Peace Through Progressive Poetry on Chomsky

That which is to come; that which with any luck we will have a say in making better. Sometimes it is hard to say what the right path forward is, and maybe that’s because our language is limiting us. If that’s the case, I’d like to believe poetry will have a place in moving us along, and maybe that’s why Bob Plain invited me to share some of my poems with you.

Anyhow, I’ve been writing poetry for a while now. My style is pretty free, and I tend to write about politics, nature, spirituality, and psychology. I’ve called it folk poetry in the past, hoping that the questions or points I raise in verse may inspire some type of answer in kind. I suppose it’s about time to start putting it out there. If poetry is not your thing, don’t fret. I’ll do the prose thing and continue to post my ramblings on politics and environmentalism.

With excuses out of the way, let me begin with a picture.

“Chomsky 12-4-12”

drumroll please
someone drags a folding table
across the floor in the mezzanine
thank you

Noam Chomsky

here is greatness
born of the simple ability to discern truth
with courage to speak unvarnished
simple yet rarely ever easy
egoless measured surety
and look at me agonize over the polish of these words
under the diction beyond all rhythm
honesty is transcendent

I was fortunate to see Noam Chomsky speak in early December of last year, more fortunate still that as I began to write about it in the third row, Chomsky sat down a few seats in front of me so that it wasn’t hard for me to approach him for his autograph.

It was a riveting talk about the ascendancy of the 1% in the US and how this class uses a strategy of failure by design to promote its agenda (i.e.-starve social institutions of the resources they need to succeed and it becomes easy to argue that social institutions are fundamentally flawed). He spoke in particular of the ongoing assault on public education, but he touched on many aspects of our society as he spoke for over an hour.

It was the most diverse and reverent audience I have ever been a part of. The person dragging the folding table across the floor upstairs (which did make a staccato noise like a drumroll) was the most heard from the crowd until the applause at the end.

Here’s a clip of the man himself:<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/2_QV1kWbNrk” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>