Déjà Vu, Nothing’s New

I love living in liberal New York
where people don’t heed rumors like they did
in Nazi Germany. We’ve put the cork
back in the bottle, lest we start to skid
into right wing tactics. Indeed, amen!
I’m practically hired by Personnel
in the Eye Ear Nose Clinic where, godsend,
a sweet black clerk assured me all was well
securing the job -- once formalities
concluded. Then a messenger appeared,
white as a Klansman with calumnies
she served up in a note that must have seared
the left-wing sensibilities of clerks
who parsed it with the wit of soda jerks!

I apologize to soda jerks who do
a better job dispensing our drinks
than human resource morons their review
of character, based on what floozies think.
I never got the job but did receive
a poignant, empathetic look of shock
from my black advocate who seemed to grieve
as much as I did, having taken stock
of what had happened. Someone who should not
have been the least concerned with prejudice
that still might stalk her, instead became fraught
with what was wrought by this, my nemesis --
who got a free pass, peddling what she wrote --
by those who should have acted as they vote.

Professor Goosenbury did the same
when I became a student in his class.
He hurt my pride, based on the specious claims
assailing me, although he let me pass
his sociology course. I banked on
more urbane manners than his lashing out.
But my quoting Lear’s “As flies to wanton
boys are we to the gods,” met with the lout’s
“The gods are just, and of our vices make
instruments to plague us.” a repartee
more apt for burning witches at the stake
than welcoming a student wannabee.
He never missed a step lampooning me
while goosestepping to slanderous drumbeats
hammered out by my seedy enemies.
And since my social duties were complete,
he mocked my army service with spleen, and
all the airs of the Nazi high command.

“So what? You served your country for some years,”
he crowed before the students in our class,
“as others have!” I guess we’re not spared jeers
from liberal professors acting crass.
It’s curious that those who’ve suffered most
at the behest of ruthless demagogues
are least inclined to make a whipping post
of people scandalized by slander hogs.
Judgmental folk seem anxious to project
their own incendiary bigotries
on personages who are more suspect
by virtue of benign iniquities.
As such., they don’t just purge themselves of guilt --
by sending to the desert those accused --
but apropos of seeing others wilt
before a spleen that’s socially excused,
they also satisfy their fascist bent,
but in a manner they misrepresent.