The Open Microphone

Uncontrolled phallic image
On top Auschwitz frame.
Cold, menacing, almost extinct.
Uncensored liberating words
Flow from open mic
Designed to liberate and,
Shock citizens awake
Who’ve fallen into a trance
From daily doses of propaganda
Fed to them since birth.
Offering lies and promises
They could never keep,
Eventually sleepy eyes open
And the real world you see.
Who will you believe?
Unedited, raw, radical,
The truth in new light
You’ve never heard or seen before.
Speaking about a comrade’s lack
Not the untruths of Conrad Black.
Subversive statements about the state
You know are true in your heart
Flow from poet’s mouth, like
A Leonard Cohen’s song
At closing time, but knowing,
It is opening time of hearts and minds,
And it feels good, like skinny dipping,
Under a midnight sky with a lover
Feeling coolness of water
In places not felt before.
Your mind tastes authentic liberation
And for the first time you recall
Freedom memories stowed away
And you access them like children
Finding their grandparents clothes
In suitcases stored away for evermore.
The open mic challenges everything
You think is right and were taught to you
At universities, newspapers, and TV.
Freedom poets speaking of love, and
Making the world a better place,
Hope dealers high on life.
Open microphones are hard to find
They undo chains of conformity
Allowing one to occupy:
Open mics, minds, hearts, and roads…

This article was posted on Saturday, June 22nd, 2013 at 3:58am and is filed under Poetry.