A TIME FOR POETS
It is now, more than ever, a time for poets, for only poetry can deliver the message while uplifting the heart .
For only poetry can expose hypocrisy while touching the soul .
For only poetry can internally move us to action.
Lydia Howell is one of those poets.
Allen L Roland
WE NEED YOU NOW, ALLEN GINSBERG
Lydia Howell
I'm listening for your finger-cymbals,
worn like wedding rings
for your unrecognized husband.
We still need you, Allen Ginsberg,
son of Blake & Walt Whitman.
You shouted your illegal love
from Golden Gate bridge.
Sang love across the Grand Canyon.
Proclaimed love at the Washington Monument.
Prayed love outside the Pentagon.
Danced love over the rooftops of Manhatten.
In this new Plague-time,
when love has married death.
When a shopping mall stands on a sweatshop.
Now, they want our hearts
behind barbed wire and the militarized border.
Padlocked shut.
Oh! playful wanderer & rebel,
we need you now!
They're making new wars.
They're misquoting God.
You would hail all the lovers
to monkey-wrench the killing machine.
Tell us to writhe blissfully
until all the deadly parts stop.
Inspire a strike in every weapons factory.
Disarm the gun of every cop
with a poem, making him remember
he's one of us.
Oh! great chant-sayer!
Summon all the lovers
to finally Ban the Bomb once and for all.
We'd caress the men at the controls
until they abandon their posts.
We could rust all the triggers
with our tears & spit & sweat.
Bearded Puck! dear Allen,
we need you now.
Lead us in shedding our clothes
& skipping through the halls of government.
So they see men, women & children.
Not collateral damage statistics.
Not profit margin.
Read HOWL to the Supreme Court.
Sprinkle love-dust in the Attorney General's eyes.
Take a rose in your teeth
& tango with generals.
Lead us in singing torch songs
that echo every extinct bird,
every murdered man of color,
until they amke a shrine
of every death chamber.
Say your poems until CEOs
& their hired torturers
can weep once more.
Embrace the soldiers
until they refuse to go to war
& scribble love-letter on their duty-notice.
We need you now, Allen.
Give us the courage to stand & resist
until the guns & the greed
are transformed into a bad dream
we finally wake from.
The TVs are blasting so loud.
They're banning your poems again.
In the streets, no dancing is allowed.
I'm carrying your book like a secret passport to the America that we dream is possible.
Now, in our great trouble,
we need you, Allen Ginsberg.
Great sunflower,
grown tall out of the rubble.
Lydia Howell is a journalist and producer/host of "Catalyst," broadcast on KFAI Radio in Minneapolis.
You can email Lydia at lhowell@visi.com Posted Tuesday, March 22, 2005
