Jan 2016
Whitman Revisited**
(Note: apologies to Walt Whitman.. this poem is metaphor for American/U.S. and not, as in Whitman’s classic poem “O’Captain, My Captain”, about Lincoln.)
“O’Captain, O’Captain"
the ship you sailed from port to port,
its prize did surely win,
but its sails were always blown
by winds of war and sin.
"O’Captain", your dreams
were born of pure fantasy of myth
to benefit a few,
all was needed to see the truth
was to take a whiff
of stench in genocidal schemes
turned into tears and screams,
creating chaos and more
from shore to shore.
“O’Captain, O’Captain",
your Yankee Clipper has won,
a single flag was raised
but never should be praised;
from the Halls of Montezuma,
to the shores of Tripoli,
your bombs and drones and unjust wars
have blown many Peoples away
on every single shore.
It’s called the good ship
Manifest Destiny -
it should sink and sail no more.
Aztec Warrior 1.6.16
(Note: apologies to Walt Whitman.. this poem is metaphor for American/U.S. and not, as in Whitman’s classic poem “O’Captain, My Captain”, about Lincoln.)
“O’Captain, O’Captain"
the ship you sailed from port to port,
its prize did surely win,
but its sails were always blown
by winds of war and sin.
"O’Captain", your dreams
were born of pure fantasy of myth
to benefit a few,
all was needed to see the truth
was to take a whiff
of stench in genocidal schemes
turned into tears and screams,
creating chaos and more
from shore to shore.
“O’Captain, O’Captain",
your Yankee Clipper has won,
a single flag was raised
but never should be praised;
from the Halls of Montezuma,
to the shores of Tripoli,
your bombs and drones and unjust wars
have blown many Peoples away
on every single shore.
It’s called the good ship
Manifest Destiny -
it should sink and sail no more.
Aztec Warrior 1.6.16
Further Note: Walt Whitman was a wonderful poet, controversial in his views and style of poetry at the time, but Whitman saw Lincoln as a hero for uniting the states and ending “legal” slavery (though as history has shown, a different kind of slavery emerged after Reconstruction- share cropping. As stated in note above in beginning of poem, my use of Whitman’s poem is not about Lincoln, but is a metaphor for America/U.S. and it’s “myth” of the greatest country in the world and having a “special heritage”, “special people” and “destiny”. There are NO special people anywhere in the world. One of the best things to come out of the 60's was that for literally millions living here, began to understand that “American Lives Are Not More Important Than Anyone Else’s Lives.” And the politicians, and official spokes people hate us for it.
