[Newspoetry] submission again

[Ryan Eckes]

Here are those two poems again if you can use them.


uniform philadelphia

something capital this way
comes every day.
philadelphia is a drive-thru
shopping mall, drive by discount history
everything on sale just
like the ad said:
khaki catalogues complete culture.
you've got mail.  ring liberty bells.
william penn collects calls.  independence is a mall, literally.
ben franklin backs billboards in backyards.

i say: please don't park your theme here.
leave be what free natural nothing our public
still spaces, leave be our unmanaged moods, leave
be what has not yet been reproduced.

don't touch those forks in the roads,
those forks of evolution that don't disjoint
thought like public space once it's bought.
don't discipline our irrelevant streets any further:

turn onto a street to change a channel, commercials
flash constantly in the form of vehicles and their people.
and haven't you counted all our beware of dog signs?
we've invested in fear.  we're fine.  we make our public school kids
wear uniforms now.  we've scared and convenienced ourselves into
slavery like the rest of america.    our communities connect through
wires, and we've learned to live tired.

we've already confused possibility with probability.
how docile do we need to be?

something capital called a political party just
came this way and we said okay.
why would we welcome GOP delegates?
what the fuck for?  shame
on all those who welcomed.
the GOP never really came here, to the city.
sure, they lunched some cheesesteaks and the news
reported they enjoyed them.
sure, many of them reserved fine pieces of ass for their
fine hotel rooms.
but it was all like that, reserved.  purchased space.  owned.

welcome GOP delegates to your owned  private spectacle
safe from protesters miles away in the irrelevant streets.
welcome GOP delegates to the First Union Center where
all our heroes perform.
welcome to the F U Center where you can
celebrate fucking the public
again this election year.

then they left, fled like the white flight
to the suburbs, afraid of talking to people
who are not reproductions of themselves.

no one even waved goodbye.
traffic lights kept us from noticing.



in general

it is easy to believe words and follow them to victory.

all the people who chant "Fry Mumia!"
were you there when it happened?

all the people who chant "Free Mumia!"
were you there when it happened?

all the people who say "those cops sure did a good job handling those 
protesters,"
you were not there when it happened, were you?

your thoughts happen when you read them out of a newspaper.
how much do you pay to subscribe to your opinions?

i read the Republicans claim they are now the "party of inclusion."
translation of "party of inclusion": Republicans used to hate black people
but now they don't because now it is profitable to not hate them.
Republicans are "ahead of the times," the party of the "future," of the 
"new millennium."

party of inclusion.  by definition, a party is not inclusive.  it is exclusive.
if a party were inclusive, it wouldn't be a party anymore.
it would just be everybody, and actually partying.

but we have the fry mumias and the free mumias: true parties, of exclusion, 
unwilling
to compromise by analyzing fact let alone admit they are in no position to 
judge because,
they did not see it happen.

propaganda splits into hemispheres to filter anger, force its flow
easily and completely against the opposing hemisphere.
streams clash.  easy, ripe anger when it's one-on-one.
in politics, this is progress.  George W Bush needs to find an adversary
and fight a war, so he can lead a nation to victory (among other things).
create and destroy your enemy, eliminate all opposing hemispheres as your own
continues to split into new hateful halves: propaganda's symmetry.
keep it flat like a coin, two-dimensional, simple.

opposites attract what makes sense: the language bolstered to them.
parties of inclusion block analysis at the border.
i don't believe anything anyone says.  ask your anger anything.
ask it to imagine both sides of a coin, having never seen each other,
wanting to kill each other.




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