(Please reference introductory notes to immediately prior post “Tammany Hall”)

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Recorded Reading (1:22): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8dfa9l7lzbgqu4bfbt645/Tammany-Hall-II.m4a?rlkey=lz7h07g39mj2wrjwwxbtq9545&dl=0

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Tammany Hall II

We’ve kept her from the conferences
Kept her from the halls
Kept her from the afterparties
And the formal balls

With her kind we would not be able
Comf’tably to sup
We are so afraid she’ll show
Us other ladies up!

Besides, our compromises,
Cowardices, jealousies
And petty power machinations
Don’t us so well please

When seen in light simple
Divine priority of ~
Selfish hatred looks so tawdry
Sitting next to love!

Then, too, we think truth dangerous
In her poetry
We make sure our public poets
Incoherent be

In all their works, and aberrant
Their personal lives in
And if they’re not, it’s early
To profile them we begin

We’ve learned well, over generations,
To eliminate credibility
In anyone a vehicle
Of human liberation be

So there Truth sits, miserably,
In our Land of Lies ~
Candle heating in the winter,
In the summer killing flies

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