the super bowl shuffle in poetry

The billionaires named their sports teams
after the races and species they wiped out
seemingly without a trace of irony.

Lions and tigers and bears oh my God
they’ll all be extinct soon, you guys
while their images will remain plastered
on the sides of three-billion-dollar
tax-payer funded white-elephant stadia
Nero calling the nickel-package defense
while the world burns down around him.
Seemingly without a trace of irony.

They’ll strip mine the Rockies
they’ll warm out the Penguins
they’ll fish until there’s no more Marlins
for fun they’ll shoot all the Seahawks
never mind how many different slurs
they’ll have for the Native Americans
whose mineral rights they’ve stolen
so they can be rich enough to go and
kill the last of all the Panthers.
Seemingly without a trace of irony.

But they’re far too dumb
these Harvard boys
to have intended all this irony.
No one with two brain cells in their heads
would destroy the world
so they could say they were rich then
brag about it through a goddamned football team.

No, these bastards are blissfully unaware
of their living Twilight-Zonish irony.
That’s the problem.
That’s the problem.
Well, anyway, it’s one of the problems.