by Scot Siegel
an erasure newspoem
based on the story "Hints from the President" by David Cesarani, guardian.co.uk
(Jan 24, 2009)
Over Obama-themed flea market
with a coach park, a street party, an
armed camp. Once the humvees out,
yesterday's ephemera today's garbage,
the city slowly back to normal. Inevitably,
a question hanging pundits and columnists
Obama's inauguration speech America's journey
a repudiation that momentous oration black but
dot.com in a way that Tony Blair never was.
co-opting and disarming adversaries.
How long he will manage to play remains
more radical than his centrist election ever hinted
abuse of human and civil rights
rippled off him. The way he disparaged
the bullying foreign
policy of the past eight years
(he) hunched the smiles, the gifts the tributes
the hapless anger on the Mall to boo and to jeer
Cheney in a wheelchair.
When the retirement lifted off
and flew over joyous shouts
"Bye Bye Bush". Sadly, the crowd control.
The jams, crushes, and frustration threatened
a cheerful throng into
a stampeding herd of selfish summons
to enter "a new era of responsibility"
duty, service, and sacrifice.
No less ironic the stretch limos, shiny speeding
inauguration balls. A lot of gas, canapes and
alcohol
guzzled(,) Michelle and Barack, plainly from the fray
this festival of bling the last gasp of an outgoing regime
typified by greed and excess?
People will be people
Obama is a motivational organizer of
306 million people. So the instruments of democratic
fight and kick quietly into the night. The rich
surrender the gun-toting, truck-driving section
to love hybrids, wind
and solar.
The first 100 days head-on,
while it is weakened,
or slice it up
neutralise it bit by bit. Lincoln, after all,
fought a war to preserve
Washington was a revolutionary
singularly American
bold move. Obama('s) evocation
of winter at Valley Forge
when nothing but "hope and virtue"
"brave once more the icy currents"
Was the devastating surprise attack on
Unlikely.
Scot Siegel is a poet and land use planner from Oregon, where he serves on the board of trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. He is the author of Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and Untitled Country, a chapbook due out from Pudding House Publications in 2009.
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