MONTANA
[ a poem ]
It’s a little cramped in downtown Butte
In winter when everyone
Lives upstairs above the bars
Eating sandwiches and swapping stories in the lounge and
Warming rancid coffee on hotplates in lonely rooms at night
It’s too cold to go outside
More than once or twice a week
But Montana is a spacious house
Like a land we call America
Before Columbus sailed and the wagons rolled west
An expansive home of many mansions
And there’s room for more than one or two
Underneath the clear big sky
He showed up one day
Moved into our flophouse while I was out working
And right away I determined to never like him
He voted for Ronald Reagan ‘cause his daddy said he should
As a reasonable replacement for Joe McCarthy
And argued that big business should have no rules
Tucking ugly plaid shirts behind a large cheap belt buckle
He was clean-shaven under his oversized dime-store hat
Though weather and custom dictated beards and skull caps a better idea
Insisting on wild cards when otherwise there wasn’t enough bodies for poker
He rooted for Cincinnati on Sunday
That is, after coming home from the fundamental church
And played deafening country cacophony on a small portable radio
An obnoxious detonation having nothing in common with Williams or Haggard
He was fond of calling liberals “commies” and “faggots”
And bragged a lot about various and sundry exploits corrupting women
Though he never seemed to have a date
To be honest, I always liked Paul Harvey
His stories of common people somehow making a difference
Who otherwise, no one has ever heard of and fewer care about
And I like trees that grow wild in a forest huddled together
Displaying different colors and shapes of leaves in early autumn
Marine life is supremely appealing along the Great Barrier Reef
Where exquisite design and collage of pigmentation knows no boundaries
And unknown beings abounding throughout great galaxies of stars
Are undoubtedly super-clustered in endless variety of infinity wonder
But we humans are a rather contradictory creature
We don’t like each other much
Unless we go to the same church
And vote for the same party
And believe in the same lies
And it doesn’t seem to matter
That Montana is a spacious house
Like a land we call America
Before Columbus sailed and the wagons rolled west
An expansive home of many mansions
And there’s room for more than one or two
Underneath the clear big sky *
Newman's Own
( even Bill O'Reilly says this is a good charity )
DEDICATED TO: Merle Haggard, who consistently formulates an interesting tune in his own way to his own drum and to Paul Harvey, longtime American conservative radio commentator of relatively short physical stature and very large heart: We the fortunate who find ourselves living in the land of plenty at the turn of a new century should strive to understand the necessity of individuals of extreme diverse political, philosophical, religious and other persuasion joining together for the common good of us all. For the conservative hand cannot say to the liberal foot, “I have no need of your contribution to run the swift race”, nor can the moderate brain say to the maverick toe, “Without you, I can hope to walk uprightly and not stumble in the dark.” And because otherwise sincere men and women fail to comprehend and practice the sanity of such true wisdom, today at the start of the 21st Century, it remains a very “long walk to freedom” for we the multi-diverse people’s of a common planetary habitat. “And now you know the rest of the story.”
*FootNote: In the opinion of the author, people who insist on branding themselves as “conservative”, “moderate”, “liberal” or in some other fashion other than as a human being trying to see through the myriad of lies we are all born into, truly do not understand a concept called “Freedom”.
'Click Here to eMail the Author Copyright © August 20th, 2003 by Richard Aberdeen. |