I’ve been trying to discover how
it is that those inside the beltway
elected to office, or working
for those who were elected,
have all sense of irony (and
in some cases. civility) erased.

How else to explain that for many
there can be no climate change
while the nation they serve
is bearing its cost, climatologically
and in discourse and diversity,
and still they won’t see that
baked Alaska is no longer just
a dessert at a Party or PAC dinner.

Or to be blind to the fact that
their parents or grandparents
once stared up at the Lady
in the Harbor, that they were
the tired and the poor yearning
for the freedom they would now
so easily deny others, that they
and theirs were the invading mob,
nonetheless welcomed in the
promise of an ever greater land.

Perhaps it is best I never learn
for in this world a finely honed
sense of irony may be our last,
best hope for salvaging our sanity.