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The Waste Land: 2028

You said you loved her—everything about her—
Her color, accents, laugh, that she was woke.
Her joy outweighed all duty and was louder!
America, you said, should go for broke.
You shrugged when unelected politicians
All propped her up like Stalin’s politburo.
You wanted a divorce from white patricians,
To socialize the dollar like the Euro,
And prove that Donald Trump was no one’s boss.
Then journalists built Harris a wide moat
Which policies and forethought could not cross.
“Who cares?” you gushed. That’s how you cast your vote.

Fast forward to our fearsome, feckless future—
The one in which you said she’d spare us trauma.
Well now free speech is strangled like a suture
Drawn tightly by the Clintons and Obama.
You thought she was so full of joie de vivre,
But in your heart you knew she’d never lead.
She’s just a puppet up the Deep State’s sleeve 
Divorced from all the vows she said she’d heed.
You’re pleased that ceiling made of glass got smashed;
But she is smashed as well, her vacant stare
As empty as the stores. No checks get cashed,
And cackles drown out hunger and despair.

Come see how prices poisonously swelled
From all the vapid policies she vaunted.
Ten dollar milk, twelve dollar gas, upheld
By legislative fiats that she flaunted.
The cost to buy a house? Eighteen percent
(If you can find a bank willing to lend)
While government largesse is freely spent
On terror states which hail her as their friend.
America’s turned into San Francisco.
Graffiti mars the walls, no truths are faced
And politicians’ hands are greased like Crisco
While all the sidewalks reek from human waste.

She got her wish: defunding the police
Despite their service, wounds and sacrifice.
She legislated for arrests to cease
Ensuring evildoers pay no price.
Now prosecutions only target those
Who pay their taxes and can hold a job.
No murderer or thief reaps what he sows
So criminals are free to rape and rob.
The churches are repressed throughout the nation—
(Although I notice all the mosques are thronged.)
And if you’re white you must make reparation
To those you and your parents never wronged.

She cackled. Women’s sports was thus abolished
While children had to undergo transition
To genders they had immaturely wished
For on a lark. (Of course, their malnutrition
Has still not been addressed.) Again, she cackled
Destroying our life savings with a caper
Where ownership of real estate was shackled
To taxing gains that just exist on paper.
The country’s paralyzed by unemployment
But immigrants still swamp us like a blight.
Our foes whoop at her DEI deployment
Of soldiers so diverse they cannot fight.

She cackled just as China took Taiwan
By force of arms. Concerning things atomic,
She signed off on a treaty with Tehran
That henceforth all the West must trend Islamic.
She cackled—she could not see any error
In falling for the Ayatollahs’ trap,
To fund, endorse and greenlight acts of terror
Which wiped our ally Israel off the map
And brought annihilation to the Jews
Of Tel Aviv, New York, Madrid and Paris.
 “I’m with her” was the Leftist call to choose
A Third World War endorsed by Comrade Harris.

Now let’s return to 2024.
You know now of the ruin she will cause
If she should win. So do you still adore
Her just because she’s female and because
She isn’t Trump and she’s a Democrat?
The welfare of three hundred million souls
Depends on better reasoning than that!
Don’t let your bias rake us o’er the coals—
Or blind you to your own indoctrination.
Don’t scorn or bury facts that you don’t like;
A “loyalty” like that will break our nation
And leave us with a bankrupt, Leftist Reich.

.

.

Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.


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35 Responses

  1. Joseph S. Salemi

    A great deal of this imagined scenario will come true, in many ways, shapes, and forms, if this sick leftist bitch is elected.

    Harris is the epitome of everything that has poisoned and polluted America since the 1960s upheavals. She is the pure product of intellectual and cultural degeneration.

    Brian, it’s a great poem, magnificently constructed. The meter, the rhymes, the imagery, the diction — all of it is top-notch and compelling. But the poem leaves me with an ominous sense of foreboding, and looming tragedy.

    Sometimes a poem can be a terrible warning. This is one of those times.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much, Joe. Well, this is not meant to be a “feel good” poem — that’s for sure! That sense of “terrible warning” is precisely what I was going for. I believe down to my core that if this fatuous yet corrupt woman is elected president it will spell the end for our country. My predictions rely not on prophecy but on cold sober foreseeability. We must fight this to the last.

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    This is a greatly terrifying poem that prophesies the sorry wasteland that will be facing us unless we comprehend the deceptions that are present in the cackling crony of the left. How excellent are the words and concepts with exceptional choices of rhymes like “politburo-Euro,” “trauma-Obama,” and “San Francisco-Crisco!” You are one of the greats of present-day classical poetry who not only is adept and creative in words but has a massive message to impart to the masses!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Roy, this is about as generous a comment I’ve ever received. Thank you so much! But I’m especially grateful that you found the content of this poem meaningful and worth considering as we prepare for a momentous decision in less than three weeks. There are indeed so many deceptions in that “cackling crony” not to mention those abjectly immoral politicians and members of the media propping her up.

      Reply
  3. Warren Bonham

    If the worst were to happen on election day, I hope that you’re not very good at prophecy. You paint a frightening picture that we must find a way to avoid.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Warren, I hope that my predictions do not come true. But unfortunately I see them as “reasonably foreseeable” in a lawyerly sense rather than as prophecy.
      The problem is that everything predicted in this poem already exists either in Kamala’s proposed policies or as conditions exist on the ground. I just analyze the trajectory and roll the tape forward in a way that any objective observer might. The poem is dystopian but couched in probability rather than hysteria. Unfortunately.

      Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    Wow, Brian, this is so on target that you might find yourself a target. I agree that this is a frightening prophecy (though utterly obvious to any thinking and observing person); and the profound ignorance of so many people who think she’ll be our savior, flusters me no end.

    “Now prosecutions only target those / Who pay their taxes and can hold a job.” “To genders they had prematurely wished.” “Of soldiers so diverse they cannot fight.” are among many great lines.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Cynthia. I worry about being targeted a little but I worry about not being able to express myself even more. Thank you for noting that my “prophecy” is utterly obvious. As I’ve said above, I believe these awful things which may cause to pass are the product of reasonable foreseeability rather than dystopian exaggeration. In other words, none of the awful things I predict lack evidentiary foundation. The future is deeply frightening — and not because of my poem.

      Reply
  5. Yael

    Great scary poem just in time for the season of ghosts, ghouls and goblins, and it’s not even Halloween yet. I’m afraid of all the prophetic aspects of your poem, many of which will come true no matter who or what.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Yael. It never even occurred to me that we are fast-approaching the ghoulish holiday of Halloween. Things are scary enough!

      Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Agreed. Evan has a brilliant and sensitive eye for the images he chooses.

      Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much, Michael. It’s sad that this isn’t hyperbole and that there is such a clear concensus on the foreseeability of the points raised in this poem.

      Reply
  6. CB. Anderson

    Every time that moron cackles
    I hear the clink of iron shackles.
    And when I see her shiny teeth
    I also see the pit beneath.

    Thanks for this. It’s always good to hear from a rational person, especially if that person happens to be an accomplished poet.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Great poem, C.B. Short and terrifying. Those cackles and shiny teeth scare me more than anything Halloween can throw at me! And I appreciate the compliment, though I fear my rationality being sorely tested these days. Thank you!

      Reply
  7. Mark Stellinga

    How nice to have such a talented convert obliterating such a dangerous piece of ‘very naughty word’. Focused and succinct from start to finish, Brian, you’ve exposed it all here! “Well now free speech is strangled like a suture
    Drawn tightly by the Clintons and Obama” – outstanding job, my friend. 🙁

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Mark! Especially glad you liked the “free speech strangled” line. Sadly, the foundations for the removal of free speech as a right are already in place. Harris and Hillary both recently offered statements that it is a privilege subject to oversight and not a right. This is so dangerous.

      Reply
  8. James A. Tweedie

    Brian,

    Ouch and wow.

    Elegantly constructed and painful to read.

    “ Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so!” Ronald Reagan

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you, James! That “ouch” means I’ve hit the mark. Unfortunately, because I’d rather write about something sunnier.

      I love the Reagan quote. How true it is! I recently saw the movie “Reagan” and was reintroduced to a man who was a true American hero.

      Reply
  9. Patricia Redfern

    Brian! Congratulations because, with your powerful pen, you accurately painted the spineless beast running to be the next, Stalinesque, president of this country supported in her devious ways, by the liberal lemmings of leftist lunacy in all media. This includes Europe. That she supports Hamas is kept a
    secret! The poem is beautiful and whole to me!. Any
    work that shines of truth is beautiful to me! You are
    perfection, my friend. Not only that… my hero!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, Patricia! You do me way too much honor, but I appreciate your literary enthusiasm as well as your political insights on the Stalinesque qualities of “spineless beast.” I think she really does support Hamas — everything she does looks geared to sabotaging Israel. With friends like her and Biden, who needs enemies?

      Reply
  10. Joshua C. Frank

    Wow, Brian, you’ve really described it well… although in a lot of ways, we’re already there. We often worry about how bad this dystopia will get without stopping to think about how bad it already is. The West isn’t dying; it’s already dead.

    Regardless, it’s a great encapsulation of the world the Deep State is making for us day by day. “She’s just a puppet up the Deep State’s sleeve” is right on, though I’m not sure there are politicians who aren’t these days. Anyway, I love the rhymes and agree with Cynthia that those lines she mentioned are great!

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you, Josh! I agree that in many ways we’re already there in that dystopian place. I would never go back to Portland or Santa Fe and I don’t envision you going back to California anytime soon. But I don’t think the West is fully dead… yet. The Society of Classical Poets proves that there’s still a pulse and a hunger to keep Western culture alive. But I think the West is on life support. Perhaps it could regain revive fully if we have bold leaders and we stand our ground. It may not look the way it has in the past, but it might be enough — that was one of the points of my recent Constantine poem. Rome was decaying and Constantine moved the capital 800 miles east to Byzantium. That bought the Eastern Empire another 1100 years and preserved civilization long enough so that even when Constantinople finally fell in 1453, Western Europe took back the mantle and entered the Renaissance. Maybe something like that could happen now. That, or maybe we’re approaching Armageddon.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        I see two possibilities: 1) modern culture will die of its own accord, leaving small, traditional, Christian communities as all that’s left of the United States, and similar things will take place in other countries, or 2) we’re approaching Armageddon as you say, and Jesus will come by the end of the century. Because modern culture is taking over the world more and more thoroughly, my money’s on the second.

  11. Margaret Coats

    Brian, I’m glad you make the poem an address to the gushers outlined in the first stanza. There are too many who vainly think they will “make [superficial] history” with their vote.

    Your title and time scheme naturally bring to mind Dinesh D’Souza’s film released in the summer of 2012, entitled “2016: Obama’s America.” It is striking to note similarities and differences in a “four years ahead” prophecy piece 12 years later. D’Souza predicted that a second term for Obama would allow him to put into effect many things Americans could not suspect. He felt that despite available evidence, Obama was in general an unknown quantity, touted for “hope and change” mainly because he was the first black president. D’Souza did a great deal of research on Obama’s upbringing and overall mindset, as well as what he had already done to demonstrate positions “evolving” in the wrong direction. He emphasized foreign policy and the inability to deal with Putin. He also investigated Democrat party long-term domestic aims. The conclusion was that Obama and radical Democrats would alter matters for the worse, and take care to make their changes impossible to reverse. Indeed, Putin seized and annexed Crimea. When Trump was elected, he was able to do much abroad and at home, but had to fight for every step he took against an entrenched deep state. Much that was beneficial for ordinary Americans was easily reversed by Biden and Harris, as foreign policy dipped into disaster.

    Twelve years later, again on the eve of an election, you, Brian, say rather that we know what is coming this time. For the most part, the plans are on the table, to be voted for or against. But this time they have little to do with the character of the candidate, who in your analysis appears as an empty puppet. They do still have much to do with her party. And while D’Souza saw weakness in foreign policy leading to loss of American strength and repute, you see the loss of Taiwan and the destruction of Israel, the persecution of Jews worldwide, and World War III. Financial collapse goes along with all this. You are correct to urge a vote against it. Clearer reasoning about voting, however, is only the barest beginning toward a better future.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you, Margaret, for this extremely perspicacious comment which gives important background insight into Democrat party long-term domestic aims. I have not seen the Dinesh D’Souza film but now I certainly want to. With the benefit of hindsight it has become clear to me and many others that Obama really did intend to radically change the country. As the years pass, I see him not only as a power-mad puppeteer but as an aspiring social engineer who has made it his business to try to rebuild the West in his image. This is megalomania and a misguided messianic complex at its most demonically toxic. I say this with the benefit of hindsight. But now as you observe, we know what is coming this time. That anyone would be willing to vote for a woman who is utterly fatuous, corrupt and as leftist as they come — in reality, a camouflaged member of the Squad — is beyond my comprehension. I can only conclude that many voters are truly on board with the Deep State agenda of fully transforming the country into what I call a “Leftist Reich.” They vote with open eyes and are happy to court disaster. What a world.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Brian, many persons will vote for Harris because they simply do not believe that such an act will have any serious consequences at all for them, their families, or their lives in general. Such persons are members of the Left-Liberal Church, and for them the vote is merely a ratification of their exalted virtue and religious piety. They couldn’t dream of doing otherwise.

        Such people are already comfortable, well-fed, affluent, living in paid-up homes, having solid careers, and absolutely confirmed in their world-view. They are never going to be mugged, or invaded by illegal aliens, or driven to insolvency by high taxes. I see these people every day at work in the university, and in my Park Slope neighborhood.

        If it should happen that a Harris presidency causes them financial pain, social disaster, or any other kind of trouble, they will blame it on fate, bad luck, Trump, MAGA supporters, “structural racism,” Netanyahu, or any other kind of narrative that allows them to continue believing and voting as they do. That is pure religion — you accept misfortune without in the slightest way blaming it on your doctrinal commitments and ideological delusions.

      • Brian A. Yapko

        Joe, this is a very powerful (if discouraging) observation. It would seem that society’s social justice warriors and biggest advocates for economic equity are the very people who have the leisure to dream up liberal pet ideas and who don’t have to face the consequences of them. The Obamas and Oprah and the people down the block who have the “In This House…” sign and who parade their virtue without every having it tested. It’s nauseating.

  12. James Sale

    Very very well written: my favourite rhyme is Paris/Comrade Harris – it is just so perfect. You capture the dilemma so very well: Trump is highly flawed, and may well be in Purgatory, but Harris is in the lower reaches of that place that Dante described so well.

    Reply
    • Brian A. Yapko

      Thank you so much, James! That particular rhyme came with a certain amount of satisfaction (along with San Francisco and Crisco.)

      I will be voting for Trump flawed though he may be. The more I know of him the more I feel he’s been subjected to an awful lot of slander and legal abuse and so I’m inclined to view him more favorably than many. But I fully agree about Harris. She is (and deserves) the pits in every way. Especially after revealing fully her anti-Christian views at a recent rally in which she mocked two young men who had shouted out “Jesus is Lord.” Her withering response? “You’re at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”

      Harris just made it very plain that she does not value or want Christian votes.

      Reply
      • James Sale

        Thanks for telling me this Brian, I didn’t know it. It’s one thing to be a-religious, but to be anti-religious, particularly in a country like the USA, founded on religious beliefs in the first place, is massively disrespectful to huge swathes of the population. But let’s pray that the God who saved DT from death – and which he wisely acknowledged – pays back to their face the one who mocks Him.

  13. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Brian, from the clever title to the chilling closing couplet, this powerful poem lays out exactly where America is headed with a linguistic skill that takes my breath away. If this doesn’t make the electorate think and think again… nothing will. I love the way there are glimmers of humor shimmering in your Waste Land – the San Francisco / greased like Crisco rhymes had me smiling while handwringing, such is the sheer magnificence of this piece. Thank you!

    Reply
  14. Brian A. Yapko

    Thank you very much indeed, Susan. I would love nothing more than to have this poem encourage readers to think long and hard about the dire implications of casting a vote for Harris. I appreciate your generous view of how it reads. I wish I could say I enjoyed writing this poem — and I did find some small satisfactions in the craft of it — but overall it gave me a sour stomach. Much like its subject.

    Reply

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