can-control, those stagnant waters

you must whip and chlorinate to low-key cadet blue

to match the wideness of your smile, to mask the sewage

of your sad, embodied, social lives, insofar as life is embodied, sad & social

for anyone. Look, it’s not too late, and if I say, hey I can see the ways

that I helped make this creature too, the one who’d never care

if something happened to me or you, but we both care
what happens to the masses of people, don't we?