Woke Poem by Doug Lane

Trump is a nightmare
from which
we are trying
to awake.

Or if we can't awake,
maybe we can do
some guided dreaming
while we sleep.

We could dream,
for example,
that Trump
chokes to death
on a cheeseburger
in the Oval Office.

That's not so crazy.
Bush43 nearly
offed himself
with a pretzel
in that same
office.

Or we can dream
that Joe Biden
whups Trump
in the 2020 Election

despite Putin's interference,
despite Repig voter suppression,
despite Trump trying to terrify voters
by warring against the cities
and stirring up God knows
what violence and atrocities
in the next two months.

We can dream
that Trump and Barr
and the whole cabinet
are stood up against
the Lincoln Memorial
and summarily executed,
their bloated corpses
dragged and beaten
throughthe streets of DC
before being hung
upside down
and all but unrecognizable
above the Capitol steps.

We can dream
that the abuses
of the past four years
- - the degradation of the law,
the mega thefts, the appointment
of corrupt judges, the caged children,
the endless cruelty and stupidity,
the hatemongering and division,
the embrace of murderous autocrats,
the 20,000 lies
spewing from the President's mouth,
the trampling in the mud
of the highest and best of American ideals

have all been a dream
from which we are now awakening,
shaken, but ever more relieved
that this journey through a sewer
never happened,
ever more determined
that it will never
happen again,

that we are cleansed
and stepping out of the stench
and darkness
and into the light,
into a new, brighter, beginning
for America
and the world

where brotherhood and sisterhood
shall rightly reign
for all
and we will embrace one another
and unite
in the service
of the love, brilliance, compassion, and imagination

we've always known
were inside us,
we've always known
we were capable of,
and in that bright new dawn
there will be no room
for Trump and the Trumplicans,
who at last have been shuffled off,
sloughed off,
like the snakeskin,
the bad dream,
they were.

And standing before us,
gleaming in the rising sun,
will be our best selves,
in our best nation,
in our best world,
woke and radiant,
ready for the work and play
of the new day.