Bird With Two Right Wings
1997

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They’re interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year it’s the great Bush pilot
And now it’s the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now it’s a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who’s busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that’s fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Born: 24 March 1919, New York, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 22 February 2021, California, USA

Ferlinghetti is a poet, socialist activist, painter, and co-founder of Lights Booksellers and Publishers. He is best known for his collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind which has sold more than a million copies in nine different languages. In March 2019 he celebrated his 100th birthday and the city of San Francisco has proclaimed his birthday on 24 March as Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day (as indeed it should be).