Michael Rothenberg

The Trumpeters

Cowards in white sheets, the skinhead cops
and racists, the religious working men
and women who think a woman’s place is
in the kitchen and children are to be seen
and not heard, and believe people of color
are here in America as a privilege not a right,
who blame Obama for 9/11, but he wasn’t
even president then, the ones who say racism
didn’t exist in America until Obama,
the blowhards, The Trumpeters, the ones
who will murder to be in the driver’s seat
of a big white capitalist car, who will never
be in the driver’s seat, will always be
second-rate white people, in the rich
man’s eye, they might as well be black
for their marginalized existence in the grand
scheme of the upper class American
power elite, but still they buy into the lie,
with their heads up the ass of the real oppressors,
the powerful whites who will never share
a piece of the pie with their middle-class
and working class, poor white cousins, who
only see these ordinary folk, these regular
people as grist for the mill, unruly ignorants
who they can use to help them build their
oligarchic empires, the front line of their
marching band, The Trumpeters, blowing
the horn of oppression, blowing the horn
of the white man’s dream to rule the world,
the white man’s dream to carry guns
in the street, free to murder kids in Sandy Hook,
free to beat their wives, and practice rape
as a contact sport while they graduate
from Stanford University with a big white
degree, free to treat a woman as property,
like a piece of shit, these Trumpeters, they blow,
and blow hard, The Trumpeters, the 40 percent,
maybe 50 percent of America, who will sell
their souls for the promise of ever- elusive
power, the good old Christians who spit
in Christ’s face and rape him on the cross,
the ones that covet cruelty, The Trumpeters,
the patriotic Trumpeters, the ones who think
the USA is a page in an owner’s manual,
clear as day, that they can own democracy,
rig and twist justice and truth to their
self-interested lies and aspirations, that justice
can be bought and sold, as long as white
people rule the world, The Trumpeters,
the ones who think the USA is a big fucking
TV set, as they slurp down their supersized
cans of pharmaceutical sugar and poison,
The Trumpeters, who mimic some hallmark
illusion of The Great White American Way,
and lick the boots of a reality show star,
The Trumpeters, may they suffer the pain
they wish on the poor, the weak, the abandoned,
and rot in the hell of their own vanity,
greed, envy, pride, lust, and sloth and ten
more sins that are their legacy, the sins of
The Trumpeters! Oh, Trumpeters, come on,
blow, blow, blow, your trumpets, here
comes your monster daddy, he comes to give
you another script to read because you can’t
think for yourselves, and he will fuck you
in the ass, and he will never kiss you, never
ever be like you, or with you, he will only
bleed you, and bleed you, fodder for his wars,
fodder for his ecocidal factories, fodder
for his machineries of deception, yes, you
will be his robot army, because you are,
accept it, only Trumpeters, only soulless slaves,
at your very core, behind your brassiness
you are only a procession of cowards, and you
will follow and pronounce your yahoo
independence as you walk to your hate-filled
grave, you will follow the goosestep of the
high boot and genocide, get in line proud
Trumpeters, the future is yours, there’s a banquet
waiting for you beyond the gates of Valhalla,
come on, you are the lucky ones, the entitled ones,
not only the desired guest for the feast, you are
the feast itself, so bow down and open your collar,
your red-haired father is coming to devour you.

–Michael Rothenberg