I ask you righteous Justice-lovers:
can it be that art uncovers
fiction passed as fact?
(is Cubism abstract?)
Behold the Caribbean glory –
pass the bong – uh, torch. My story
cries for sober ears
to modulate our fears.
Ask the ones who fled that island
why they left their tropic homeland;
if they think it’s cool
to glorify Red rule…
The noble face of Revolution,
CHE provides the cheap solution;
earnest young Ernesto
lived out the manifesto.
Martial hippie, beatnik butcher
bravely gazing toward the future
beams the brow of CHE
their shining knight of day.
Brand-new bloodshed – same old song
for guerrilleros of the bong
who rage against machines
confounding ends with means.
Such semi-informed fools display
a heady ignorance of CHE –
as if he played the bass.
(I hold them in disgrace.)
Though CHE was tough on Rock n’Rollers,
he abetted thought controllers;
jailing small and great
in Fidel’s prison-state.
Yet they’re convinced that CHE was righteous:
militant against injustice –
worshiping his name,
impervious to blame.
“Yo, CHE wuz for the PEOPLE, man.
(They’re not too sure about his plan…)
He died to make men free –
immortal – isn’t he?”
Vaguely Leftist youth display him,
not quite clear on how to play him –
Bearded god of Vision:
immune to all derision.
Ahem. A different Bearded One,
God’s other revolutionary son
borrowed from CHE – or stole
The liberator’s role…
Yet, let us not be blown off-course.
My words must gather rising force
to set the record straight
and hotter heads deflate.
The hairy Argentinian medic
left a lucrative esthetic:
facial meme of war –
his T-shirts rock the store!
Outworn by posing poetasters,
dreamers, thugs and hero-wasters
ignorant of history
and high on Marxist mystery.
He glowers with a lit cigar:
the noble hippie Commie/czar
for kids who went to Kollege
emerging void of knowledge.
Now hailed by rappers, clueless starlets
Hollywood saints (and leftist harlots);
everyone’s a fan
of Cuba’s Magic Man.
What was his plan to save the nation?
Proletarian dictation!
Eliminating classes
while kissing Party asses.
Classic Leftist liquidation:
bathe the land in blood. Salvation
comes much later on.
For now let’s get it on !
(Let’s get his T-shirt on that is.
The taste is flatter than the fizz
of Revolution Cola;
go ask the Ayatollah).
One serious thing I beg of you.
Do NOT discern the truth. Just view
his face with pure devotion
to set it all in motion.
CHE was a merciless father-mucker
(translate THAT to Spanish, sucker).
Put away your bong.
My poem’s too long
(thus ends the song).
It is hardly surprising that commercialism, the passport to physical prosperity, should be the prevalent idea of an age, when, through the disintegration of class-rule, prosperity is for the first time in history possible for all; nor is it surprising that the masses, stupefied from time immemorial in the cavern of Pain, hereditary and inescapable Pain, should, when released at last a little, drink some madness from the unaccustomed sun, and follow, as they do to-day, Pleasure for Pleasure’s sake, even over the precipice: nor, moreover, is it surprising that the vast majority of the people, educated, though it be but with a smattering, for the first time in history, should not yet to any great extent be partial to poetry, the final flower of the human intellect.
CONNECT/HOOK 