A Free Verse Poem About Anything
I can write a free verse poem about anything
If I want to extend my ego
Or I can just let the world be
All fucked up and beautiful
Six billion lives alone
Living in self-imposed exile from real experience
Cast adrift in a specific social melieu
Which is then projected onto the rest of humanity
Except for those
Few or many
We think of as Others
People so alien to our experience
That we deny our common existance as people
Greeks and Barbarians
A five thousand year old idea, at least
Which still dominates our consciousness
And of course it does
Look how we clothe ourselves and feed ourselves
Have shelter and transportation
And the frivilous entertainments that make a C+ life
Feel like a solid A-
Can I have an amen?
Because of course I'm preaching in a free verse poem about anything
The last frontier of the wordy hypocrite
On vacation from responsibility
When the knowledge that we are all one
And the world is in pain
Often and harsh and often preventatble
If we can care more, know more, do more
More, more, more, more, or
nothing...
Block it out
Return to the acceptable
Accept the inevitable of the way things are
Just sit back and enjoy the fringe benefits that go to those citizens and
their neighbors who get a chance to vote every four years or so for one of
the two guys who learned how best to suck up to power and gets to be the CEO
of the Big Stick of Capital
Bread and circuses baby
Only now its on 115 channels
And the bread may take a little longer to get than it used to
But its so good
Thats why so many of us have to make it
Or serve it
Instead of painting and writing poetry
Singing and dancing and growing gardens
We wouldn't want them to do that would we?
I can't make my own fucking Big Mac can I?
It isn't someone has to dig the ditches anymore
Now its the guy who gets to drive the ditch digging machine
Is a lucky bastard
With a fat paycheck and a good tan
With a paid lunch and health insurance
May I take your order please?
Would you like fries with that?
I'll suck your dick for 50 dollars
Because of course a man has to talk about sex
in a free verse poem about anything
Because money buys sex and not just servitude
Would you like fries with that?
If you turn your back I'll kill you
Just for what you've got in your pockets
I can't write adds to sell cigarettes to Asian teenagers can I?
But I watch the same TV commercials that you do
Where the guy in the phat car gets the skinny girl
with big tits and perfect teeth
And guess what mother fucker
Guns are cheap
Would you like fries with that?
from May, 2002 issue