8o's legacy (happy Independence)
Don't blame the GWB administration, it was Reagan and his merry crew.
Though we protested in the post-Vietnam 70's
hot and sure about every error
the point is, we had that luxury. Yes, there was hardship,
discrimination,
individual need; but really no one need go hungry
for lack of a job, there was real community
spirit, especially on the lower rungs, but philanthropy as well.
There was a strong foundation that made sense
and could be reasoned with.
The 80's brought in a different worldview,
more wide and wild. Days of cocaine,
champagne, glamour and celebration for sweet deregulation,
when every dreamer
could believe the capitalist vision of wealth unbound.
Before it was found that
poisonous as plutonium in the gleeful arms of the truly greedy,
just what we
were free to become.
Since then it's been spinning our balance to bits of
blast-warped brains.
Such unbridled hatred and spitting disdain. Psychic
Cassandras said at the time, his numbers are 666.
A man possessed by
Hollywood fantasies of what we all should be,
folie a deux with the nation.
And here are those snowy yesteryears roosting
in our rafters, laying out
the macabre future of their disaffected dreams.
Who are we, really?
Distanced from our history,
believing convenient lies, what are our chances
for recovery?
July 4, 2010
interdependence
Q & A
I need you, out there,
to ask the questions,
feed my liminal factory --
imaginal machinery set to
engineer exquisite ideas
in shrink-wrapped phrases.
Tell me your shame-held
secrets, fears that track you
in the night.
Let me meld them with
trenchant fairytales,
legends that recapitulate
on cable news, vibrant stylings
of the Blues,
surreal cartoons rendered by
Nietzschean travails.
Let me take this mess,
sprinkle with inchoate memories,
bake well at near 99 degrees
until the odor overtakes the air.
Now, open wide and taste
enchantment, if your questions
and my answers
meet and satisfy
each other's needs.
July 4, 2010