Sunday, February 03, 2013

DANCING WITH WORDS

A.D. Winans

DANCING WITH WORDS
There are poets who like

To dance with words

Dance for favors and illusionary

Poetry careers

But dancing for an audience

Isn’t like feeling the rhythm

That rubs up against the soul

Odetta, Buffy Saint-Marie
Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie,

Pete Seeger Billy Bragg
Were living proof of this


Money pigeonholes

Power corrupts

The spiritual truth

The scriptures tell us this


The true poet knows this

Stands tall above

The dancing with word poets

Who are little more than

Instruments of a poem greater

Than themselves



Bar room revolution talk

Is little more than an exercise
In futility

Take it to the streets

Be like Walt Whitman
Walk blood stained battlefields

Real and imagined

Tend to the spiritual wounds

Of your comrades


Be like the people of Egypt

Risking life and limb

For their beliefs
Be like the anonymous poets of Poland

Who during the height

Of government tyranny

Tossed poems into the public square

For the people to read

Giving them hope in desperate times


Be like your sisters and brothers

In the peoples struggle in Wisconsin

Fighting for worker rights

Love them become one with them


Shout your poems from rooftops

In solidarity with them.


Whitman was the Heavyweight
Champion of poetry

Stood tall and fearless among

The enemy

Which is never really man

But the poison in his soul

Pride envy lust for power

How can those inflicted

Write from the heart?


One column of media praise

Is of less value

Than a single tear drop on a poem

From a waitress in a greasy

Road stop diner


The dancing with word poets

Dance a solo dance

In a bar room with no jukebox

The true poet’s topic is people

Not the poet.

a.d. winans
2/3/12