Political Parties, IV

Now,

I have to explain

once again

that I don't hate

all Democrats

or the party itself

mostly because

the last time

I talked about them

in poems

someone took it

really really really

badly,

not just because

I called them Demagogs

but maybe?

To me the Democrats

aren't Jefferson

or Jackson

or Clevend,

Wilson, Carter,

Clinton, Obama, Biden

or even FDR,

but JFK,

whom I still like to idealize

as one of the greatest Americans

who ever lived,

whose ambitions for the country

were greater in public

than they were in private,

whose rhetoric truly soared

and is still unequalled

except maybe by Lincoln,

who was assassinated

at about a thousand days

and whose work

was completed by Johnson,

who would never have dreamed

of a great society

if not for that day

in Dallas,

who suffered

through the darkest days

of the Cold War

and brilliantly navigated

through tragedy and triumph

as no other president had before

or since,

and we all still live

in his shadow

and can't agree

how he was killed

mostly because

we remain

in shock

that it ended

so suddenly,

and so can't honestly contend

with his legacy.

That's the Democrats

to me,

what they've been so obviously chasing

ever since,

not just Clinton

but Carter before him,

Obama, 

the true myths 

of Camelot

held up by a stiff backboard

and a winning smile

and a brother

who could also

have been great,

helped him be great

and suffered the same fate

for it.