Adrian Potter likes to rant, and I like what he likes to rant about:
Adrian S. Potter works, writes, and dies a little each day in Minnesota. Despite the silly questions that idiots ask, he is not related to Harry Potter, but he would pretend to be his cousin for a lucrative book deal or a free pitcher of beer. Additional propaganda can be found at http://adrianspotter.squarespace.com/.From: Apotter Apotter [
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
]
Just Another Poet Ranting About Revolution The government wants more money for their war evidently democracy doesn't come cheap so we measure the cost of the passing months in the bones of dead soldiers laid end to end. Education matters, as long as you can buy one a message taken to heart by the girls I've known who ended up dancing in strip clubs to pay for tuition and books, which is okay by society's standards since all women have to sell themselves in one way or another to make it. This country is overrun with families haunted by the ghosts of deadbeat fathers, crumbling under the steady weight of unpaid bills, surviving with one dead car in the driveway and no means to afford another, and then we wonder silently what's happening to our world as the news reporter mentions a woman drowning her two children in a bathtub. Look: we've spent our lives believing the world's falsehoods without question, and we are all too fragile to have come this far unscarred, but the knowledge that nothing will be done by our leaders places the burden of creating change squarely on our shoulders. As others have said before me, the revolution will not be televised; nor will it be podcasted, documented on blogs, downloaded and burned on a blank DVD, or streamed and broadcasted via YouTube for folks to sit back and view from the comfort of their homes. This poem is not an act of aggression for each moment carries the weight of its own brutality but we need to take the truth, sharpen it and press it against the president's throat until he stops pretending that lies are the answer to every question. Stand Up and Sing Huddled like hostages during our transatlantic voyage, we were relocated to this North American continent where natives were displaced by manifest destiny, where we were chained in the name of capitalism, where we found ourselves sold and traded like cargo, and yet we still stood up and sang. When separate but unequal remained public policy, we remained silently resilient just to survive while prejudice spit venom in our faces, while sipping water under Colored Only signs, while refusing to budge from bus seats, and we still stood up and sang. As society resisted change with dogged stubbornness, we walked proudly despite any circumstance through racist protesters to attend better schools, through inclement weather to boycott transit systems, through populous penitentiaries and peaceful protests, and yet we still stood up and sang. And today, as we subscribe to the factual myth of The Man holding us down, we are admired and reviled in the same breath, walking, smooth-talking contradictions in the pigmented flesh, the epitome of duality, tiptoeing around categorization, equally capable of staging diner sit-ins or drive-by shootings, speaking proper English or Ebonics, standing for something or nothing at all, and, in spite of all that, we still sing. And we must continue singing, whether it is glorious gospel music or rebellious gangster rap, the twang of plucked guitar or hum of harmonica breath, the jubilant jazz of the jumping jook joint, the eternal boogie that funks up the night, or old slave songs that once tempered the pain of suffering. We must sing to document our twisted path through history we must sing black men stand up and sing black women stand up and sing sing these blues forever, so their echo never dies.  Be first to comment this article |  Add as favourites (3) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 29 | E-mail
|
