friday refrains · two cheers for democracy
Friday 5 September 2008 | 8 cookies in the jar
AMERICA
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,
And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu
Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels
Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America
And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,
And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money
That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,
He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—
And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—
Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,
And I look at the student with his acne and cellphone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,
And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:
“I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”
But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be
When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river
Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters
And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?
•
AMERICA
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
8 cookies in the jar
post your glowing encomium (or bitter philippic) »
Follow this heated, lively discussion through its very own feed; also, you can pingback or trackback from your own doubtlessly much more interesting site.
Yummy.
But what about Ginsberg’s AMERICA!?!?!
Though, damn, that first one is kick-ass.
I really enjoy this, and it is in stark contrast to a very different sentiment of American culture and power in the 1980s when we had movies like Red Dawn and kids grew up listening to their parents shout “Better Dead than Red” and would plaster “America—love it or leave it” bumper stickers on the back of their Chevy Impalas.
Does it seem to anyone else that exuberant national pride has become exuberant self-flagellation? We have become more introspective of ourselves as a nation, more self-critical too. Not that any one person or country couldn’t use a little eye-popping self-honesty now and then to wake them from the dream of being smothered by a satin quilt. But is it a little like the political rhetoric you hear so much of in this election year, as we toss off the quilt and roll back to sleep, replete with observation but short on solution, or is recognition the first step in change? I wonder.
I wonder, too. And….
Funny thing is, in spite of a few publicly lauded (and nervy) America-questioning American poets, we STILL have such bumper stickers, along with their attendant sentiments. Anyway in this border state we do.
Those unquestioningly patriotic flicks are still around, too. (It’s the “unquestioningly” word that’s the important one, of course.) Cf. a recent J-List discussion in which the Brujo, astounded, watched grown Johnnies defend the daily schoolchild recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. As being helpful for teaching values. Teaching what?! What values?!
I guess I still think that criticism is the only recipe for what we have, at various times on this yar blerg, called “improvement.” But then I would think that, being a critic.
Then there’s Woolf: “As a woman, I have no country….”
Finally, Jamaican poet Claude McKay wrote of his complex feelings about being an African-descended citizen of the Americas? in 1921.
I suppose there will always be a segment of the population that is virulently patriotic, even as there are those who will be able to do nothing but criticize without possibility for solution (is that really the antithesis of hyper-patriotism?)
J. suggested that the post 9/11 mentality that saw a rise in what I call hyper Patriotism had some kinship in the pre wall fall of cold war politics, and that it has been the intervening years of quiet between those two events that allowed us a certain peace in which we sewed the seeds of our national introspective.
Indeed like an old shut-in, if we don’t have a good saber rattling every ten or so years to shock us out of the confines of our own looming national schizophrenia, we turn on ourselves like and animal caught in a trap.
(In rereading this I didn’t realize how grumpy I sound, shows the effects of a poor nights sleep to be sure)
Mon ami, I hope your little one gives you and J. some quality sleep-time soon! :o(
Truly, humanity has apparently needed both Confucianism and the Tao. Anyway it repeatedly invents them.
Frankly, I’m not patriotic in the least. My loyalties aren’t even with humanity. And I’m grateful to live in a place where, as I tell my students, no matter what I say in class, I’ll still be there next week–most likely–not hauled off in the middle of the night and disappeared for my crackpot beliefs
NB by the way that I wouldn’t be opposed to a daily schoolchild recitation of the Bill of Rights. Per Mr. Difranco:
I love my country
by which I mean I am indebted joyfully
to all the people throughout its history
who have fought the government to make right
where so many cunning sons and daughters
our foremothers and forefathers
came singing through slaughter
came through hell and high water
so that we could stand here
and behold breathlessly the sight
how a raging river of tears
cut a grand canyon of light
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpuJujIu9g)
*That*’s why I’ve been listening to Pete Seeger over and over again in the car. I knew there was something going on, but hadn’t dug down deep enough to figure it out. Ani illuminates.
A few parting stray thoughts:
1. A comparison between John Walker Lindh and Ezra Pound (And what is their recipe for Eggs Benedict Arnold?)
2. Richard Gere booed offstage when he asked for compassion and understanding for the enemy after 9/11?
3. When is anti-American really anti-American? When you leave town or when your timing is piss poor?
4. If I don’t have any Seeger on hand can I listen to Bruce Springsteen The Seeger Sessions Band Tour instead or do I settle for Mississippi John Hurts Last Sessions
•
Relentless narrator: Whatchoo mean, parting? ;o) Besides any friend of Springsteen’s is a friend of mine (in fact I think it was Mr. M. who got me going on the Boss).
PS the last two minutes of Chris Jordan’s TED talk, on why critical thinking (not the same as blaming):
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html