Bird With Two Right Wings

Bird With Two Right Wings

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 its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo
on his captains cap and now
its 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