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

LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?"
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
  Who, who are you?
  
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?

Dylan is dead.
no, not Bob, you Philistine,
Dylan Thomas who implored us
to rage against the night;
so are a passel of poets
and penners, but not I

Emily heard her fly buzz,
well before her eyes shut; she
was a wee bit obsessed
with the reaper

Hemingway's also a goner;
guts enough to shove a shotgun
in his mouth--mostly I wonder if
he tasted blue gunmetal like I did,
and who cleaned his brains
off the wall?

nobody had to clean a red dollop
of mine, for the firing pin was askew
and all I got was a click, and a sense of shame,
and impotence more flaccid than
the one which put the barrel
in my mouth

hell, how hard is it
to **** yourself--I guess harder
than I thought, since I never bought
another rifle

so Dylan is dead
Em and Hem too, but you
are reading these lines without
contemplating your own demise
I suspect

after all, it's early spring
and a time of new things
clawing their way into the light
thinking nothing of the terminal
night -- but it's just a sun dip away:
ask Dylan or Hemingway, or even JFK
but I wouldn't bother the Belle
of Amherst

she would make parting
sweeter than sorrow, and she
never tasted the cold lead, or spoke
with fear or dread of the dumb
and the dead

she never murdered
men in black pajamas  
in a forest primeval...

I didn't see their spirits
ascending, in ribbons of light,
only rivers of their red blood
soaking the green ground,
yet today ravenous
for more it seems

why would she rage
against the good night, when
her carriage waited patiently for her,
and immortality, her vessel bound
for a light Dylan and I
will never see

Perched on the plank seat
of the old wagon
the dusty man gently jiggles the reins
of his reliable old steeds,
they as resolved as he
to reach Archer City
to get booked up.

Larry was there with his white hair
whittling his latest creation,
an overweight manuscript
sure to cause a sensation
no matter its heft.

They sat together talking
til the fireflies flew,
shared stories of books
loves, and good bass hooks,
reaching down to fetch a fresh brew
when they got parched
which was frequent
as they spoke at length
of men like Woodrow and Gus,
how they cussed,
poked, and stretched yarn after yarn.

Larry’s gone to the barn
but the guy who pulled up
in that old wagon
still is reading
and yet yearns
to revisit Texas lakes
to fish bass,
visit the local café,
and eat a passel of pancakes
or a big, tasty chicken fried steak.

My summer sweats bloom from a grass rag,
Scratch another hardly blasting out a calibrate,
Can I break, strap out hacker doozy bluemoors,
Caught from an out sound, an out frowned
Blackening the coffin sweet cough lubricate,
Shackle high tops on pipe dream loft shakers,
Clover feelers, four hitter on lucky seven collar,
Depth sin protector, **** I ain't wrath looter,
Nor do poppa sizes on some puke lips locker,
Key switch for gates hellish donor, back loner,
Course you see, I seek seep suckled *****,
Not some subtle soul (gap in skirt) poker,
Forever reaching lines, bust knuckle lifters,
Cracked rage like Nile is flooding wealths curlers,
Jewel duplicate for ruby cuts on roofless lust,
Symbolise another and I'll grabble force an honour,
Sober up soppy crotch rummage coper,
Scan cell prison ament Scholar's "repent!"
Mace battle X axel swop blunt round passel,
Cost more on pepper rubber rock relation,
Patient prep operation, cramp dilation,
Dial engage **** sudden blocked injection.
Cast nocturnals ominous above monuments,
Men fall like weak's race for joy's division,
Attend pro's vision, pure as skies probations,
Pack pampers protection tracks premonition,
Flat lines before lap times, clenching half rhymes,
Hop hotter than blues croft in dusks knots,

My heart is a squishy stone
I toss out
across this green-gray gloss
mosquitoes skim
but the odds were always slim
it would skip with any vim given
its mix of bulges
and irregular beats
Let’s not mention that
surprising lack of heft
currently keeping it afloat
There it lies not quite flat
a maroon lily pad
I’ll lay piddling wagers
some nomadic creature
can make a home
Maybe the crawdad whose squeak
nothing like a fog-horn warns,
“Frog dress is on the marsh”
I swear I can hear
her bull groaning,
“The slippery *****
can’t stay clothed”
Newly hitched
this bogged-down daddy’s got
a passel of polliwogs to feed
and he needs
the lean of her tender
slimy legs for support
The crickets and I
might inwardly snigger
but from such
small giggles bred
is the manly laugh of strife
and that’s when
my heart slinks slowly back

A passel of rascals;
The cause of the hassle,
Guilty of the catcalls,
Would normally have pratfalls.
Never suffer from blackballing;
Their ethics are appalling
But greed is calling the shots.
In the end what have we got?

We have a den of thieves
Rolling up their sleeves
To count the loot they stole
Fulfilling their roles of criminals;
Not the least subliminal,
But right out front to be seen
And pictured on magazine covers
With their blow-dried lovers.

Hair and ******* by Mattel
They perpetrate their hell
On all but their rich buddies
And fool the fuddy-duddies
With their rancid ballyhoo.
Yes, they rob some rich too,
But some never knew it;
Rich, not smart, they blew it.

Every generation, this nation
Sires a new batch of vermin
And we have to determine
If this is the new litter or a loner
But instead the fools get a *****
Over some new crook or other
That can afford jet planes to fly
But claims he is a regular guy.

Once the country is a toilet
They’ll keep trying to spoil it
By boiling the bones of the dead
And murdering us in our beds
Because they don’t need us
Except when they want to beat us.
They can just pay each other.
But the country won’t recover.

He wants me
He says.

Don't they all?

I am tired of being wanted.
I am tired of being needed.

You have yourself a passel of kids
Out your own wahoo --
You wouldn't want to be wanted neither.

Don't want me.
Don't need me.

Bring me flowers and roses
And mix tapes
And doughnuts
On Sunday morning.

Kiss me.
Sweep me up in your arms.
Look me in the eyes.

That would send me.

Bring me.
Send me.

Don't want me.
Don't need me.

The want and the need make me tired.
The bring and the send makes me free!

But.
Maybe.

He, too, is tired of being wanted and needed.

Well.
Then.
What are we to do?

Want and need one another?

No.
Too many competing demands.

Take my hand.
Please.
Just tell me you love me.

Don't want me.

Don't need me.

Just love me.

And I will just love you.