Poem: Political
Usually when I confess to being a Mason
I get the funniest reactions:
people think it’s so evil
that I have the strangest beliefs...
when they themselves support
(by non-dissenting participation
in our imperialist society at least)
a government that makes my childhood friends, admire
the daily gun down of freedom-fighting Arabs
who only want us out of the Middle East!
Then everybody’s been talking about a new election,
the people on TV, man, they get a political erection
and now we need to start making a new selection,
the newspapers are busy giving birth to a new God.
who is it going to be next?
I mean,!!THINK!!:
this so-called nation
is a highly complex and highly technological casserole
of over 300 million people:
so what is human like me going to do
that’s going to affect America so much?
Next to nothing, of course:
it’s not a question of leadership or reasons,
it has much more to do with bull-shit religions.
It gets so old,
all these people who should know much better:
just doing what they’re told
losing touch with their golden higher selves,
thinking they somehow need a fuhrer, wait, another Bush!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m not bashing Obama himself
(though he’s a humorously ambitious intellectual elf)
he actually seem to have some hippie inclinations
such as trying to work things out with “rebel” nations;
No, it’s just that a state doesn’t need a “head”
anymore than a plane needs wings of lead.
And America’s prisons are full of so-called criminals
but mostly it’s not for crimes of the gun
or robbery or even theft that they’ve done,
but simply for potions that transform the mind
(which are as “Drugs” by the system maligned)
And the founding fathers would shudder to see
a mess of junk that’s on the television:
sentimental drudgery, million churches at preaching,
shows like NCIS and Tatoo teaching
that you’d better not step out of line
or you’ll cease to be treated as human
(sometimes open crimes against humanity
treated as entertainment on TV)
And we selfishly control nuclear technology
when we’re too filled with superstition to see
that it’s the only solution to the energy crisis:
now people are starting to realize,
but that’s a hypocritical joke,
that’s wasted decades of brutal air-raids
Now I’ve been in jail–
No people, as a guard!
And known plenty of different sorts
(ripped slinging mexicans, four clover hippies,
guys who’d pulled stick-up jobs, this thin Marx and Engels-loving literary snob,
drunks who’d talked back to police-men,
red-neck methheads sharing cells with thoughtful pot heads)
and in California
the whole institution is run
like a ruthless dungeon or something:
civilization is truly lacking from the men in blue
And I’ve known lots of “crazies,”
Guarding foster homes and psych wards
across the world:
mixed together are idiots, singing visionaries,
sociopaths, and drooling Van Goghs
staring out of hated window-sills
You know, it’s not that hard
for even a brilliant, rational scholar to go insane
when capitalist society doesn’t value
the higher contents of his brain–
and wants him to write TV advertissing
or some such deranged piss
Hmmm... see every now and then
I’m talking to some person
(most recently, a truly decent type)
and I’m warned about “the new world order;”
Now, I think it’s obvious
that the rich of numerous nations
(from America to Russia to Saudi Arabia to rag-tag Mexico)
to each other owe greedy allegiance
(Bin Ladens, Waltons, and Putins shared from a platinum dish)
leaving commoners to worship flags
and blame their poverty on people of other creeds and colors
But true globalism and humaternity
is the only defiant cure:
freedom from jingoism and racism
can save us all from truly terrible disaster,
for as no race is superior none shall be master
and if we do not freely share the sun
the sky shall eventually fill with wars’ debris...
and the hawks of all sides will have “victory”
(2015)
