(Activist) (National) (Poetics)

Another approach to reconciling the lazy mind of summer with the activist desire of the poet to intervene in the growing conflagration of war and instability throughout the Mideast and beyond, is to address your (media) captors directly:

Dear Soul of Karl Rove:

You are a great conceptual thinker, and I am concerned about the collective memory of our nation. Concerned, that is, that your invented scenarios are destructively meddling with our memories, and leading to the demise of this great nation. Now that you have entered a maze of your own design (a difficult conundrum, even for a man of great creative genius) I’m wondering if perhaps you can begin to help, rather than hinder, the soul of America.

For example, I remember that there were really no terrorists in Iraq before this war started. But reading the papers, it would seem that the terrorists have been there all along, and we went in to “get” them. I had this discussion with my neighbor, and he looked at me like I was insane when I told him that the insurgency in Iraq was born and gathered steam only after the invasion. You really got into his head!

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Metadata: politics, poetry