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My second self-challenge poem, still experimenting
with structure and punctuation. My first attempts at symbols and
metaphors, all overdone to the point of total obscurity.
Most readers are surprised to learn (since my
metaphores were way too bizarre) that I was writing about the recent
resignation of President Nixon. It seemed like a masculine subject
and therefore unchallenging to pick. Also, I had been emotionally
moved by drawn out claims and counter-claims by the political
partisans (often using bizarrely melodic catch-phrases) and the way
that the sudden resignation and pardon had eliminated (actually
postponed by twenty plus years) any actual inquiry into those events.
I had only passing knowledge of what had happened, but had been
tickled one night, years previously, to hear a skit by the comedian
Steve Allen where he sat a piano and played what he called his
"Watergate Love Songs" (including 'At this point in time ..
I think I love you'). To this day I use phrases like 'plausible
denial', 'prior knowledge' and 'this point in time' as a sarcastic
homage to my earliest encountered political spin meisters.
For what its worth, my reference here to a 'savior'
was indeed the biblical one, representing at age fifteen my earliest
documented statement of hopeless cynicism. |
