The Jazz of Revolution: a mad man’s resolution

by I.G. Karfield on June 2, 2011

This poem by I.G. Karfield was written at the time of the Egyptian uprising and is based on a ROAR article published after the first day of protest in Cairo.

Tunisian protesters:
The Human Remote tester.
The wee mister
President Ben Ali
The key to unlocking
taking to the streets.

The jazz of revolution:
The Jasmine Revolution.
The mad man’s resolution,
Common woman’s revolution.

Intellect tougher nut –
Crack me not –
But the skeptics elected
Revolt another time,
Not now.

Butterfly me caterpillars
And whirlwinds with
Mushrooms in them.

Chaos theory weary
With so much hate
Under liberal democratics.
The disgusting smell of
Discontent contentness.

The liberal revolutions fuse with
The End of History.
And we call for some digitalized
Millennial generations
To save us.

The three decades of Egypt.
And Algeria, now rioting,
Tunisian burned,
Lebanese bleeding,
Mauritania mania
And oil in Saudi Arabia –
Artists ask us
What if we’re out?

2007-’08 Food crisis?
No, that’s physically impossible.
But Food riots 2011,
Food riots 2012…

Mexicangs are doped up
On trading dupa,
But food will come
To a supa dupa
Full-blown insurrection.

Record levels pancake settlements
In the middle of the jungle,
Food banks – the new kind:
Best in Switzerland,
Safe steaks.

Price of oil: one burger a barrel.
Global youth unemployment,
Forget it – senior programs
Are replaced,
And placemats put in place.

Mohamed Bouazizi
Will have overcome this fate,
Sparking the Tunisian revolution
With incendiary infusion.
His soul would be worth more to us.

Youth unemployment
Will never feel the same.
And the world keeps turning.

“Yes, yes,
Those unaffordable food
And petrol prices,
And in the rises,
The torturous economic hardship,
Vigorously vein vagaries of global capitalism.
Speculators…!
Mount up.”

And we see the greedy fools,
As they love to do,
Chase after record profit
Levels, like devils,
Despite the revolutionary wave.

Despite the brave
Men and women
On the streets deep into shit,
With their scarred and
Broken knees.

Despite the revolutionary wave of 1989,
The revolutions of 1848.
Despite Twitter,
Glitter in gutters,
Gutters poor and bitter,
Shut eyes for gold colors.

Littering information,
Facebook, WikiLeaks
Triggered a long lasting
Sensation,
The sense and inspiration
Of alteration of the way nations
Behave.

This is old school rhyme style, not
much more complex.
But in the likes of
What Lauryn Hill says,
I add a mother courter,
So you silly fools hear me.

Please excuse me for my rant,
As my internal contradictions of
Capital accumulation are
Bugging the crap out of me.

Rant, Rant, Rant…

And on the Revolution rolls.

source: http://roarmag.org/2011/06/jazz-of-revolution-mad-mans-resolution/