Watching a Steven Seagal Movie on a Venezuelan Bus

The plot doesn't matter.
Nothing matters.
The massive, expressionless Seagal
plows like a deadly freighter
through oceans of flying Asian bodies,
countless disposable Ornamentals
groaning and dying
as the green flanks of the Andes
flash past our darkening windows.

Some movies go straight to video,
others, direct to Third World transportation.
The U.S. jettisons lame surplus entertainment
the way we dump tumor-causing pesticides
that fail our minimum standards.
Somebody else will suck it up.
That's globalization with a vengeance.

On the ferry from Isla Margarita
full of families with young children
the lounge TVs blasted out
The Amityville Horror - murder
and demonic possession on Long Island.
"Basura pura," said one woman.
Absolute rubbish. Yes, but hard to escape.

What must folks here think of the country
that sends them all this toxic waste?
Where a so-called religious leader
publicly advocates assassinating their president?
Venezuelans call the U.S. president "sangriento":
Bloody Bush. Maybe they figure
he's seen too many bad movies.
And now he's starring in one,
a political Steven Seagal - mumbling, oblivious, lethal.
Bodies are falling around him,
disposable humanity of several nations
including our own. But only darkness is visible
now. We need a different sort of show.