I’ve been hearin a lot of bad mouthin about socialism ever since the president tried to provide affordable healthcare to the working poor… I also hear some carping when someone suggested that the minimum wage paid to workers should allow them to buy the necessities of life… I don't hear too much bad things about medicare and social security…. I guess thats not really socialism…. I don't hear too much about the big bailouts of the bankers with government money after they put us in a recession… privatized gain and socialized risk must also be a strain of a special kind of entitlement...

We’ll I think this whole socialism business needs some clarity about what its all about…. so I made a list of socialist heroes so my fellow American’s can get a better feel for what going on with this red menace...

Heres a list of socialist heroes….

Jesus Christ of Nazareth...I just can't get past the Beatitudes thing. Since all the po folks of the earth get to inherit all the good stuff when they pass on.... I figure heaven gotta be some kinda socialist paradise....Some don’t buy the idea that Jesus is building a Mar-A-Largo estate for Donald Trump... while having the rest of us live in our cramped apartments…. Jesus did say he’s building many rooms but the po folks get first dibs on everything… For all the doubting Thomas’s and Thomasina’s get Sean Hannity’s fastidious fact checkers to read the good news in the Gospel of Matthew.

Jack London... To think he’s been spreading the Red Menace in the mind of America’s innocent children for near a century now…. When Michelle Bachmann finds out about this she'll introduce a bill to change the title of The Call of the Wild to the Call of the Commies... I don't think it will affect Sarahcuda because she don’t read at a sixth grade level yet. Alaska is safe for now....And all comrade citizens are doing just fine thank you.... spending their annual royalty checks they get from the state for all the North ***** oil drilling...  Hell during Sarah's half term governorship... she did what every self respecting socialist despot would do... she paid out a special $1,200.00 Permanent Fund royalty dividend to all comrade "North to the Future" citizens.....

Carl Sandburg... The People Yes? Sang the songs of the People Yes! Celebrated a broad shouldered, hog butchering America who wrote a biography with love and affection for our country’s greatest Republican President....  Whats that about?...And his treatment of Billy Sunday...a back in the day,.. aw shucks,... from the backwoods holler... Kenneth Copeland like... Believer's Voice of Victory preacher of his day... who hurled fire and brimstone at cowering congregants so when he passed the plate they filled it up with hoards of heavenly manna to fatten his bank account overstuffed with moth eaten earthly treasure… I'm sure even Pat Robertson believes Sandburg’s soul lies beyond the sweet redemption of Jesus...

George Orwell… Unlike **** Cheney... who said he had better things to do when his country called on him to serve during the Vietnam War... Orwell’s fervor for democracy was so great he left his native land to lay his life on the line to fight against the fascist menace in Spain... When he got into a battle he came across an enemy combatant taking a ****. He later said, “I let him go. How do you shoot a guy with his pants down?”... A deep respect for the humanity of others is clear evidence of a socialist's fatal flaw and why the righteous laissez faire American’s hate it so....Unfortunately Orwell and his comrades lost this one to Franco and his sugar daddies Il Duce and Mein Fuhrer… but we’ll keep up the good fight…..

Dorothy Day… This saint of the proletariat kept the soup kettle brewin to feed the working poor during the Great Depression... She spent her own money to build shelters to house catholic workers and didn't make a **** dime off the vulnerability of their screaming want... A squandered opportunity maybe…. definitely a coocoo loon according to the weltentstehung of Ayn Rand… so popular around these parts these days...but Dorothy laid up some serious dosh in heaven for her labors here on earth…. for where your treasure is…. there you will find your heart also… Anyone who knew her said Dorothy's heart was always in the right place….

Albert Einstein…. this guy was no dope….he knew enough to make make moral distinctions of exploitation and greed… and the self condemnation of conspicuous consumption...the destructive capacity of unfettered power….and worked hard to figure out equations to end the wastefulness of war... he did teach at Princeton though… more proof of the red infestation of the universities…. greed is good…. knowledge is bad….

Eugene V. Debs…. went to prison for his beliefs… got a million votes from jail… thats how devious these reds are.... even from prison they run for president and fool the working people into participating in the democratic process…. he believed everyone should vote… and would probably be imprisoned today for violating all the laws being passed that take voting rights away… gotta watch the reds…. next thing you know they'll close the electoral college and force politicians to pay a 100% poll tax on all the money they take from their corporate sponsors….

WEB DuBois… the souls of an oppressed people is the soul of a nation...ain’t it written that a nation is judged on how it treats its most vulnerable?.... Mr. DuBois fought to bring justice to all those lacking the means and rights in a nation teeming with diverse groups with needs and wants… it ain’t just about afro american jazz… its about the blues sung by all people on the outside looking in… he believed it unjust that only a small portion of American’s held the keys to the doors of prosperity… everyone should have a key to unlock the doors of opportunity… everyone…. that includes workers, immigrants, women, gay folks, religious minorities, disabled and the poor and lots other people I haven’t thought of yet…. but what about the real Americans...whose gonna stand up for them??????????

Woody Guthrie…. this country belongs to us… next time a frackin jacker comes to tear up your land and dump poison in your well… next time a strung out strip miner wants to plow away the top of your mountain and dump arsenic in your river…. next time a GMO attorney says the crops you planted don’t belong to you because they are contractually patented to him…. next time a big oil company says that they got a right to pollute the oceans and **** the fish so they can pump out a passel of fossil fuel… next time a bankster comes knocking at the door to take your house away… next time a tea slappin Teabagger starts screaming that the Koch Brothers should be allowed to own the national parks so they can cut the trees down for firewood…. tell em...you heard it on good authority…. that this land is your land…. not theirs….. if thats socialism…. I’m liken it….

American Socialists

Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land

Oakland
10/21/13
jbm

Upon this day, a reckoning of an ideal
Has begun—the immortalizing of ideologies
In statues, in tremendous acts, in carbon footprints
Has kept humankind comforted well into
Its collective existential crisis,
Like a black hole consuming all matter around it
So has David Koch created a hole
So powerful, only the crumbs of an economy
Still circle recognizable, having long disfigured
What it means to be human—
Randian liquors dribble from his lips
Like crude from earth’s entrails,
Where to heal the ills of an unequal system
Forever picked and scratched open,
Fresh blood lines a gilded age promenade
And workers follow the path,
Churches follow the path,
Business executives follow the path,
The fossil fuel industry follows the path—
The legacy is strikingly apparent
In the folds and lines of the earth,
Carving human-shaped beds
In the crust and forever below
One such for David Koch, too,
The legacy is strikingly apparent
In the ****** of things human and not,
The legacy is strikingly apparent,
In the killing of the human and the birthing
Of the industrial human, the consumer race
With word opines what industry cannot solve
With deed makes hurdles far exceeding industry,
A contradicting race
A self-limiting virus,
An impossible being, the consuming race,
An inhuman being—
This ******* of the over-man
Should come with minor fanfare
In babelic tongues as we celebrate,
Good or bad, happily or tearfully,
The death of the invisible hand’s seraphim,
Who, while building the tower to heaven,
Took up the horns, encouraged us with
The Gospel of individualism that Russian sociopath
Espoused so convincingly, so fetishistically,
We’ve risen above, we’ve moved beyond,
No longer human but capital:
What does not **** us
Only makes them stronger.

All my life I've paid,
I've paid taxes, dues and sacrifices
I've paid bills, attention and detention
**** I've even paid a visit to the county jails a few too many times, either as son, brother or inmate
Either way I've paid, but
Why Do I Gotta Pay?
Why do I have to pay every time a cop sees me on the streets,
Why do I gotta pay every time they slam me on the concrete,
Why do I gotta pay every time they serve and protect me,
Why I gotta pay taxes to subsidize the incomes of those who disrespect me,
Answer me,
Is it because I came from a broken home, or because my Mama was on drugs and my Pops left us all alone,
Is it because I was baptized into the street life b4 I could even decide between wrong and right,
No, no, no, I know why, it's because I look too Mexican and not enough white, right? Nah, it's probably because all my friends are high school dropouts, washed up or strung out,
Or is it because the Indigenous, Latinos and Africans are worthless, well ****, I didn't get to choose my race but if I did I'd still choose Mex!
Why Do I Gotta Pay?
Is it because I'm a threat to the status quo and looked upon as the states foe, well that's not fair, I pay a bigger percentage of income tax than Mr. Koch, Wait! I think I know! It's because my family's from the other side, **** that border! Daddy, why couldn't you be white? It's like what I told you on the 16th of September, We don't belong here because we have indigenous blood, remember? This is the European man's land, duh! Y'all are just so ignorant huh?
Why Do I Gotta Pay?
Is it because for a little bit of contraband from the Earth I'm a convicted felon while Ray Rice is free after he crushed his wife's skull like a melon, is it because I can't find a job and still I haven't robbed, is it because my school won't give me financial aid so I was forced to sell dope to get paid, but still I don't get paid, I pay taxes or the carnales will have me put in my grave
Wait! I know why I have to pay!
It's because I'm a slave, not to celebrity gossip, consumerism and materialism, but to imperialism of the state, I'm enslaved cuz I got too much soul to behave, my stilo is Zapatista & I'm **** with my head shaved, They made me a slave cuz they know I'd take their wombmen away, not by force though, cuz who could resist a date from this Latin Lover from around the way, they mad cuz I got Spanglish from the barrio, lingo from the hood & an academic vocabulary from the Pecker Woods, they scared cuz they're wombmen wish they could, every time I step out Miralo, I'm lookin good! These cops could never be us, and when I'm thuggin, Man, I wish they would! Im a slave cuz I don't understand, understood? I'm standing over my land, understand? Cuz I don't ever stand under! I only Overstand! That's why I gotta pay! Cuz I'm a slave that won't work for minimum wage, I'm a slave that can't be put in a cage, Im a slave that don't know his place, I'm a slave that just won't go away, I'm a slave that can't behave, I'm a slave that charms sharper than a blade, I'm a slave that steals hearts and makes way, I'm a slave that plays and never gets played,
And that's Why I Pay
Cuz I'm a slave that chose his own fate ✊

Homage Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
       scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
       the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
       Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
       out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
       Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
       Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
       the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
       & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
       Aeon till it came out clean

By: Cedric McClester

To a desperate politician
Who’s broke
Things might go better
With Koch
They’re not just
Your average folk
And their spending
Is sometimes baroque

Why can’t they get off
Their buns?
They’re too busy
Trying to raise funds
And they’ll never be
Against guns
As long as they’re
Who the NRA runs

It’s the American people
They neglect
While they take time
To genuflect
To the lobbyists
That they respect
So their to do list
Remains unchecked

We need to publicly
Fund our elections
And get rid of
The lobbyist connections
So they’ll follow
The people’s directions
In spite of
The rich folks objections








Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015,  All rights reserved.

There once was a proper noun,
who started hanging with the wrong crowd.
With alluring adjectives who handed out compliments like candy
− gob smacking gossipers with an opinion on everything.
And with thrill-seeking adverbs,
who buddied up to the most dangerous of companions;
crash, dive, hurl, and gamble (to name a few).

Until the day the sentence came rambling into town,
planting punctuation in the form of kisses
on the noun’s eyelids, earlobes, and collarbone.

Provoking such admissions as, “My thighs stuck
to the black leather seats under the hot, cloudy skies
of that August afternoon, and my hair whipped
like willow branches in the wind,
when I rode on the back of his motorcycle.”
or, “He greets me every morning with a sun-drenched kiss”,
and, “The tulips were picked fresh from the ditch of
a curvy, country road, but now sit in a
vase by my bed, and are slowly wilting away.”

It would eventually be made clear
that the sentence had a nasty habit
of propositioning prepositions,
only to leave them hanging,
and to place things in parenthesis,
that simply did not belong.  

And so, the sentence would wind up leaving town,
or “run-on”, as the noun liked to tell it.
Went chasing after some particularly provocative expletives,
eventually trailing off with a faint set of ellipsis...

And the kindest of adjectives
came cooing after the noun,
calling to her; lovely, lustrous, listless.
And the adverbs brought with them
their gentlest of friends; comfort and console,
to speak with the noun:
softly, tenderly, lovingly- all witnesses.

But it was of no use,
and the noun whispered quietly:
“I have been enchanted with a single kiss
which can never be undone,
until the destruction of language.”


*based off of the poem Permanently, by Kenneth Koch

Deaths Of 2013

My third year doing this.

Paul Walker, Texas ranger,
driving fast leads to danger.
Matt Osbourne was Doink The Clown,
Paul Bearer always wore a frown.
Dennis Farina and James Gandolfini,
always played a mobster meany.
Peter O'Toole, famous actor,
Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
President Nelson Mandela,
Dennis Burkley, was a famous fat actor fella.
Lou Reed, is now on the wild side,
took all the colored girls for a ride.
Conrad Bain and Bonnie Franklin,
tv actors who had white skin.
Paul Blair and Stan The Man,
playing baseball, when they can.
Marcia Wallace and Lisa Robin Kelly,
both had ***** that bounced like jelly.
Tom Clancy wrote famous books,
not much on having good looks.
Cory Montieth and Patti Page,
one died young, other of old age.
Jean Stapleton, was Edith Bunker,
Archie always put her in the dumper.
Pat Summerall and Deacon Jones,
played football and broke some bones.
Dr. Joyce Brothers and Pauline Phillips,
they both gave good and bad tips.
Ray Manzarek, from The Doors,
Jeff Hanneman knew all Slayers chords.
Chrissy Amphlett, liked to touch herself,
Caleb Moore's trophies are on his shelf.
Mindy McCready and George Jones,
both hit those country tones.
Chris Kelly from Kris Kross,
Ed Koch is a New York loss.
David Frost and Roger Ebert,
always had words to insert.
Anneitte Funicello from Mickey Mouse Club,
Eydie Gorme almost got a snub.
Jonathan Winters, was very funny,
to come from Mork's egg, made him money.
If you don't know who these people are,
look them up, internet not very far.
For the ones that I missed,
please don't get to ******.