Frederick Pollack wrote:
> Actually my rate has been slower than usual ... This is
> psychologically a weird time to write; it was easier, in a way, under
> Bush, thinking that everyone Out There was a fundamentalist,
> nationalist nut. Thinking No, they're more complex and various than
> that, and that I myself (gasp) might have to take some responsibility
> for how things turn out ... Apart from bronchitis/flu, end of the
> semester, economic worries etc., this new more complex perspective
> makes poetry more difficult. (Which is a good thing, of course.) In
> "Linz" I was circling back to my native pessimism. Hoping that
> history proves me wrong.
If, as "Linz" suggests, it's Justice you want, you came to the wrong
planet.
What will GW's monument be? Not a Linz but maybe a tort,
a chain of suits as empty as the 8-year effort to depose him.
Whoever said Poetry Changes Nothing nailed it.
If poetry had changed the last eight years, Bush,
Rumsfeld, and the cardiac vampire would be in coffins
filled with their native earth, stakes through their hearts,
and Sam Hamill would be President.
Up for dispute.
What great moments of change we can believe it?
1. The abolition of slavery that drove it underground where it
remains to this day?
2. The Pure Food and Drug Act that made Soylent Green marginally illegal?
3. The decision that hanging and electrocution are cruel and unusual,
to be replaced by the humane euthanasia of lethal injection as
though all life ended in an animal shelter?
Now name your favorite lie:
1. Your 401(k) is still fully valued.
2. No one will be denied health care based on ability to pay.
3. No, babe, that isn't splooge on your dress, its rubber cement.
Grant this much: the President-in-Waiting has defied radio hysterics,
the natterers who promised a Commie Negroid empire
presided over by Bill Ayers as the Emperor
with the little beady rodent eyes,
and Bernardine Dohrn as Principal Courtesan
of this neue Ordnung.
It's probably going to be much duller than that and
in a year we who voted for him probably will hate his guts.
When will be be out of Iraq?
How many compromises will he have made
to watered legislation to get anything through at all?
In a sick way I feel like the kid who was abused
by his jolly old uncle long ago:
I cannot forget and I cannot forgive.
Politics ended in June 1968
when Sirhan popped a cap in RFK's head--
RFK, the last politician I believed could effect
(ready?) CHANGE!!
I've never trusted a word from the rest of them:
a drunk driver, a guileless fool, a Governor who
would have hired Stevie Wonder as his driver,
finally a whoremonger who married the true Messalina
of the Washington courtesans.
Is this the one at last I can believe?
No.
I voted by default for an Alfred Noyes character,
The Highwayman, who rode by night
up to the old inn door.
Pray God there's no one lurking
in the shadows.
KW
--
Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
---------------------------------
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
|