Public-Address

[dukealien]

Public-Address


Tuesday morning, riding past
a high school on the morning wind
I heard announcements, North-Korea-loud
blare out declaring “Crossing Boundaries”
its inmates’ Wednesday theme.

Students would, it ordered, “voluntarily”
sit at unaccustomed tables in
the cafeteria and talk with people
other than their friends.

No doubt there will as well
be harangues about the invalidity
of circumscribing borders separating
people who are really all alike

while in the cafeteria thugs trespass,
leering twenty-something “unaccompanied
minors” who lied about their age as well
as how they got tattooed and narco-ganged
under watchful, unforgiving eyes of monitors
for whom the only sin lies in rejecting them.

Edit added hyphen in "North-Korea".

Free verse seems to be the form for political poetry...

But a world of folly, where issues like this are subject to politics instead of law!

[rayheinrich]

Public-Address
...

Political poetry is even harder to write than love poetry. One reason, imho,  is that
it's so hard not to wax polemic. The other is that people think anything they disagree
with is badly written.  Good execution.

{Spoiler}  "Free verse seems to be the form for political poetry..."
I'd amend that to: ""Free verse seems to be the form for poetry..."

{P.S.} "... where issues like this are subject to politics instead of law"
Laws are politics. Good laws are politics you agree with, bad laws are politics you don't.

P.S. And maybe use: "I heard announcements, North Korean loud, " (note added comma)


P.P.S. I've found exercises like this to be very useful. BUT... the participants need to
feel that they've entered into them voluntarily. Since most student activities in high
school are performed under duress (good training for their future work environments),
these things usually turn into a "just say no to drugs" rally. Which, by the way, your
poem stated rather eloquently.

[dukealien]

Public-Address
...

Political poetry is even harder to write than love poetry. One reason, imho,  is that
it's so hard not to wax polemic. The other is that people think anything they disagree
with is badly written.  Good execution.

{Spoiler}  "Free verse seems to be the form for political poetry..."
I'd amend that to: ""Free verse seems to be the form for poetry..."

{P.S.} "... where issues like this are subject to politics instead of law"
Laws are politics. Good laws are politics you agree with, bad laws are politics you don't.

P.S. And maybe use: "I heard announcements, North Korean loud, " (note added comma)


P.P.S. I've found exercises like this to be very useful. BUT... the participants need to
feel that they've entered into them voluntarily. Since most student activities in high
school are performed under duress (good training for their future work environments),
these things usually turn into a "just say no to drugs" rally. Which, by the way, your
poem stated rather eloquently.

Thanks for the read.  Won't argue the issue of free verse, but I'm still learning (I hope).  One thing learned is to let line-end stand for a pause less than comma length; considered your suggestion (when writing and again now) but don't like how the consonant-to-consonant N-L reads.  I recognize that A-L is ungrammatical but it seems to flow better.  Perhaps the comma before "North" should be removed.

On politics and law:  politics reflects (or comprises) how and what people think; law sets forth how they must behave under threat of force.  Since law must be able to guide future actions and politics changes constantly, politics changes laws but errs when it tries to legislate what people think.  "You must sit next to Mongo" may be a proper law (if you're both draftees, for example) but "You must like/respect Mongo" is not;  "thought-crime" is an oxymoron.

[rayheinrich]

Maybe:  North-Korea-loud ?

(Our interpretation of the word "politics" differs, but our ideas about what wags what don't.)

[dukealien]

Maybe:  North-Korea-loud ?

(Our interpretation of the word "politics" differs, but our ideas about what wags what don't.)

Good idea (on N-K-loud) - edit made.  I shy away from all-hyphen merges like that in prose because it does weird things at line breaks in some browsers and word processing software.  But here the line length is limited, and the intent is to guide thinking/pronunciation.

(Wonder if Pavlov ever tried using electrical stimulus to artificially induce a dog's tail to wag... and see if that altered its disposition for the better?)

[rayheinrich]

(Wonder if Pavlov ever tried using electrical stimulus to artificially induce a dog's tail to wag... and see if that altered its disposition for the better?)

Sounds like something Trofim Lysenko might come up with.
---
Here's an off-topic thing on dog tail wagging interpretation:

● A slight wag, with each swing of only small breadth, is usually seen during greetings as a tentative, "Hello there," or a hopeful "I'm here."

● A broad wag is friendly: "I am not challenging or threatening you." This can also mean: "I'm pleased." This is the closest to the popular concept of the happiness wag, especially if the tail seems to drag the hips with it.

● A slow wag with the tail at half-mast is less social than most other tail signals. Generally speaking, slow wags with the tail in neither a particularly dominant (high) nor a submissive (low) position are signs of insecurity.

● Tiny, high-speed movements that give the impression of the tail vibrating are signs the dog is about to do something, usually run or fight. If the tail is held high while vibrating, it is most likely an active threat.

We can now add another newly discovered, feature of dog tail language that may surprise attentive pet owners as much as it surprised scientists like me. It now appears that when dogs feel generally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rear ends, and when they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.
...
Excerpted from Psychology Today, full article can be found here.