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By Victor Schwartzman, on 12-10-2007 17:58

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Published in : OW! Site Content, Agit Prop 101


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.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Last update : 12-10-2007 17:58

   
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