A New Draft (an excerpt)

Disclaimer: I don’t normally post poems here, because I feel that they have a much better chance at legitimacy if they live a long revision life and see the light of publication in a real venue, not my own blog… However, because of the nature of this poem and my slight intoxication, I have decided to request feedback over the internets, which are known for their fair and balanced opinions.

Written tonight, this draft is rant-y, and liberal.  I post because I want feedback, but I’m not entirely sure about the politics…

**edit: if it seems cut-off, it is.  This is the first third (about) of the poem**

See for yourself after the jump.

It is not as though I was entirely right:

On Points interview with poet Tracy K. Smith – Space and Poetry! I’m not wrong! 🙂 http://bit.ly/nVvZWB

Smith’s poems still read as if the flight of fantastic

power in the æther out amongst the stars

guides our world. Even this brilliant daughter

of an engineer knows to be read

is to live, and to live one must make

concessions to all those who call the radio

show about their faith in their

all-powerful-individual – even if it is not

the particular belief she holds.

Even if these particular evangelists with

nothing better to do on a glorious

afternoon are ego-stroked on their bellies

and bare backs, as though babes, just to quiet

their loudest brayings. This is the fallacy

the entire republican system has fallen

to: squeaky-wheel-syndrome. It must

be greased and stroked to quiet squees

of self-agrandized protest. The groans

against a system. It is always the system.

And yet a belief in the biggest system

of them all is superstitious, so why not

assign god-granted powers to politicians,

the return of the theocratic class: blessed

are those who are humble before media, for they

shall inherit the world; blessed are those

who cry for capital, for they shall live

enriched; blessed are those who convey

the talking-points, the bullet-points, the chapter-

verse-points, for they are infallible.