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For Pointman: Faint Praise For A Nation's Plebiscite (poem)

By John Crandell

Here it's been two weeks since JabbaTrump won it all
    and I wake and sit up from a dream, cross-eyed
I was out mixing potting soil
    among specimen Dragon Trees
And up walks Jeff Machota and Bill Branson
    who I'd not ever met before
Come to give me a map
    of my home town way down the coast
Unfolded it they did
    right on the potting table, 3/4 " ply
Beautiful cartography, every building crisply shown
    Plus the river on the north side of town
Where Pointman Scheppers and I rafted west
    before I was flown off for Cam Rahn Bay
Such an array of topo lines
    eliciting hills, peaks and ridges, around Sunland
Low and high terrain we'd known long before
    He'd not admire films Apocalypse or Deer Hunter
In his own film, DeNiro climbed back up his ridge all alone
    aimed, then let that animal go free
Pointman said those flicks weren't real enough
    from coast to coast, life is now way too real
What was a miasma, has become
    a phantasmagoria of hate
But he was as genuine however
    as the granite on El Capitan

—John Crandell