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.