Driving home today, I pray with white sage burning in the ashtray, as Geldof sings of the Mudslide we’re all anti-nonpartisan to in this age of odd raison d'être. …I wish I could share it with you, personally, while…trying to figure out how to say this in a jovial way that’ll bring a smile to a face rather than the customary blah-thinking American grimace of creative death toll purgatory. Politicians, in my hopefully-wholly-honest opinion ~~ somehow we’re all liars anymore, have outstayed their usefulness to the interactionary humanity fold of this beautiful continent growing older (but not near as old as the trees and the watershed) that some of us hope to call our home at last. That is it in a nutshell to me, B. Their original public service, their holy not-humble-but-sure-as-ignominy-should-be-noble purpose has diminished greatly these last few decades in the wake of the onslaught of a kind of piss-poor kingly class of grandiose self-servitude in defiance of the
letters written between great men like Lincoln & Jefferson & Franklin…& Madison that has made far too many into mooches, leaches, thieves, sneaks, & powerful holes in the universe where the people’s sweat and money disappears by greater amounts year after year. & now it’s become all about the race: what race? Not the human race, but the See Me Race, the feel me read this masterwork to screw your heavy head hung low into the socket of my bard’s wheeling, lest you falter and look like an outcast amongst the sheeple who gather round the steeple to lay claim to your freedom to wander and reclaim the one so-hopeful-it-hurt notion of humanity as a being thing not definite but ascending daily in the warmth o the sunshine & the pulse o the moonlight. Forsaken for th rusted sword kind of race-for-the-gold that serves only one group of men over another. …Arriving home to
phone messages ad nauseam: claiming my best interests lie in calling you my liege & my master, lead me to disaster, to falter before my own conscience lest I speak with nonsense in the eyes of my fellow Earthborn and all-American radio listeners. Letters in th mailbox, signs everywhere polluting the streets & buildings for how many months now? …There’s even a cow over their with a stencil-painted message to passersby that claims my freedom is best entrusted to this name that means little to me, but it’s plugged and it’s meaningful ‘cause it’s there for me every thousand feet or so as the crow flies overhead, crisscrossing paths with me on my drive home, maybe hinting at me to watch my health as we slip into the mighty slipstream pointing-out the shackles that we wear anymore as a symbol of our love for God & home & country. Hit the button ‘cause it’s blinking, not sure what I was
thinking, …as I should have let it go again, & there she is…again, again with her me, me, my, my, now, now, now oh my brother let me tell you how: Don’t get fooled by Barack or McCain, you daft bulls & cows, because I can do a better job, now, relieving you of your money & services now, now, than the person before me, or any other previously, with my sights set on the next available highest office afforded to the cash-pat with potential and chic market brevity…heavily adorned in accusations for my friend over there who once kissed my hand and called me fellowman; yeah baby, however I had to schmooze to get here, regardless of anything meaningful beyond the barely bare minimum rhetorical daily requirement of go fool Captain Beefheart wit my Magic Band of Baudelaire reading-but-not-understanding, never ever have EVER understood, addressing some neo-love nesting
pretense for recompense to you to see me, your leader in title, up on high behind the dais, preening my family to the Star Spangled Banner; cheer my legacy; I’ve already finished my plans for the library celebrating me, me, my, my, yes, yes, yes, oh the best friggin’ library in DC, count on it Mister Joe Bag-o-Donuts & your Betty Boop, as I speak words of wisdom and sugar-coated lie to your face. Oh, revelry on behalf of my-oh-my beloved constituents’ labors and spiraling death toll dirges. &…aw shucks, mama, you nearly had me there: was it that you meant to splurge and sell me some hope, or was it the other cat who you don’t much like as a matter of fact and figures? You got all up inside my hair, square, & gave me pause for a moment there, as the sun began to crawl down behind the western tree line then my hand hit my guitar and I remembered the sitar and the Beatles
song on The White Album that reminded me to keep hold of myself in matters o political manipulation and deceit and the night came on like winter wash on a warm morning after a big snow, cold and fast and unfettered of anything more than the bedrock and the riverbend…ebb & flow (nearly drinkable). …And the path of least resistance that you claim is in my best interests…feels more like a cheapening of my soul’s intent to find a sense of redeeming human quality of life in this 21st Century breakneck pace before I die and leave this heady place. & it sucks to believe it, for even one moment, that you may be Hell-bent in your blown-up penchant to hone in on my doubts and fears and sad moot optimistic jabberwocky. But no, there doesn’t seem to be any other way to see it: I breath therefore I am an air breathing biped with a pair of eyes there for seeing and two ears for
listening and a brain for complex thinking and mourning lost liberty, and I think you’ve set-out to deceive me and mine who I live in service of in a land that has forsaken no one, really, yet you call it yours for the taking while smiling DOWN at me from that tall place you’ve been ambitious enough and sell-out worthy enough to endeavor to manipulate the weakest and strongest amongst us for sake of one term or perhaps two wherein you can rewrite the Constitution in the flux of your own image of wealth & retirement packages for your cigar buds in smoke filled rooms near the country home where you know you’re going soon enough; and what a fine retirement it shall be. I’ve tried to see it another way but cannot in good conscience lay claim to any other clarity of mind, groovy ladies… and gentlemen of this jury of my kindred kind. I believe that politicians are commissioned to
rape and pillage on behalf of those who blow their noses on you and me gladly, as a sign of gleeful anti-peace solidarity not of the people, by the people, for the people, but of the bleak reality that all affluent men are created equally able to turn the tables on the other in order to stake due claim to the power & the glory forever & ever, Amen. These people, born of loving mothers mostly, who have made themselves appear so…important…are probably the least vital people on the planet anymore, bro; the greatest pains in the neck, my shiny-eyed sister who smiles when I see her as a symbol of the matriarchal wonder that still lives in the four winds of our best intentions come together here beside coastal tides and wash our fears away as we take, this day & night, the opportunity to remember the romantic youth…before the bullet tears our faces open and leaves us on the ground
shuddered and broken in the wake of a reality which has left us, you and me, with little recourse but to line up & be counted-on to do our patriotic part by picking one of three & standing for the pledge of allegiance to the zeal of which has little meaning anymore but to feed the rich and be-still-the-poor. The most outwardly selfish form o life above that of toddlers on id-level-kick-rants or teens trying to bargain their sense of autonomy from parental stance has the floor anymore, & the only score left in our favor is the chance you have to know her and take her in your arms and love her deeply & the daughters & sons you two can reap and see to their one day at a time upbringing in the comfort of knowing that love is the final frontier anyways. Show me something better, go ahead, I dare ya. Once you know love, it can’t be taken away, not even in the midst of lies & calamity,
water-board depravity, the sarcasm of those who’ve never known the pure joy of the emotional synchronicity of two beings in a spin that leads to the belief that two people can and will make a go at it, come what may, babe. Oh babe, oh babe, like the poet said, your cloths are hanging and your scent’s in the air…. One more hour and you’ll be there ... coming in the back door and I’ll get to see you stare at me with those splendid ocean-eyes that'll make me understand why I woke up again today; …why I didn’t give in to my worst dreams or some arbitrary dark desire to not be here anymore. Maybe there are those who setout to be in service of the citizenry. Maybe they do begin as civil servants in mind &/or spirit; forsaking greed and other tyrannies, or maybe they never did, but certainly few of them are motivated in that direction for long, and likely not anyone pressing our buttons now. & I’m gettin’ old. & it’s grown tiresome anymore. & I’ve known love; …honest love.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)
Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. – James Madison
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. -- Thomas Jefferson
When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny. – Thomas Paine
I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. – Thomas Jefferson (1800)
A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody. – Thomas Paine
Where Liberty dwells, there is my country. – Benjamin Franklin
