perspective, number forty-three

one of the ways to tell that you live in interesting times
is to think of how it will be recorded in
history books
is it one of those one-paragraph
by-the-way-this-guy-was-president-and-nothing-much-happened
things

or was it something that merited a whole chapter
or at least a few pages

i have a lot of hope
[groans]
for this to be a great day
i really do
it's unlike me but whatever

and it's a good day to remind ourselves
of everything we've lost
not least because of the idiot
we put in the oval office
twice

in the last eight years we lost
- a budget surplus
- two big buildings with a bunch of innocent people in them
- a large city
- separation of church and state
- over four thousand troops
- the limbs health and livelihood of countless others
- checks and balances
- a vigilant press
- some number of iraqis that we haven't bothered to count
- civil liberties
- civil discourse
- the moral high ground
- millions of americans' retirement savings
- privacy
- the meaning of patriotism
- the respect of a plurality of the world's citizens

i almost feel bad for voting to put barack obama into office
there's a lot to do