The Pathetic Hopeful Poem–Ken McKeon
We need to change,
Change utterly,
There’s this Grotesquery afoot,
A club footed staggering
Eight-foot tall guy.
His head is bolted on,
He speaks mushy grunt talk,
He lurches around,
He’s a lumpy bearish pantomime
Of bad looks, worse clothes, horrible breath,
He’s my man of the year,
He’s all need,
He knows nothing but hunger,
He won’t wait his turn,
He’s outside right now,
He’s ready to shoulder through the living room wall,
Get him to change his ways,
Give him a four leaf clover,
A bit of the green, a good luck charm,
Fasten it to his shabby mind,
It will do the trick, hope works that way,
It never fails, bank on it,
If he simply swallows the clover
Out of ignorance, out of hunger,
If he remains only as he is,
We’re really fucked,
He needs to keep it as a sign,
He needs to believe it,
If he doesn’t, watch out.
He’s that big, that angry, that ready
To do anything but alimony,
He’s even ready to play right field
In a summertime pickup game of softball,
But it’s wintertime and it’s cold,
And he’s tearing down the wall,
Get the cloverleaf ready,
We have to have hope,
Miles and miles of hope.
It’s bound to work.
The problem with hope is that it starts from where we are. And when we can’t remember how we got here, or perhaps never knew, then hope transports our frustrated fears and blind aspirations toward a future we will also not understand.
We may feel that we have no choice but to trust the people in power to do the right thing, even though they are there because they effectively thwarted every possibility for positive action while their opponents occupied the throne.
Still, the human need to feel hope in the future springs eternal—as it should.
But we are now living in a new time: a time in which only what we know in our hearts and can bring into the orbit of our own personal life can be trusted to carry our hopes forward in time.
I feel that poem perfectly describes the USA’s present situation and specifically a certain man. When was it written? “Miles and miles of hope” is definitely needed for our future.
Michael, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you a happy and healthy New Year filled with HOPE.
Hi Loretta,
I think Ken wrote this poem very recently. In any case it was new to me when he mailed it last week.
I was interested that he uses a theme (how we get the monsters we ressemble) that he used in an earlier poem I posted here last June:
https://michaelgrayauthor.com/2016/06/monster-mash-ken-mckeon/
I’m warming to the idea of hope as a perspective that can inspire the human spirit in its depths: hope without content, without expectations, accompanied by the desire that the benefits of hopefullness be experienced by all.
Thanks for sending your hopeful feelings my way,
Hi Michael, thanks for the link to “Monster Mash”, another very interesting poem by Ken. His poems really speak to the state of our world today.