Poem: Fellow Prisoners
(Poem written tonight – and then revised – feedback welcomed – changes indicated to illustrate revision process)
Fellow Prisoners
If we assigned
one dollar to every star
we would need two or three
milky way galaxies
to foot the 700 billion bailout
and while I can buy
one milky way for fifty centsone dollar
from the snack machine at work
that’s not the same thing.
Those are made out of chocolate
and not the hot air
of our nation’s politicians.
it isn’t composed
of hydrogen, helium,
or a whole lot of hot air
like our nation’s politicians.
October 11th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
The revision makes it perfect!
October 11th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Thanks.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I don’t grok the title (aside from McCain’s apparent misspeak), but I definitely like the poem. It’s tempting to send copies to a few elected officials.
The snack machine at my office though generally sells candy bars for either 75 cents or (more often) a dollar.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I got that comment from a few people in my writer’s group as well. It actually costs 65 cents here, but I do work at a non-profit, and we might get a ‘deal’. Someone suggested changing it to one dollar to play off the opening lines, which was a good idea.
The title plays off McCain’s misspeak, and suggests we’re all prisoners of these politicians. I might be able to come up with a better title.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
a dollar to every star…
a milky way for a dollar — this price is right!
but it “contradicts” the notion of milky way (galaxy) as made up of stars, as implicit price
factually, though such matters are mere nits of wits to poems,
a galaxy has some 100 billion stars,
so 700 billion would seem to entail some 7 milky ways.
logically, of course, milky way galaxies contain all elements, in profusion –
so they also contain milky way candy bars, in potentia if not in actuality.
finally,
do not stare at the end to my starry-eyed commentary
which never would have come to be
if not for destined accidents of its disastrous endings:
there is the curious “fact” of nebulosity,
right smack-dab-between-your-eyes in the nebula itself –
a galactic lens has an astral focus to its spiral,
in whose spinning arms rests turning earth –
but, only as seen from earth, we do not see ourselves in it,
though we are there, as much as we are here,
in ghostly apparition, a milky way contains many galaxies,
no nearly so many as an infinity,
but still a lot to plot in a filking raster poem or a star chart film–
Still, a lot of emptiness makes a galaxy,
just as it shows politicians for what they are,
among a hundred thousand million points of light,
feeding on the dark matters of the universe.