– improvisational reaction to a word received in my In Box from Dictionary.com

(from 2015)

Kakistocracy\kak-uh–stok-ruh-see\noun

1. Government by the worst.

Sounds too much like you know what. But that’s what we have on our hands in Washington. A shitty, cranky, dysfunctional cast running the country into the ground. Not the best. And in many cases not the brightest either. But we the people voted them in to lead us into the future. Corrupt as their vision of it is. We checked off their names. That’s you and me. Our votes were tallied. We got what we asked for. What we deserve. Countries always get the governments they deserve. We got ours. You like it? I don’t either. As a reminder of just how hopeless the situation is, a check of the headlines on Yahoo finds the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris heading up the news. Sure enough, the rejecters are at it again. And leading the pack are the Republican candidates for President. One of them says, “Do not succumb to the notion climate change is manmade.” From another: “It will make it harder to create jobs in America.” His home state Florida might be hotter than Hell and on the verge of a Biblical flood but Marco can’t quit his carbon fuels. And then there’s the reflexive, “I don’t know, I’m not a scientist” response used by many others. Well me no scientist either, I concur as I make a few revisions to this in my NYC studio with the windows wide open on a beautiful 72 degree December 24^th afternoon. Same weather as it ever was. Not. Though mentioning Marco gets me thinking about another native Floridian, the recently departed, Orlando born, Daryl Dawkins, a.k.a Chocolate Thunder, former professional basketball player and poet when he wanna be. Chocolate Thunder claimed to be an alien from Planet Lovetron, a place he went to to study Interplanetary Funkmanship in the offseason. Now that should be a required course in any university core curriculum, and raises the question: would you rather live on Lovetron or in a world as imagined by billionaire Super Pac donators? Ditto that here. I do wonder what Chocolate Thunder’s unpublished reaction to the climate change controversy was? I’m thinking it went something like his famous spoken word outburst to the backboard he shattered with a monster slam in a 1979 NBA game. In fact, I feel that’s likely. And so with all due respect to Dawk, and mimicking his Interplanetary Funkmanship, I’ll go out there myself…

Climate change denying
Bullshit flying
Temperatures climbing
Sea levels getting higher
Trees bending
Ground breaking
Still denying
Habit is lying
Floods a rising
Glaciers roasting
Earth toasting
Carbon dioxide killing
The forces unwilling
Wind ripping
Devastating making
Only one way out
And it’s with no doubt
At least Bam
Is trying to keep us out of that jam