Preferring to "lean and loafe at his ease," Alan Britt is troubled by the corruption and ambivalence that permeates the Great Experiment, so politically speaking he has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds, and oil, also that it’s time to eliminate corporate entitlements and reduce military spending in order to properly educate its citizenry, thereby reducing crime and strengthening the populace in the manner that the Constitution envisioned. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur.
ALAN BRITT: Library of Congress Interview:
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-alan-britt.mp3
PRE-EASTER (Redux)
You don’t recognize me?
I was the one dipping
every organ of my body
into our crime infested river,
I feigned death & remorse,
not necessarily in that order.
So, give me my due; I’m just
a pall bearer looking for a gig.
VIOLIN STRING
Violin string lost somewhere between
Mozart & Beethoven stumbles
upon Schoenberg or his protégé,
Alban Berg.
Violin string inhaling the zeitgeist
yet waving a nervous torch for what
lurks right around the corner.
Violin string dreaming a hernia operation
that didn’t go so well, one involving
knives reserved for mugging victims.
Now violin string wonders how it’s going
to pay the rent for a family of twelve
inside a four-room plywood flat.
Violin string with monofilament sinew
strangling its bones—its bones the
chiseled countenance of a 19th century
cigar store Iroquois chief.
Violin string crooning you didn’t expect
to see me so soon, yet here I am.
Violin string’s in a hurry these days.
Who knows? Who knows?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
(For Alan & friends)
Looking past your shoulder
everywhere that you go—
violin strings like psychedelic octopi
prowling your liver & looking past
the vast past that promulgates
your future.
If you’re willing to live inside this second
person point of view, then I say to you—
looking past your shoulder
everywhere that you go—
I say Madam or Sir, whichever one
you prefer on this March 3, 2017,
I say Madam or Sir, whichever one
you prefer, ride those violin thermals
past the final bleep on your ER monitor
& ascend the heavily guarded iron gates
of the Promised Land!
I dare you.