Thanks to Poetry Super Highway for featuring my poem this week!

“Show strength!” intoned their leader – he for whom
strength never had been anything but show.
“We’re marching to the Capitol!” — but then
he turned away as they began to go.

He lumbered home and watched it on TV:
the fallen barricades, the broken glass,
the painted bull behind the podium,
the selfie sticks, the guards who let them pass.

“We’re taking back the people’s house!” But then?
Nobody there to tell them what came next.
They stole a laptop, tore a Chinese scroll,
smoked joints and pissed on statues. Sent a text.

What follows “show” and “take”? They didn’t know.
Their leader had no other verbs to share.
Within a few hours they had wandered off,
leaving their garbage and their feces there.

At 1 AM, New Jersey’s Andy Kim
son of Korean immigrants, took up a bag,
began to clear the waste. The water jugs,
the pizza boxes, torn and trampled flag.

His only comment on the tawdry coup:
“It really broke my heart … what could I do?’

https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/