"I thought I saw new writing on the wall./ I even dared to hope the cage would spring. . ."

::::::::

Lo! Before the Capitol, when you took your place

Before the same-old same-old weary throng,

To see that star of timeliness in such a young face

Made me feel, for that moment, even I could do no wrong!

Amanda Gorman you made that moment shine,

Your alliteration echoing down the Mall!

My cynicism faltered on those steps and fell in line;

I thought I saw new writing on the wall.

I even dared to hope the cage would spring,

There seemed no hint of the accidental in your eyes.

So when I heard that before The Kickoff you were reading

Against all the odds eternal hope did rise,

But all I saw was that they used you. How dare

They turn your star into a common highway flare!
............

Poet's statement: Football uses warriors and discards them after they've given their all, all in the greedy spirit of American capitalism. Everyone knows this, but they don't seem to care enough to stop it. I'm sure Amanda is aware, but I thought she would use the pulpit to read a new poem more aligned with the voice she unfurled at the Inauguration, summoning the ready spirit of youth (and other youthful poets) to step it up and celebrate the possibility of bottom up rebirth of our battered democracy. In the poem I say there was no hint of the "accidental" in her eyes. In other words, that she knew what she was doing. But apparently she doesn't. She was just another trophy-pawn of Empire, another commercial. And, if she doesn't wise up, her star will fizzle like a "common highway flare".

(Article changed on February 9, 2021 at 15:14)

(Article changed on February 9, 2021 at 15:17)

(Article changed on February 9, 2021 at 16:02)

Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.


He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.