The Left Column

Politics for Poets

Wake up!

Kevin Smith showed up in the channel changer channel and it was an acid moment. So I watched the little 10 minute part of what it was that Kevin Smith had recommended: a new movie by some people with a fairly suburban humor, goth-light kids at the up-class school. Cather in the Rye is part of the plot.

I watched what was billed as "10 Bindlestiffs". I found humor in it. I found humor in it to the point of wanting to actually watch the rest of the movie. But I can't find "Bindlestiffs", only "10 Bindlestiffs" in the listings. So I'm being haunted by Kevin Smith recommending movies that aren't available.

I try not to go there.

I have been tempted lately to post political things to this column. However, this is Politics for Poets, and I am very poetical and try to shun the political (because it often wants you to be a zombee so it can be a zombee and eat you is the horrer movie that some people say is worst-case buerocracy). A poet ought to be concerned with matters of soul. The poet most love even the corrupt politician. Or, if he can't, the poet must at least understand that someone might. The gun-mall is actually the sick-man's soulmate.

I have long held deeply paranoid views concerning the level of my own paranoia. And for that reason I have shunted the obivious conspiricy babble to only be let out of my little writers fingers in the mouth or writings of a character of mine in the throws of psychological delusion. I say it over and over that most things in government are not broken and do not need to be fixed. And that means that the people of government are mostly doing a good job and ought not be shocked and awed by political changes. However, we also understand that poltics is about power. Power is often abused. For all the good done by polticians, there will be mostly focus upon not that, but what was done wrong.

Many change-mongers want change because they are pulling a shakedown. There are legitimate things that need to change, and there are legitimate causes that have to be 'mongered' for the better good. Efectatious change should never come about from bullying. It sets a bad precidence. Political bullys may become power junkies. Zeolots, all worked up about some new cause, can become bullies. Perhaps their groups did some important work pointing out inequalities and changing people's additudes. But don't effective people always want more? Some people, when they believe their cause is just, resort to whatever means at all to lobby and promote their cause. They even go so far as to demand lists of doners and then somehow target these people through boycots, etc. These are things that a polite poet would perhaps not do, things that just shouldn't happen to anyone exercising their right to free speach in a democracy. When it is a matter of someone's faith, there are boundries that polite people respect. Political opponents should not be lerking in the bushes around the houses of doners to the opposition cause. In a mature democracy someone who disagrees with another about an important topic, say some kind of marriage issue, might agree, politically, with 90 percent of everything else of an opponent. We are not supposed to be enemies just because we support or do not support some new and hot-button issue.

Eventually we all end here.

In the case of total and complete remaking of all and everything, I suppose that happens to everyone at the very end of their life.

We live in a world where dark humor is perhaps the freeest form of social satire. Events in Washington can seem like the third act of a five act tragedy, where the characters ought to know better, ought to resign themselves fast to a furious exit. Exit the stage, sad puppet clowns. "It's all the boys over board now, my fondest mates."

"Eeewick! Eeewick!" he's a zombee. He can't hear you. Can they cast the demons out? Can they restore his soul? What will the next two acts bring? Will it be a story of heros or will they be tradgic jestors?

It you try to be a hero you will probably have a tough go at it.

I think I've blogged enough today.

Life goes on.

Thank You Veterans!

June 21, 2012

~ OK Now.

 
   The poet likes the other
  poet's pretty poem:
 flowers, hours, April showers!
   And a love affair
   and do I dare
      give away the end?
   How does the story
     end so well?
  He never gets enough of
     reading the books she gives him.

 Depth of snow
 no one know
 in rills and hollows
 where you shouldn't go
  when the storm is fierce
  and the night is cold
    even you 
   shouldn't be so bold.