as it turns out, Mike Myers, the man behind / the international man of mystery, / hadn’t seen a ghost / but had seen the future, / standing there, / face strained by surprise / on a live telecast / for Hurricane Katrina relief. / Nobody asked him what he saw / because we know / what we saw ourselves: / that any president, / let alone a Republican / serving in the wake of Nixon / and Reagan, / could leave black people under siege / of water, / drowning / or starved skinny, / wasn’t a surprising thought, / but to hear it spoken publicly was, / at that time, / during a four-year pandemic of patriotism, / absolutely bold. / Boldness has never been in doubt / when it comes to Ye, not then / and not since― / the epitome of strong mind / meets big mouth./ As self-conscious as I was / in those days, / nerdy and past due / on my pubescent growth spurt, / there was no way I couldn’t / be taken with him, / high / off crack music and what not. / I loved the old Kanye / because I thought he loved me, / loved us, / like he loved his mama, / like his mama / loved books / he’ll never read. / We saw what happened / after she transitioned, / ’twas like Shakespearean tragedy / adapted for the gossip blogs. / I think back / to the towering waters / after the storm surge / and to the dryness / of the land beneath his eyes / since maternal separation / and I know / something is broken, / deeply broken, / when he’s sitting down / in the Oval Office / with the president / of the United States, / the one that came after / the one more people would’ve guessed, / but / there’s a beef there / that the two men on opposite sides / of the desk / share about the man / who last held the office, / though the stakes of that steak / are not the same / and never could be. / Instead of a teddy bear, / we find a sheep / in a baseball cap; / come to find out, / free thinking not aimed / toward freedom / is a waste of a thought. / He rambles earnestly / but strays from poetry / while the camera flashes / in his eyes, / eyes that absorb the light /  but reflect the president’s orange glimmer / back to him like praise. / This sight / would’ve seemed impossible in 2005, / but so many things / assumed to have changed / by then / turned out to have been / the same the whole time. / When Yeezus said, / slavery was a choice, / his lips were / quotation marks / followed by no attribution, / puckered insults / insinuating that his own people / provided no friction / against their reassignment as property, / as ornaments of wealth / and power. / The irony of the scene / is regrettable, / straight-up sad: / enslaved people / built the damn White House / and he’s acting like / he’s finally made it, / hey Mama— / not seeing how seamlessly / he blends into the walls / with all the other bodies / bearing the load of imperial lunacy, / forcibly upholding, / even and especially in their death, / the supremacy / of a violent orientation / on the orbit of the world, / reinforcing the kind of ideas / that spin sound heads silly / as the slope / of history / slickens with blood.