I wrote this poem just the other day in anticipation of all the captains that will be zooming into town this weekend. Can any of them inspire the kind of adulation Walt Whitman felt for his captain? I’m inclined to think today’s captains do what they do without accountability, not because they are deliberately deceptive, but because they operate under the cover a world filled with distraction. I tested the poem with a small audience at a Starbucks on Yonge St. north of Eglinton at a Coffee House event organized by Clara Wells. Thanks to Vanessa Wells for the photo. The cigar was a prop for another poem.
O Captain! My Captain!
If you get one,
why can’t I have a captain too?
Was O captain! My captain!
the posturing of an idealist?
Is that all it was?
Good press? Words for hire?
Is a cry for a captain
just a finger shoved up
against whatever gland
secretes nostalgia?
It’s as if Eden sprang
from the fields of Gettysburg
or today in the hills
north of Kandahar.
Is it not my right? Look,
I have a coupon –
redeemable at Wal-Mart –
buy one captain,
get one free,
or, at the very least,
take a rain check.
If we feel contempt,
for things gone by
and cynicism at things
we’ve been promised,
what’s left to us
but a narrow cleft of time
where we find purchase
to scrabble for our lives?
Give us our TiVo
time-shifted programming,
reality TV with ripped abs
and breast implants.
Give us this day
our daily Dose,
gossip and Sudoku,
news feeds on screens
split five ways past Sunday.
Give us our RSS,
our tweets and our skype,
friends delivered
on the wings of a
deprecated XHTML,
multitasking, ADHD,
Ritalin swallowing,
blood engorged
corpus callosum
in a hypertrophic head.
What was I on about?
I can’t remember.
So much happening.
Let’s go shopping instead.