Sean Rima: "In the Muddy Waters of the Potomac."

Don’t write many political poems, because most political poems suck. This one didn’t turn out too bad…

rev. s

In the muddy waters of the Potomac.

Listening to the news
on a Wednesday afternoon,
I wonder what
George Washington
would see floating by
if he took off
his boots,
sat down in the grass,
and dangled
his naked feet
into the waters of
his beloved
Potomac River

in the year 2017?

Would he see the ghosts
of the Great Rebellion
slipping by him in
the murk,
singing songs
of independence
from beneath the
drum line of advancing
muskets and cannon fire?

Or would he see and smell

what the rest of us
see and smell,
every day,
on the cable news,
choking on our vomit?

A once-mighty river,
sparkling with a
once-great idea, now

muddy and gross,

poisoned by the slick of

blood, cum, lies, and money,

gushing from the
Georgetown sewers of
lesser men than he,

as Freedom bloats, then
putrefies, and sinks to the
bottom of the Potomac like

a dead body,
weighted-down,
and tossed

over the rails of the

Arlington Memorial Bridge.

____