Notes on the contributors to the MassPoetry blog
On Reading at Dewey Square October 27, 2011
Note: See the Boston Globe story on the readings at Occupy Boston, including Don’s.
It felt good to stand in the 40-degree rain Thursday in Dewey Square – a kind of solidarity-in-misery with Occupy Boston. The rain was persistent, but had a feeling of equality as it fell fairly on the 1% as well as the 99% and trickled down to 100%.
Organized by Peter Desmond, Robyn-Su Miller and Susie Davidson, poets contributed their verses to the protest at 2pm each day of the fourth week of the occupation. Alice Weiss was the featured poet on Thursday October 27th, and led off with a dedicated poem, “Dewey Square.” I read my poem for the occasion, “The Bankers’ Song.” (See below.) Another dozen poets read their poems of resistance, inequality and distress.
There was no thunderous response, the One-Percenters didn’t quake and renounce their wealth, no unemployed found immediate work, and Congress didn’t coalesce around the needs of the nation. The Occupiers just occupied their tents and the two yellow-slickered police shifted glumly in their heavy brogans. There was only the rain-muffled clapping of cold wet hands and a few warm smiles – mainly of the poets themselves. No bang, hardly a whimper.
So standing in the rain, why did this reading feel good to me? Why does it still feel good at the laptop in my warm house? It has to do
with taking a stand, making a statement about me, mainly to myself I suppose. I have moved out from the middle, from the dependents, from the uncommitted to take a position that too-big-to-failers need to be accountable for taking too much risk, that it is not OK for the 99% to falter while the 1% prospers, that America can do better.
Behind the sometimes microphone in Dewey Square, hung a soggy sign taped to the granite walls of the exhaust duct for the sunken South East Expressway: “We are the majority, we will not be silenced.” That wet afternoon, no one tried to silence us and few even listened, but I was able to hear what I have to say.
The Bankers’ Song
Take a
mortgage, equity loan
enjoy
yourself, it’s just your home.
Spend it
through our debit card
the
terms are easy, it’s not hard.
It’s
only paper, play the game
we’ll
package yours with more the same
and sell
them to some naïve folks
then
sell short this cruel hoax.
Now if
you fail and need salvation
we
profit big, go on vacation
chuckling
that the whole thing’s legal
because
the Feds repealed Glass-Steagall.
And if,
per chance, our math is wrong
we’ll
sing to Congress our sad song
fly
there in our private jets
and ask
for public safety nets.
None of
us will go to jail
it’s
private pay and public bail.
We banks
are just too big to fail
it’s
private pay and public bail.
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