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Tag: role models

Idol

Published on April 26, 2017

Don’t want to be an American idol,
good for a season and then tossed away;
held up like Jesus and the King James Bible,
blamed for the country’s future going astray.

Don’t want to be an American idol,
hawking potato chips and new Chevrolets;
starting out starstruck, ending up suicidal,
shriveled and spit out prematurely gray.

Don’t follow me thinking I’m headed somewhere
you’ll recognize on TV.
Don’t waste your time trying to be somebody
who only wants to be me.

Don’t want to be an American idol,
shrink-wrapped and candy-coated fantasy;
sold on the corner at a dozen a penny,
bootlegged in mixed degrees of quality.

Don’t want to be an American idol,
famous for being a celebrity;
pretending at a something somewhere near vital,
believing whatever I’m supposed to be.

Don’t follow me thinking that I’ve got something
to make life easy and free.
Don’t waste your time trying to be a somebody
who only wants to be me.

26 APR 2017

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Physician, Heal Thyself

Published on July 20, 2004

for Jim Morrison, who I very liberally paraphrase and augment: Why are songs and poems important? Because songs and poems are the basis by which culture is passed from generation to generation. No one sits at their child’s bedside and reads them War and Peace; they teach in rhyme, in meter, in short works. In the building blocks of culture.

There is no spokesperson for your generation;
it is a hoax that you want to believe —
that someone else will speak for you,
explain those crazy thoughts of yours
that keep you awake late in the night
questioning first, your sanity,
then next, the sanity of those who judge sanity.

There is no great role model for your age;
just another media frenzy led by old, tired sharks
who want to find a way to package
some elixir of youth, then age you before your time
and hook you on the stuff, too.

There is no voice crying out from the wild,
no magic bullet or single dosage
no seer sage poet priest politician messiah.

There is just you.

And the dreams you don’t express.
And the others you let speak for you.

Throw away your radio,
your Billboard and Rolling Stone,
your solid gold subscription
to someone else’s Top Ten List.

Speak your own words.
Speak your own mind.
Teach yourself how.

20 JUL 2004

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