These Poems Kill Fascists!
It's been a prolific month over here at poetry central. Last month, I published my first booklet, "Dream Trains Keep On Running", and embarked on a sort-of-tour, going to Ashland, Reno, San Francisco, Berkeley, Arcata, and sundry points en route to distribute about 200 copies of the booklet. Then, after going to Coachella and selling my soul once again to the messiahs of rock, and seeing that once-in-a-generation rebirth of the American Dream, I came home and published my second collection, "These Poems Kill Fascists". I distributed another 200 copies around Portland and read the book in its entirety on NW Everett while First Thursday took place around me.
I've got more technology than Thomas Paine could have imagined, and we're many, many years overdue for another revolution. This is my stab at fanning the flames of discontent into an inferno of peace and love and happiness. Let's see how long this fire burns.
Or, if you just can't wait, you can download PDF copies, ready for printing and folding, at http://www.semprian.com/mikeygolightly/. Feel free to print up a few and hand 'em out wherever you think a message of hope might be needed.
And as always, all of my mass emails, be they dispatches or "From the Skylounge" or what have you, are available at http://mikeygolightly.blogspot.com.
Enough of the sales pitch. Here's the first poem from "These Poems Kill Fascists", an ode to Portland, the Coachella Festival, and the rebirth of the American Dream.
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O Desert Lord Muse! Under the April Skies
I felt you cry out “What’s My Name?!?” and
danced your Jungle Love across a grassy oasis,
I saw your chosen prophets in open shirts and
preacher robes, floating pigs above the
masses and dropping acid confetti from
a silent circling plane above infernal explosions,
I bathed in bass with your unwashed followers and
became a young lamb in your flock,
my rock and roll savior,
guitar-faced screams melting me into the
sands and the sunlight
where I surf the straight ray beam of hope
to the shooting star sky and shine
that love back down, lightning flashes
of hope, home in once-depressed
Portland, ready to blaze a fiery trail
into our bright future and
The Next American Dream!
In the desert my compatriots from
all the world’s oases gathered together
and cried out “Let’s rescue the
American Dream!”, “Let’s renew
The American Revolution!”
O Desert Sun! Let the seeds of this
New America scatter forth from the desert,
blown fast by trade winds of liberty,
spreading across this vast
New America,
watered with rock and roll, we will
sprout into the fruiting trees
of this, the next Greatest American
Generation,
and we will take back THE LOVE!
THE PEACE!
THE HOPE!
we’ll WIN the war by REFUSING TO FIGHT!
We’ll inherit the earth and you damn well
better believe we’re gonna want it this time,
this oasis of hope spreads with smiles
shared on springtime streets back home
and the smoldering sparks of Little Beirut
will explode into infernos once again
with my little kiss of the hot desert wind.
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Fighting the best fight of all, with you all by my side, getting my back, or screaming in my face,
Mikey Golightly
