I consider myself a cheerleader on the outside. I've been watching the US from Paris for a decade. It's been enlightening. And depressing. I was never able to see American politics from the inside. I just blended into the ease and docility of "our way of life". But from France, I started to get a different perspective. The Revolutionary Bankable Poetry Revolution is my response. (Along with the countless letters to Arlen Specter...) In my diary here, as well as on my blog, I offer these anti-poems as antidotes. Here's the recent anti-manifesto. I don't think a third way is enough. I think we need to search out an eleventh way, something so removed from where we are now that no Super Bowl commercial would touch it. And by the way, as a sign of intestinal fortitude, I rooted on my hometown Steelers from midnight to 4AM, broadcast live on French TV...
Attention all official and non-official members of the Revolutionary Bankable Poetry Revolution. This is your muse speaking. (Well, actually, this is your muse speaking through a blog, which is, in fact, just a way of whispering directly into the NSA's ear.) It has come to my attention that, despite your considerable numbers, your revolutionary spirit has been flagging. (And that's not wave the flagging.) I, abiding in the muse residence, that spacious haven of peace on high, where your Great Leader is fervently convinced some dignified, old, bearded guy lives (Boy, do we have him fooled!), have not been impressed with your political - strike that - poetical, engagement. No Battle Hymns to the Destruction of the Republic? No Odacious Affronts to Justice? No Intergalactic Super Sonnets? No Villainous Villanelles? What has happened to your creative chutzpah?
In my all-knowing eyes and ears, it has become self-evident that all forms of discourse are NOT equal and poetical diatribes lobbed at the powers-that-be (other than me) can topple any fortress, no matter how white. So get cracking! Churn out verses to combat crisis! Launch those missives of inspired vitriol! Pay no heed to the dogs of war, unless to piss on them! We, the Revolutionary Bankable Poetry Revolution, will overcome!!