On The Thesis that All Art is Political

A child of the future told me

His professor a prophet to sing

A song of militancy for thee

Art the ideologue's sole thing

Bound in uniform to forever be

Her long dark locks wrapped

With a length of barbed-wire

An officer's cap her only hat

Severe Marianne at the barricade

her only stance the banner held

High and straining forever forward

Above a blur of faceless men to lead.

All art political!  

And that

Which cannot

Be parsed

By this slogan

Or that cant

Kitsch! and

Thus a figure

Of derision

And dispute.

And so the party walls off

The faithful behind a fence

Of dogma and defenses

Raised against phantasms

Of unregimented minds

Bandits of book and bell

Wreckers in their hidden souls

Never laid bare before the

Altars of the proscenium

That enclosed ritual stage

Of the people's theatre

The democratic arts!

There is a certain breed of

Man, sabre on his belt

Who cannot look upon
Well-plowed acres of

Spring-green fields of hay

Without seeing in his
Mind the fields of fire

The lines of advance and

The cover inherent in a 

Cool dark wood across

Nodding heads of grain.

Thus the organizer and

Party militant gazes upon

The cultured and popular

Arts, and sees nothing but

Fields of battle to be 

Conquered and paced off

Fortified against the next

Tribal faith to come

And seize that which has

Been taken for the 

Party of the Faithful

Or revolutionary Red Front.

You!  With your gift of 

Song to raise above

The congregation ingathered

To stand before the

Familial altar of your

Gods as they might be!

Were you born to sing

Hymns of praise and beauty

Or to bawl out a battle-march?

You!  Whose pen is sharp

And swift and all things

Clever and clear and 

Deft in the design

Is your pen a tool to find

Whimsy and the truth

Entwined in God's design?

Or is it a dagger to be drawn

Against or in service to

The devils of your day?

C.M. Hagmaier

2/20/15

The irony here is that I'm the most political, or at least, ideological combative, of would-be poets.  I like to think that it's a defensive formation, but...