B F R

the broadside series


#10


Blue Fifth Review
Volume VIII. Issue 3
April 2008

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Photography by Brent Sturgis

Collin Kelley
( Atlanta, Georgia )

poem

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Patty Hearst On The Occasion Of Her Presidential Pardon

Mama’s got her x-ray sunglasses on,
her thought control beehive sending signals,
her noose of pearls ready to lasso me home.
Take off the black dress, Mom, I’m not dead.

I’m an urban guerrilla, don’t call me Patty, 
I’m not a cartoon or your little girl, I’m Tania. 
Only in California will they let you keep
your rock star shades on for the mug shot.
I looked like a starlet.

I’m alive, an example, a symbolic warning.
You think 1975 won’t happen again?
Just give it 30 years…the riots will come,
and waters will rise and desperate men, 
labeled as terrorists by fascist governments,
will strike fear deeper than the SLA. 
Our symbol is a serpent, its tentacles long,
and reaching. Cut off a head, another grows back.

I’ve got a sawed-off carbine and cyanide bullets,
check out this beret, I’m a modern day Che Guevara,
I’d make Bonnie Parker cream her panties, 
when I strike my pose in San Francisco, 
I smile for the security cameras, I’m making 
a withdrawal. 

Dear Donald DeFreeze, sounds like a Superman villain, 
looks like Superfly, so much hotter than Daddy,
who gives away cheap food to the poor,
no beef or lamb, a Marie Antoinette with no throne.
No mind control here, just a little deprogramming
to see truth unwashed and unfiltered,
to see what is coming next.

The leaders will be not-so-secret dictators, 
human rights will be discarded, 
countries will be occupied, the rich 
will drink oil, racism will rise in flood waters,
and I’ll be free, pardoned, back in the familial fold.
But every time you see me, you’ll remember 
the gun in my hand, the street-fighting years,
that we are still prisoners of war,
and you’ll wonder just who has been brainwashed.

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