Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝#ClassicPoetry #NationalPoetryFoolMonth
#poetry
Today's poem is called "After the Clash", and it follows from (and can be sung to) the Clash song "I'm So Bored with the USA".
I'll post it in this thread.
Yankee children
Growing up in New England
Think the country can be new
But re-runs on again
Yankee politicos
Gonna make people do what they said
9/11 was 2001
Getting bored hiding under the bed
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
But what can I do?
(1/2)
Yankee agents
Are on TV to stay
Cause terrorists in America
Work 24 hours a day
Thumbs up for torture
Every week a Watergate
Old fall fashions coming back
Hood and wires held out straight
No use blaming the con men
We’ve heard it all before
Everybody loves a con
But suckers are a bore
Poetry is not supposed to be, basically, parodies of rock songs. But I write what I like to write.
The line "9/11 was 2001" from the second stanza was what I used for the title of the whole chapbook that this is in, a collection of some of my political poems. People kept repeating 9/11 as if it was an eternal signifier, never to pass into history, never to include a year.
The second half of the poem is about GWB-era stuff that sounds deranged now. Did you know that there was a TV show, _24_, that was all about heroic Federal agents torturing people? That this coexisted with the iconic picture of Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh being tortured? That there were pro-torture pundits?
The last part, about con men and suckers, is something that I come back to a lot when thinking about US politics. Movies about con men present them as the heroes. Even when they create victims, the con men are active and the victims passive. America admires con men: the successful con is its own justification. There should be no mystery about why people know that politicians cheat and lie and admire them for it.
Anyways, this is not a great poem. I think it encapsulates a particular moment which is why I saved it.
Posting a poem a day has done what I wanted it to do, which is to get me to start going through my back catalog. I've posted all of the poems that I'd put on my blog over the years, except 3 that I no longer think are among the top 30.
/fin