Harvest Time

Thanksgiving, my grandfather required my hand under his arm to step towards the lavatory

Left leg shaking, cane in right, my thirty-eight-year-old stance as brace

He says, “I cannot see.  Point me in the right direction.”

Lead dog for the hunt of a geriatric prostate for that elusive drip of piss

Flabby white thighs, octogenarian-tailored zipper shifted to the right side

For a cardiac-risk male gut bulbous tire rolling and strapped

Like a leashed haggard dog growly rock-toothed and snarling

I will be the death of you

Twist asshole trajectory to bullseye plop-down lowered crane-like

Between my arms to his pulling elastic band briefs off of buttocks

Revealing the lunar light of where we all phase

Huffing, staring at feet, saying, “I should have stayed home.” 

Bring up Saints football, penis hooded by stomach fat

Mission launch failure, no urine, raise spine, button and zipper operation

Hold up pants, help stand, reassemble trousers

Belt the beast to keep to plow

Pace out to the living room, see my father talking about Trump

My dad’s hunting long bow like Odysseus on the wall, made of swamp wood

Old man strength to string, fire through rings, his grandfather’s bull’s horn to blow

To echo off the swamp waters for the Catahoula’s to hunt, when a deer was split

I see his retired hand gripping a coffee cup, standing on the home rock like a cowboy playing Indian

Naming things with white mustached lips under the crucifix doorway, bald

With the gun safe in the closet and the gun safe in the bedroom, the pistol in the pickup truck cab compartment

Conversations like, “I would never go to Chicago.”

Rooted for the cartoon Indians over the Cubs in the World Series in October

Voted red again in November

With my mother, uncles, aunts, cousins, everyone, but my brothers and me

Says, "It used to be simple when I was a kid.  We had men and women’s bathrooms. 

We didn’t have to learn all that.  None of that existed."

There comes a point in growing up where you realize

Your relationship with your parents has transposed

You can no longer speak as if seeking advice or drink from that well of knowledge

The intransigence of what is has calcified into sedimentary silence

Layered and petrified bow is non pliable or malleable to function in a modern world

The digital fairies pilfering daily interface into the way of meat on bodies in motion

The connection between seed to tree to archer to bloody deer to factory to truck to store

To bank accounts trading ones and zeros for Pfizer and Flomax

Into the fossil fuels goading the sun for the life of dancing bees buzzing the sweetness of roses

Circling in a dizzy-head bumble symphony wanting to stand firm in the front door

Letting the impasse clog into a baby boomer colon watching a 1950’s childhood

Grab America by the pussy in 2016

Start a trade war on anti-intellectualism

Obama tolerating water cannons on indigenous protestors in the irony of just above 32 degrees Fahrenheit

In North Dakota because Northern Hemisphere November is just that bit warmer and thus

The whole reason we are here

And do not talk anymore

The horizon of silence has dawned

So I realize I have begun to talk to my father the way we talk to my grandfather

I do not expect him to understand

Me, nor the context, the sphere of the setting, the planet, the economics, the psychological approach

To why humanity is where we are, the leaves have fallen from the oak

Dry acorns pelting the base, waiting for the deer to come to eat

I know he is a man who has planted more trees

Than I probably ever will. 

Lob-loly and long leaf pines, pecan, old hickory

Tax deductions for hunting property and his grandchildren’s college fund in loving timber

More likely forced to shed to qualify for healthcare; I know there is love in his heart, misguided in application

His eyes salivating to string the bow, hungering to harvest

The cycle of herbivores and shaved rocks crafted into arrow heads

Tractor wheels and gasoline, iPhones and internet tree stand surveillance

To track the herd, the outliers and the general health

Seeing the scrawny and wanting the does to get enough clover and nuts

Cultivating trails and pastures, coming inside turning on Fox News

Gripping bullets and Bible pages, judgment of thirty years of Hillary

As if it hasn’t been men like Donald this whole time

The billionaire’s exemption is somehow safer  

Three degrees and novel Nebraska dustbowl revival

Queue Woody Guthrie on the Victrola

Turkey feathers and blaming California

Dipstick the aquifers for parched almond orchards 

Hippy pot and tax coffers, transgender dystopian blues songs

White crosses on the church lawn and I want to smash them all

Robes and court seats, anti-choices reversing mainstream

The only way I can talk to them anymore

Seems to be not talking

To treat my parents as children and pretend the world was always great

Always simple and give up baubles of faith and hope of their aliveness

My father feels a marathon bursting the ribbon upon his chest

Three sons and, three grandchildren, wife, partners for two kids

And in why can’t we just keep our focus here, on family

I do not want to talk. 

His blessed doing of a god

That is dead to me

Instead there is an interconnected energy that I know growth comes from pain

The forest needs to burn

A man on fire attempting to sleep on a sofa

Head throbbing laughing off suicidal ghosts

For longer than I can recollect, but especially now

Part of me has been infected with my parent’s myopic apathy

Drinking this cup is to see their death ferment

And in psychological ladder rung parents die before children

As some ordained expected genial order

The octogenarian asks to return to the restroom

He thinks he has a drip now

Get up again. 

We walk on five legs.

Dad stands munching straddled in the open front door way

Singing, “Imagine there is no bacon.  It is easy if you try.”

Dog walks up from the porch

“Too Late I ate it all” 

Release

At work I sit alone in an office in a chair

at a desk of a woman I only met a few times. 

Wednesday she passed away

after a sudden juggernaut of cancer spread through her body over the last six months.

I found out over the phone commuting home. 

Previously in the afternoon my body paused. 

I felt heaviness, limbs wanting to curve in like reforming an egg,

Breathing slowly, pensive, sensing something powerful had transpired. 

Like a release

I knew days were close for her going into that dawn,

but had no way of knowing in that moment the timing of mortality. 

All I can say is I stopped. 

I could feel what felt like a ripple of energy. 

I took my hands in mudra with each finger touching its complement

on the opposing hand placing my forehand in the curved aperture

between the archway of my fingers. 

I breathed with my eyes closed and felt the power of that moment

with her work sweater still zipped to the back of the chair I was sitting. 

Some people believe in god. 

I personally do not, but

I recognize the presence of our interconnected universe

passing in a totality of energy and consciousness. 

No one knows on god one way or another. 

We have moments that make us contemplate, feel, absorb, and notice. 

This was one for me. 

Today I attended her funeral

Hundreds of mourners lined in compassionate recognition

A mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend

I stood in black

Walking into the soup of faces in a Catholic church

Sipped in like stale wine

I signed my name in print not wanting to hide  

I sat in a pew meditating hummed an aum summoning a simulacrum

Of the vibration I felt at the desk

Wishing peace and time’s compassion into those aching

Eyes closed, breathing

I positioned in line towards the altar

Her husband set brave feet to Earth

Receiving humans with no suitable words

In fleeting apertures

I gave my name

I sit at her desk

On the day she died I felt something deep passing

like a release, stopping me to pause

In my body around noon

I did know until after work

And I wanted you to know

In the presence of her space, in her chair

What I felt

Tears welled in his face as I spoke, he gripped his hands to his chest

I do not know if life has a way it is supposed to go

I know energy, I know love, I know kindness

She had all of these

I am no longer a man of faith,

But maybe I can still be a conduit for those who are

In their darkest hours

That there is a connection between us all

We may give it many names

Perceive alternative modalities,

But in each we are all present in one interconnected pulse 

Confessions of a Day form an Introverted Single Parent

Didn’t go to sleep until three am.

Limbs stripped of liquid wax from hundred-degree yoga Friday night

Cleanse of a week contemplating too many shadows

Woke at nine Saturday toe movements

Ingest water and an overripe banana

Scrolling a message returned from family in the ongoing conversation

Of how eighty percent of them voted for Trump and

How this conclusion was reached with a poet in the clan

Spiting up bloody book pages and science

They tell me why can’t you be simple; stop asking questions

Go get laid; quit worrying

I am not curious and I would hardly know how to do research

Privilege insulates you when you are not the one affected

To not risk getting called out or maybe losing the little you have

Because you held a mirror up to the person with more power

To let them see their ugliness

Parked at the library exchanged governmental music

Drove beyond the spillway, up fifty-five

Into the maw of the detention camp porch and the train horn  

Hadn’t seen my daughter since September

Longest I have gone in my lifetime

Drains away into this casual acceptance of what normal is

Space taking and the knock on a door that goes unanswered

Requires three minutes, repeated knock knowing the cosmogony

Hear a piano like a replicated doorbell of her twelve-year-old fingers playing long

Reaching out in silent voice and wanting to make sure I heard

Like fawn was in position, knowing buck was approaching

Her mother holding baby three

Ask kid if she wants to bring a soccer ball so we can kick it in the park

Tells me she won a juggling and skills competition including the boys

And Paul was there

Car to sushi because the girl likes snow crab and chopsticks

And daddy has no teeth again, can’t bite, remove, fold temporary into napkin

She has to look away, ask, are they out yet?

Talks about the public or the Catholic high school

Visits, decision in two years, I mention expanding world, perspective

Mirror how good public junior high was for me

How to live her life, bold, and take on uncomfortable and novel

She tells me about reading The Once and Future King

Of Lancelot and Guinevere, I mention the word bad-boy and she blushes

Ride talks about Ave Maria in school piano during Christmas mass

Girlfriends might sing while she plays, says I probably would not want to come

Sniffing father’s atheism and I say, “If it’s on a school day I would probably have to work, but I would want to come.  It is good to get in front of a crowd and be brave like that.  I am proud of you.”

I que a Slingshot Dakota CD, to tell her about a female piano playing punk lead singer

To the park, autumn winds, juggling on knees, ball up and sideways

Race her across long, win by a few lengths, but she is gaining

Sprint and show her a downward dog jumping into crow pose

Catching my body on my knees laughing at the sky

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Movie, pulled our Gryffindor robes from some Halloween ago

Watch the hesitancy in her eyes for a split between tween

And reading her the novels in first grade head on my chest at bed time

Finishing in countless car rides audio book commutes from Friday to weekends

Debates then agrees to robe, we fly in style, tell her others may look at you

And you may feel like the only one, but they are happy and a bit jealous

That you are alive, not afraid to stand out and be you and play

That sometimes you don’t walk, but you twist in the air

For no reason but you felt it in the moment and you leap

Never be afraid to jump or ask the waitress for an extra set of chopsticks

To use as wands to watch 3D wizards, we banter as if magic is real

Time ticks into return and she wants me to borrow The Once and Future King

So we can talk about it next time, probably when the next Star Wars comes out at this rate

Smile and I hug her and tell her I will always love you

No matter what I am here, even when I am not here, you are in my heart

I suck in the other man she calls dad

The way her mom makes a point to say it as much as possible in front of me

The doing what is best for another human being and making one’s ego

Like a rabbit in a hat

Drive back south to LSU Florida traffic full of disgruntled tail lights

Sounding to Ramones and the Clash wanting to hear punk

Fast and pressed even if the lane is trudging gator bait

Pull into the house to another Trump message

Rock the Kasbah Bill Murray on DVD on the side, eat a sweet potato

Write a bit, and get ready to head out to Urban South Brewery

To Shotgun Cinema and watch the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense

On a big screen in the dark, drinking ale

With a herd of slippery people making flippy floppy

To David Byrne’s big suit

Why do I do all this yoga; for tireless thighs that bend and gyrate

To every song after Heaven, moving with the crowd alone

Feeling breath and darkness that cold pit of late November

In a warehouse, letting go to the speed of talking

Into being in a moment burning down the house

Of this is how I find myself

Hands in the air jumping, film strip drum beat base line

Clapping as if this is real

Watching the conversations in a place where nothing ever happens

Credits, lights, walk to car, iPod rotate playlist I put on when daughter is in-car

This is not my house, this is not my beautiful wife

Same as it ever was behind the wheel of a large automobile

Tchoupitoulas next to the Mississippi River

Same as it ever was, Same as it ever was, letting the days go by

Yawping a punk anthem in Bhakti heartbeat bouncing independent toes

That do not give a fuck what anyone thinks being me

Like a rouge wolf howling at the harvest moon 

Gates of the 21st Century Dustbowl 20161117

The monsters come behind the smile of a tangerine puppet demagogue

Promising salvation to those he plans to harm

In a pressed suit poof-haired sling blade,

It is not him; it is who he is letting in

He whispers, “It is unfair to judge so soon.  Stay calm.  You will not be the ones devoured.”

He will not be the one who eats you. 

Jim Crow’s crook nose sniffs the populace

For flecks of color to whitewash a rainbow

Snort the spectrum into a cocaine line across the oval office desk

Leaving poor white dust in a plowed parade of freedom 

White thankfulness for being spared, to have that bit better in an illusionary honey pot

To lick dry before the Earth asks, “Where have all the bees gone?” 

The monsters lurking behind the nostrils are out of hiding

Obstructionism in an octet is parlayed into fervent abandon, cookie-cutter Republicans unleashed

Paycheck to paycheck America shivers in color-coded vibrations of fear and ecstasy

Subject to similar razing, swaths of the alabaster perceive salvation

In the scent of another false prophet

Jesus wrapped in a flag crop-dusted in Cheetoes and Botox with a mashed potato chin 

Propped up as Agent Orange for change for corn fields in pain

Union towns busted and one more degree from 21^st Century dust bowl

Lebanese American parents immigrating staring at a barricaded future

Palestine died today

Mexican roofer wiring pay to loved ones feeling the drip through the ceiling

Libyan migrant boats to Italy overturned in the Mediterranean

Syrian rebels left to Putin’s thumb

Oligarchs smile at online bank accounts

Thirty-five year old in St. Louis remembering a twenty-something abortion

Imagining a mirrored self overturned to no choice or a surprise forty-something uterine hijack    

Sixty-eight year old government retiree Nina on state health insurance plan

Cuts her diabetes meds sleeping alone in the god damn Mississippi woods

Colored cut lives not surprised, see the white wolf brown eyes have always seen

Blue eyes wake from Sam Browback’s Kansas

Yellow brick road crumbled when the wizard kept the gold

Lies post ballot bubble obvious as a Deep Water Horizon dawns in America

White supremacist Viagra got an old Tricky Dick hard again

The Gipper’s memory came back to fonder times of Gordon Gecko

Big Short strippers stuffed with margin call bills

Old Fashioned Kentucky whiskey

Pissing bladder on a pile of dead black bodies

Penis in one hand, iPhone tweet in the other

Staring for an updated Pfizer stock price

Don’t even look down  

Corporate coffers slept dormant set to pounce on slashed capital gains and income tax rates

To bring back cash gerrymandered overseas awaiting the lowest potential window

To commit fraud in trillion dollar increments

The American people smile in the sunlight with thankful applause to the marmalade mannequin

Pennsylvania coal miner seeing his town die, testicles folded into a disability paycheck

Wife lost her husband to fracking’s lower natural gas prices, globalization, and climate change

Promised a time machine back to the era of white whale oil

Moby Dick devouring with the machines of industry

Stuffed with steampunk innards rigged with the bones of corrupted teamsters.  

E.P.A. E.P.A. Grandpa Simpson cried at the site of the pig.  Abrahamic tradition come due

Sacrifice your first born onto me.  I will test you; give him our country

Gate to the globe, god rolling dice in a casino Mr. Burns goes to Washington

I have come here to lead, not to read.  Detention camp domes coming soon!

Caught sneaking back in after deportation or on the no-human-beings-migrate list

Lock her up!  Lock her up! Trump that Bitch! Grab that pussy!  Lynch that nigger!

Was that too harsh?  Context soft spoken, remain calm.

Put away your twitter to let the monsters do their work. 

Curb your manners to when you think the microphone is gone.

The great death star wall one can see the lack of empathy from outer space, ask Berlin or Jerusalem

A never-built symbol to the universe

Harvesting strawberries with white fingers in Neverland

Inflation in a trade war as China’s red dragon roars

Stirs over its gold itching to see cities burn. 

Climate change deniers obliterate what is real behind the idea that if the apocalypse is to be

God has chosen it, so what is there to fear? Standing rock can stand down

Welcoming the Nebraska desert with Kool-Aid and Brawndo toasts

Lake Mead and the Yongding He and Tuhai Hu in Northern China

Two of the top five most stressed river basins on the planet. 

Drinking water in Somalia, Nigeria, India, Malawi

Ticking math  

No water, no crops, no food equals war and survival of the richest

American air conditioners hum in late November cackling to the sound of Arnold Schwarzenegger

As NBC’s new apprentice.  Immigrants can be governors, but never presidents.

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on white boy?

Which side are you on?

Poets its time, time to step up

Get out of the echo chamber

Face to face conversations with the climate change denier in your life

The person who would just rather not know, who says that is all too complicated,

Who says you think too much; Talk to that person

The poison to our democracy is not the politician,

but the apathy of the masses to coddle personal ignorance

That elects the politician.

The water is rising, and all I did was stand there.  

Letters from a Liberal Son

11/19/16

Mom,

Our whole family outside of my brothers and probably cousin Susan voted for Trump. Let me see my grandparents, parents, my aunt, uncle, and the rest of my cousins and their spouses probably all voted with them. Now do I know that about everybody no, but five minutes at any family gathering or any small scan of social media makes it pretty obvious.

Now whatever you and dad are not on the same page on as far as how you got to that path, whether it is glaring ignorance through apathy or willful viewership of sitting in a brown chair and absorbing Fox News year after year, I do not really care. You wanted this on some level. This to you was the better of whatever ambivalence or deliberated thought got you or dad or anybody in the family, and that choice has an impact on the world and me as a human being. It has an impact on my daughter's future in ways that you may dismiss as not important, but to me that fact that you did not care about her growing up in a world as a young woman and having Trump as the leader of the free world, our country, for not just all the obvious he is grossly unqualified, but his racist, xenophobic, climate change denying, evolution denying, misogynist spew affects ignorant people to emulate his nonsense and it causes people pain.  It also will pass and alter real laws that will damage and end people's lives.

My best friend in the world is a black gay man. I assume you have no clue about the man just nominated for Attorney General today or what that means for human rights in this country for people of color, or homosexuals, or a woman's right to her body. You and dad basically in voting for Trump told the world, not my problem, I have other things to worry about. I think Trump's agenda is a better path.

How you think it is better, maybe you could explain that to me, because I have yet to hear one supporter of the man explain to me how the policies and people who will be empowered will not lead us down a path that is both economically and socially harmful to the likelihood of accelerated climate change and the homogenization and degradation of the multiculturalism at the heart of American exceptionalism.

It hurts me that so many people in my family just do not care to want to know better. I know everyone that grew up in Grandpa's house is a racist. I know I was scared to bring my friend to the house or date a black girl who I know actually liked me who I liked in high school because I was afraid of dad's reaction. I think dad thinks Obama is still trying to take his guns.

Basically it saddens me that in my own family no one cares to read anything that I write and then tell me I am wrong or they are right or why. Trust me I read plenty of history, economics, psychology, sociology, literature, philosophy, and look at both sides of the one-party coin. I understand it is not just oh the Democrats are right, but the path out of this mess is farther left leaning than even Hillary.

Trump lied to fake that he would emulate progressive ideas with ignorant desperate people exiled by the paradigm shift in fossil fuel industries and globalization. He stole pieces of Bernie Sanders platform as talking points and twisted sound bites he plans to back up with a supply side economic agenda that will have the exact opposite effect in the long run than what people thought they were voting for.

It saddens me that people understand pieces of the story and stop reading or think that it is all about red or blue as if both don't have good and bad ideas, but this deal with Trump to me it crosses an unprecedented line in American history in the age of television and the media making sure facts do not matter because a reality television star gets ratings and that is all that matters.

Black lives certainly don't matter. Women's rights as human rights certainly don't matter. The environmental crisis that threatens to raise global temperature by another degree by 2050 doesn't matter. In case you didn't know last time in Earth's history that happened the area around Nebraska was a desert. Who gives a shit right? Who needs food? Who needs to read the consensus of scientific opinion? We have the Bible and a new executive branch who chooses the later over the former.

I on a personal level know what it feels like to lose my job working for a man who to me is like New Orleans' mini Trump because he thought he could save a few bucks. I know what it was like to sit next to his right-hand man attorney use the word nigger in front of me at lunch like I would just not have a reaction. I remember getting up immediately from what corporate culture was sitting at the top of the corporate office.  

It's easier to just listen to hate and not say anything when your privilege insulates you, when you are not the one affected, to not risk getting called out or maybe losing the little you have or your station because you held a mirror up to a powerful person’s ugliness.  I would like to think I am not the kind of person that can just stand there and not do anything. I would like to think I am not the kind of person that would not call out the ugliness I see. I would like to think that is someone you would like your son to be, but things like voting for Trump make me question that. Maybe you and dad would rather your sons to not care and not speak up, to just sit down and keep our thoughts or art to ourselves.

I know what is like to lose my job to Enron's fraud. I know what is like to go through abortion from a father's perspective. I know what is like to listen to black poets speak truth of the racism they have dealt with. I know what it is like to hear homosexual poets speak about what it is like to be gay in America. I know what it is like to hear indigenous American and Palestinian American poets speak their truths. I know what is like to hear women's poems about sexual assault. I know what is like to see the financial statements and payrolls of countless companies and see what the top people and the owners get paid while they tell some guy they can't afford to pay him more than $12 an hour.

I know what it is like to hear someone tell me she was raped repeatedly by a Catholic priest. I know what it is like to lose my faith and see the nonsense of organized religion pervert the minds of people I love to do things like think if god was real he would be on the side of a man like Trump before a woman like Hillary Clinton. This is probably because right wing America has convinced the Bible belt that abortion defines Christian political morality in this country in a one stop shop of over simplification to turn off brains.

So this as a human being and knowing things that frankly I do not think many people in our family have even thought about, and assuming the known deficiencies in the neoliberal system that is strangling this world, that Clinton also represents, that Clinton was somehow worse than the conservative xenophobic racist, supply side economics version Trump represents.

I am hurt by it because when dad eventually tries to tell me it doesn't matter, why do you get so worked up over everything. Go get laid and lighten up, I feel like my own father does not see me, respect my sexuality when he says the get laid part, that he does not understand me and just like so many people in this country does not want to know.

The family can support whatever you want, but it has consequences whether you choose to feel them or not. People will suffer from this in systemic ways that will affect this country for years to come. Will all that happen in 2017; no, but I can see the arch of history in what is forming and it scares the hell of me and frankly should scare you. 

What of your grandchildren's future; all girls at the moment. Would you feel comfortable looking any one of them in the eye when they are old enough to understand and explain how you and dad voted for the man who bragged about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their pussies or just paid $25 million to make his lawsuits about his fraudulent university go away or any of the countless ridiculous thing a billionaire born with a silver spoon who probably just had to apply for a job for the first time in his life has done to hurt people with less power than him?

It hurts me and makes me feel farther away from all of you. I love you, but to look my daughter in the eye in a world where I know she is growing up in a house and a town that probably overwhelmingly voted for Trump and will attempt to normalize his agenda, it tears me up that she will believe that crap or grow up judging poor people the way so many Trump voters do labeling takers and makers and ignoring complex systematic interrelationships in global economics caused by the very ideas they vote for. It scares me that she will think she is less than because she is female or that some boy has a right to touch her after she says no or just because he wants to see if he can get away with it. It's sick and to me indefensible.

The worst part is it is not just Trump it is the elimination of what the veto power was holding back for the agenda of the throng of the Republican Congress. Those are the anti-intellectual, supply side economic, anti-choice, white privilege denying, climate change denying, overturn Roe vs Wade wanting, non-equal pay for equal work wanting, eliminate Dodd Frank and Wall Street regulation wanting, repress voting rights legislating, register Muslims, wall building horde. A vote for Trump unleashed that flood that is waiting to widen the gap of wealth disparity and reduce human rights in America and in the world. You can try to say I am exaggerating, but if you do please back it up with facts, because all the research I have done points in that direction.

Life has given me a lot of lonely hours. I have used those to read and try to talk to people and have as many real and personal conversations in my life and I wish I could express why it breaks my heart that despite everything I have invested in that time that my family would rather escalate a commitment to some Republican fantasy camp of horrendous consequences served with a smile than explain to me why I am wrong based in a foundation of facts. At least I would know, I could live with that. I would be happy to be wrong.

I am not saying that Republicans do not have a place of importance to help our democracy, but the Party has gone off the reservation, so far so that the very swamp they hate is their own reflection. People have been manipulated for generations to do what the powerful wealthy elite want behind the idea of a cross, a flag, and fear. So many people in my family go right alone with it and it just hurts. I cannot pretend it is normal or okay or does not have consequences just because people would rather not know.

I love you, but I am not going pretend I am okay or that the sphere of all of this does not hurt me deeply.

Son

Son,

I read your response. I'm sorry that you are so full of anger and hopelessness for the future of America.  I'm going to say again that I didn't want to vote for either Clinton or Trump, but I made a choice. There are lots of things that I don't like about Trump, but I have more objections about Clinton. She has been part of this country's politics for 30 years and I don't like where the country is now. I hope that the future includes some positive changes. I think Trump won because America wants change and Clinton has been an integral part of the past. I think Obama got elected because America wanted change even though the change he would support was quite different from the change that Trump supports.

I hope that human rights and/or equality for all people would not be compromised during the Trump administration. There is always hope that a lot of what you and others feel will happen under Trump won't come to pass. I have to have hope. I don't know anyone who has done the research that you do or anyone that would be interested in that level of research. I think in order to do what you do you have to be curious and believe you could make a difference. Unfortunately, I'm not that curious and would hardly know how to research. I'm sorry your family hurts you and disappoints you. Even though we are not on the same page with many things I am not hurt by you or disappointed in you. I can easily accept our differences and still like you and love you.

I think you also need to consider that all of us, no matter what we believe, will be wrong about some things. You have a very detailed agenda of what horrible things will happen under Trump. No human can know. There are too many variables that will come to play that will skew the results. You have to accept that the country has voted in a Republican congress and a Republican president just like I accepted the last eight years of a Democratic president. If you research past presidents you will find many flaws with each man even the ones that lead in the manner that you would choose. I hope that the current situation becomes less stressful for you. Had Clinton won, I would not have been happy but I would have accepted the country's choice. That's what we all have to do since this is a democracy. I don't see the positive affect of dwelling on doom and gloom no matter who is elected. I can't be intense about anything except the love I have for my family.

I love you.

Mom

Mom,

The lack of empathy in humanity is the problem.  The family being insulated so that you do not care is the point.  It is the reason a man like Trump gets elected.  It is a reason why a man like Bernie Sanders can’t make it out the primary from a woman like Hillary Clinton.  You saying, “You have to accept that the country has voted in a Republican congress and a Republican president just like I accepted the last eight years of a Democratic president.”, is a false equivalency.  Trump has a Republican majority in the House and the Senate, and the Republicans carried out an unprecedented level of obstructionism for eight years that is the pinnacle of hypocrisy of Trump saying he will drain the swamp.  The fact that you equate the two goes back to point one, which is you do not care enough to pay attention or want to know.  

Democracy is a living organism made by the people.  Accepting the reality that Trump was elected is not something the people have to sit idle and accept.  Protesting, activism, and participation are the vital blood in what makes a democracy.  It is the direct opposite of what you and dad are trying to teach your children.  You are teaching us to keep to yourself let bad things happen to people as long as it is not you.  Sure, you hope for the best, but you have to do what keeps you comfortable first. 

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."  Martin Luther King

I am disappointed and motivated to act, to take my art and poetry and try to touch people's ignorance and let them wake the hell up from the apathy and lack of empathy that is destroying our ability to talk with and see each other. One of the main things I asked for is to tell me facts, tell me why you feel you are right, tell me why dad thinks Trump is the better path. I want to know. I do not want to be brushed off like I am still a child. I want to have an adult conversation and be respected that I asked a serious question and when all you or dad have to say is I don't know, that is the mirror of the two people who are supposed to be my guides in life. It affects me more than other people would. It burrows. The answer, "I do not like where the country is now." tells me little.

Son

Son,

I'm not trying to brush you off.  I don't know what to say anymore. Perhaps your Dad can explain how he thinks and feels better than I can. I don't have facts to back up how I feel. Part of the reason I chose Trump over Hillary is because he is not a politician. Having to pick between the two my consensus is I want to give someone who is in business and not politics a chance. I know that this is probably a weak reason for you, but it's reasonable for me. You are a grown man with your own thoughts and ideas and I respect that. You are probably right about some things and wrong about others as all of us are. I don't think we can predict what is going to happen.

I love you, Mom

Mom,

Thank you for giving me your reason as you believe Trump is not a politician and he is a business man. I wish you did your research on Trump as a business man or dissected the idea beyond a catch phrase or further contemplating electing a human with zero political experience to run the largest government on the planet.

If you find out what I am wrong about please let me know. I will rely on the mathematical realities of economics you and dad raised me to study and learned in college and in professional accountancy and the humanity I was born with and cultivated as a poet.  You may not be able to predict what will happen, but in my research of history I know what happens when you alter tax rates and civil liberties in the way Trump has promised. That is not a prediction. That is what is promised and what has the majority of Congressional approval.  How you assess this as we cannot predict what is going to happen is to me patronizing. People have records whether in business or politics. Those records are how we assess future events in context to the contextual prisms of the now. Based on the records of tea party and traditional Republicans that agenda should be easily passed. The Senate requirement to pass veto is gone. This to me is a sober assessment of the realities of government.

I love you. 

Son