When I was thinking about The Bop, a poem I wrote in 2018 for The Woody Guthrie Festival poetry reading came to mind. Here is the poem, which was published after the festival in The Oklahoma Observer and in my book, I’ve Got the Blues: Looking for Justice in a Red State:<\/p>\n
Lines for My Friend, Sandy, Who Wanted a Lighthearted Poem<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to be lighthearted
\nwhen your president\u2019s a liar,
\nwhen the whole dang world is threatened
\nby his pants that are afire.<\/p>\n
He shreds the Constitution
\nand feeds it to the rats,
\nrules by whim and fiat
\nand blames the Democrats.<\/p>\n
To think, he used to be one!
\nBut then the party turned.
\nNo longer segregationist!
\nThe Jim Crow laws all burned,<\/p>\n
at least in legal rule books.
\nWe know Jim Crow\u2019s still here,
\nand the liar\u2019s words and actions
\nstir up the racists\u2019 fears.<\/p>\n
Adored by evangelicals.
\nI can\u2019t imagine why.
\nThis preacher\u2019s kid knows Christians,
\nand this hater comes up shy.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s stacking courts with corporatists
\nundoing revolution.
\nWe shed the aristocracy once.
\nThis backward evolution<\/p>\n
should not sit well with patriots,
\nand that\u2019s us, do you hear,
\nthe workers and the poets,
\nthe brown folk and the queer,<\/p>\n
moms and dads, day laborers,
\nall those who earn a wage,
\nwho vote and pay their taxes,
\nthe ignorant and the sage.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all in this together
\nWe all must march and shout
\nand call and vote and rally.
\nWe can\u2019t sit this one out.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s hoping there is justice
\nand it lands his butt in jail.
\nDo you believe in karma?
\nWill Putin go his bail?<\/p>\n
July 2018<\/p>\n
I decided to twist the first line and make the revised first stanza my response for my Bop.
\nNow, I just need to write the poem. I have an idea and less than forty minutes. Wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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