Troops deployed to the Capital,
picking up trash with bayonets,
rounding up homeless like prisoners
from the war on poverty;
people expended and flattened
by the system like empty tubes
of toothpaste tossed into the street,
becoming eyesores to the privileged
who just want to drive to the golf course
without passing tarps and tents
or bodies bowled over from substances
and consequences that slap the face
of their one-sided policies,
the upward creep of good fortune.
Clean skin, crisp suits, Mar-a-Lago faces
inflated like their brutish rhetoric,
with hand waves across their opulence;
everything is improving
for everyone they know,
from board rooms to country clubs;
any remaining conscience stifled
at the sight of the Great Unwashed
begging at intersections;
can’t even enjoy wealth’s freedom
without the streets being overrun
by those with nowhere else to go;
how can they brag about
how great America is again
with a constant reminder littering
the sidewalks like encroaching dust
on their granite mantles and
marble floors?
©2026, Dan Schell, Flex Your Head Books