2 out of 4 Ain’t Bad

So I submitted 4 poems in response to an email I received asking for poetic responses to the 2008 Presidential Elections. I had what I thought were the perfect poems, 2 of them both dealing (albeit absurdly) with the goddamn elections and the hellish fear they made me feel. I spoke to the growing anguish that those dog and pony shows inspired, the feelings of indifference that I noticed in some, which worried me, and the fervent scramble to one side or the other, which worried me as well, though my side was clear, which means I’m guilty. I tried to write about the disenfranchisement that these things can conjure up in the average red-blooded, debt beset citizen of these here United States.

Anyway, those poems were rejected. The other two poems, which dealt somewhat with Barack Obama, were accepted. Go figure. The first has more to do with the 1968 Democratic Convention and the legendary mayhem that resulted. The second is a response to the film Taxi to the Dark Side and the things that were rattling in my silly head during my “political” period (last fall when I was swallowed up in all this and watching documentaries about torture and simultaneously hearing about “exhuming García Lorca,” which I thought would (off) rhyme well with “electing Barack Obama”).

Thanks for accepting the poems, I thought, although I stumbled on them by accident—I was not notified that they were accepted. This is what happens with online publishers. Tighten it up, folks. I still think the other 2 were more germane, but what do I know? I just wrote them. Anyway, yeah, nice to be on the list of folks who reference Obama in a poem, although one of them (at least) is pretty critical. Nice: an even-sided collection. Fair and balanced. Sort of.

Thanks for listening.