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Drowned by the HypeRoutinized, motorized, tear gas sprayed in jaded eyesInside, on the hard wood floor, back patting How they'll take on HMOs, tobacco, even Repeating their speeches on video screens This is the sound byte, not the gun fire outside In the protest pit, the white noise background Of directionless dissent, so it is portrayed By lap-topped journalists comfortable with room service Charging lap dances to corporate accounts They whose strings were pulled by Citigroup Now eat shrimp canapés with leather-faced stars "We're for the people," the robotic triangulor says Protest confined to a pit, voices in the wilderness Muffled by vinegar-soaked bandanas Driven back, in the shadow of Wells Fargo Under the logo of KPMG Peat Marwick Past the windows of skid row Staying at the Panama SRO, the Goldenwest, San Peeedro Street, detoured past Kosher burritos On the air-conditioned floor, the consummate insider's Portrayed as the vessel of minorities' dreams "If he can, you can" - but the dreams he carries Are those of Aetna, and other Hartford-based insurers "We're the party of the people," busted blood vessels The last nose of Camelot, Eleanor Holmes Norton Sent out to sell the unsellable, declaiming The greatest peacetime prosperity in history While the District she represents includes An unmoved ghetto, an Anacostia where empty buildings, Their plywooded windows painted black, Stand dusty, the proffered salvation No more than a new private prison Skid Row circumnavigated with crime scene tape Tapes looped again and again: "We are the party Of the people, if entrusted with this office, I'll fight for you." With rubber bullets The sound bytes fly, like, "Free trade is fair trade." "I'll never compromise your right to choose." Tear gas Kills brain cells. Pico, Olive and the Fig, All smell of death, disruptions quickly erased Misreported, drowned by the hype 
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