Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Poetic Density and Revolution

Met a really good dead poet today, and he's good because he uses the fewest words to get over the most complicated things, and because he was a good revolutionary, too; my poetry would be greatly enhanced if I could do the things Roque Dalton did, like formulate a revolutionary strategy that, claims Claribel Alegria, forged "links between the clandestine politico-military organizations and the open mass organizations [and] came to be the accepted line for all the principal revolutionary movements" in Latin America. He also miraculously escaped certain death at the hands his executioners twice, once by coup d'etat, and once by a more spiritually connected earthquake. That would be nice enough, but he was a good writer, too who avoided the overworked, wordy ways of typical revolutionary poetry, good at heart but long of tongue. Like mine:
America I’m sick of pointing my finger at evildoers.
It’s getting too hot in the world, and America keeps putting fossil fuel on the fire while widows in Chicago freeze in the dark, and the butterflies could be wiped out by habitat desecration leaving poets only traffic lights to describe with density.
America do you even want poets anymore?
I haven’t smoked marihuana in years but the gateway is still open for soul butterflies to pass over and I am still psychotropically connected.
Reality TV is still false, newspapers still write lies, and the hyperreal is still unreal but I still see the desert wide open to the sky.
I have not applied for copyright protection but still need security for my own obsessions.
I remain a cocksman but I won’t fuck the world on your dime, for a hundred-dollar pair of sneakers, for a $1.25 gallon of gas, for a low-fat burrito, for fresh strawberries but I will if we all come in a orgasm of atmospheres biospheres tropospheres hydrospheres fucking pulsing juices fragrant with sweaty bliss, lubed for love of planet, wet holy ecstasy.
America do you remember when sex was holy?

Well that's a lot of hooey to say what Dalton says in four short lines:
Love
Love is my other country
the primary one
not the one I'm proud of
but the one I suffer for.
By the way, you can find a lot of great Dalton tributes in Roque Dalton: Redux from Cedar Hill Books. Some of it, of course, is that long-winded Latin Revolutionary stuff. That's ok.