Activist POEM: Yet Another Trump Tuesday at Sen. Portman’s Office

Yet Another Trump Tuesday at Sen. Portman’s Office

Empower verses
In power
What is won to think?
Lying in wait
Miring our advocacy
Swamped with democracy
When and how to mete US
We go through the drill
Lairs of representation
As hour representative
Represented by representatives
And sum how still amiss representative
Even as anyone can read the signs
Along standing
Hi noon
As if genuflecting the one
Who helled office
Only in attendance
In a shadowy cloak
Wore of attrition
By hook or crook
Never quite present to us
We no demonstrably
We have hit AWOL
Yet ever so rightly
Will pass on our tidings
And the next weak
In wake of yet an other attack
We will rise agin
Sea you soon

Indivisible Toledo holds a Trump Tuesday protest at noon every Tuesday outside Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s office in Toledo. We have been doing this since Donald Trump’s inauguration. Typically, a legislative aide has meet with protesters at least every few weeks. Yesterday, a legislative aide met with us for the first time in over two months, a new record for unavailability. We have never been able to meet with Sen. Portman, nor has he ever met our oft repeated request to have a public town hall meeting anywhere in Ohio — though we particularly invite him to have a town hall meeting in Toledo. Our meeting was particularly intense, reflecting cumulative rage over President Trump, and the silence of Republican congresspeople, specifically Sen. Portman. Sen. Portman has over four years til his re-election campaign, and he seems intent on biding his time during the tumultuous Trump presidency. He is a quite reliable vote for the Trump agenda. This poem was inspired by our meeting yesterday, and our chronic frustration in not having any direct access to our elected official. Of course, with or without Sen. Portman, the resistance will continue.

Feel free to browse my designs on dissent and resistance.