I try to teach my kids civility
I aim to instill respect
As you stand upon your soapbox
Doing the very things I ask them to reject

The name calling, the mockery
the disregard for people’s lots
The lack of compassion and empathy
for the things most people fight for- that you bought

The lies, misleadings, and backtracks
the disproven “no I didn’ts”
A child in a chair and not a thrown
Immune to things like evidence

Whims for approval turned promises
Drawing lines within the sand
It seems it’s more about winning
Than for that for which you stand

Both sides telling stories
Versions of truth their only bond
But we’ve grown tired of being treated
as lemmings, sheep, or pawns

You push, you prod, you bully
but to ‘serves’ not in your nature
It’s not politicing but your very actions
That go against the presidential nomenclature

“How much blood” is how you sell your people
on a wall to protect the border
While daily mass shootings by citizens
don’t sway you on gun control reform from your NRA donor’s orders

Praying on fear and on weakness
Xenophobia’s your zen
Our nation of immigrants now vilifying
asylum seekers and aliens

Taking his ball when he can’t have his wall
Leaving no room to negotiate
How can we expect progress
With the elected refusing to participate

Your way or the highway
disagreement means dissension
And all the while teaching
to attack with cruel intension

Our reality turned reality show
Campaigned threats seeming scripted or phantom
But the series plays out before us
with every tweet and every tantrum

Is confusion what you seek
Or is this show purely propaganda
Each decision that you forge
For you own personal bonanza
(But you lack the historical knowledge…and charisma
of Lin Manuel Miranda)

Half way through or perhaps a quarter
May your legacy be not pure stain
Be it through frustration or distrust
The distain has caused a change

A palpable shift of those typically silent
a democratic squall
Some running to steal the dusty seats
While throngs now protest standing tall

Innocence lost – what have we done?
Our children’s first act to revile
Like the epiphanies of Scrooge or the Grinch
There’s still time to right the ship and reach across the aisle

Not party first, but future first
we can once again be great
But to find that hidden path once more
Starts with putting aside the hate.

So I will teach my children
Hate is ignorant, love’s a mission
Standing up for your beliefs
Should never mean not listening