The job for artists and poets today is to dream for a
society that’s forgotten how to dream. We’re failing miserably. We have
preachers, not poets. Preaching kills dreams. Telling others to think like us
is the easy way out. It’s for simpletons.
Direct force creates resistance. Meanwhile corporate media gods treat us
like puppets on strings with cartoon images of shouting, ranting, raving
lunatics of vulgarity on a soapbox. Can you say Poetry Slam? Or the other
caricature—a limp-wristed, tea-sipping, simpering whisperer of lavender words
crawling out of a dusty lair to bore us to death. Neither one is of any use to
real people except in mockery.
Our education system does a damn good job of installing a
poetry deflector shield for life.
We need real dreamers, real dreams, witch doctors who find
our fears and desires and bring them to light—display them in all their
multicolored, frightening, lustful power. We are thirsting for Carl Jung with a
bone in his nose, sweat pouring down his naked bulging belly, beating the dirt
in a primal rhythm with his dusty feet, a dripping red paintbrush in one hand,
a stone symbol of the subterranean Lord Priapus in the other, singing loudly
and off-key about the foul thing he saw fall from the sky onto a tall, thin steeple.
That’s what we need right now. Leave your application and a
resume at the door.
Well said, Gary!
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