After The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with abject apologies to the spirit of T.S. Eliot
Eliot’s words, with tweaks of my own here and there, appear in standard font
Quotes from Kellyanne Conway in italics
Let us go then, you and I,
When the polls close,
The evening spread out against the sky
Like Newt Gingrich, taking the wings off butterflies
Let us go, leave the school gym, walk through half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights
An Elks Club
Or bachelor party
If you have the time, if you have the inclination to speak to a stranger
If you want to divulge what is a very sacred, private matter
–the way that you just voted
An overwhelming question
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Those conversations never happened.
In the room, the women come and go
Weigh all of the issues,
All of the images,
All of the information
And make a choice
Almost at the last minute.
And indeed there will be time
(I want to do right, apart from my gender – I want to do right as a campaign manager)
There will be time, there will be time
(Women have been late-in-the-game deciders)
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder
Nearly two and a half million people die every year that are on the voter rolls.
It takes time to get dead people off the voter rolls.
And create
Every life should have a chance,
Regardless of race, socioeconomic status or circumstance
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate:
Why would I hang a sign around Ted Cruz’s neck that says ‘Iowa or bust?’
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
An avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge:
Negative,
Caustic,
Burn-it-to-the-ground
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Falsehoods
Alternative facts
Oh, do not ask
Why would I hang a sign around Ted Cruz’s neck that says ‘Iowa or bust?’
Because then there’s only two options:
Iowa, or bust.
I don’t sugarcoat things, but I’m very polite in delivering them.
In the room the women come and go:
“Please speak to me from the waist up: my brain, my eyes.”
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
I went out on my own, years ago, to try to create some additional choices
in a parallel universe.
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t be fooled, because I am a man by day.’
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
I’ve noticed a lot of people are very bold and blustery on Twitter because it’s easy to do that With the poison keyboard
And a hundred and forty characters.
My morning coat, red, white and blue with buttons shaped like cats, My collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My felt hat rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
There’s plenty of room for passion, but there’s very little room for emotion
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the Tappers, Cuomos, Holts,
I have measured out my life with talking heads
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Above the chirons
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
They say a bald man is trustworthy. He has nothing to hide.
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
There are many ways to surveil each other.
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
I never knew how ugly and how stupid I was until, well, you know.
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To reject the spin
The overreach and distraction?
And how should I presume?
Sexual harassment is as difficult to prove as it is to disprove.
And how should I begin?
Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.
Shall I say
Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?
Are you gonna look me in the face and tell me that?
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
Women are trying to have it all but are trying to regain control
And, although it shouldn’t be, men behaving badly is sort of an occupational hazard
They think that they’ve got a monopoly on talking to women from the waist down.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the silver bullet, the magic elixir, the fool’s errand
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To say:
You can’t appeal to us through our wombs,
We’re pro-life.
The fetus
Beat us.
We grew up with sonograms
As if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen
We know life when we see it.
That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
This whole biology-chemistry-abortion-gender agenda
Would it have been worth while
If one, fixing her makeup and fluffing up her hair, and turning toward the press corps,
Should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
We know there are lots of leaks everywhere.
There’s nothing we can do about that, except not leak ourselves.
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I serve at the pleasure of @POTUS.
His goals are my goals
His message my message.
Uninformed chatter
Doesn’t matter.
©Melinda Rooney, 2018
Recycled: Found Narratives 