Overtime

This poem appears in the Spring 2018 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

It’s much too late to think
   of options or alternatives.
Our Pharaoh-in-Chief is waiting
   like a spoiled prince for loyalists
   to kiss his ring.
                              Meanwhile
   the little we have saved is taxed
   for war.
                No one admits
  we’ve made a hoax of peace
  by living behind closed doors
  and stashing dollars for the worst.
We’re drunk with ultra-security,
   ultra-speed, ultra-vitamins,
   ultra-power.
                      We converse
   through machines.
                                We think
   in slogans.
                      We worship glitz
   and notoriety.
                            We choose novels
   for “easy reading.”
                                   As for poetry?
It’s all reduced to wordplay
   and sociology.
                            Meanwhile
   the televised and tattooed world      
   slides by disguised as normal.
We sit and watch.
                             Even
   when seated, we keep a pistol
   holstered at the hip and ready.

Samuel Hazo is the founder and director of the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and McAnulty Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Duquesne University. The author of several books of poetry, fiction, and essays, as well as four plays, his book Just Once received the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2003. A National Book Award finalist, he was chosen the first State Poet of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Governor Robert Casey in 1993 and served until 2003.