I mentioned when I posted Angry Young Poet there was a second poem I shared from my youth with my students. I softened this one a bit, as it had an angry voice. I know this version sounds pretty harsh, but it is gentler. A recent conversation reminded me how I marginalize voices of those already marginalized. A professor commented he was told by an affluent person that another less fortunate person was a non-entity and the worth of human was measured in material worth. I know this might be isolated, but it troubling and I was reminded of this poem.
Captains of Society
Shallow, superficial, arrogant
Single ambition
Greatness in the eyes of others
Only those with resources can apply
The rest
Forgotten
Pay a high price, but…
It’s their fault
They own their misery.
A cheque to charity
Assuages my conscience
What about the despair?
Don’t care
I claim I do
Donations in good faith, but
It’s a tax receipt
I can really claim, but…
Done on the backs of others
Get the staff to donate time
Not mine.
Increase taxes
Not mine!
No way!
It’s wrong!
Tax others!
What is work?
I create jobs
It’s a spectator sport
This work, which
I manage from afar.
Drive luxury wheels
Shout
Curse
What’s the hold up?
Who’s blocking my way?
The ‘75 Ford station wagon
Engine shot
Dead broke!
Is it their home?
Throw a party
Drink
Eat
Be merry
No concern for homeless
A romantic notion this ‘hobo jungle’
Not my world
What’s wrong?
It’s not my fault
I gave at the office.
After all.
Throw money at problems
It might help
Don’t
Stop, see, care
If it really helps
Denying, refusing, unfeeling
I pay for a clear conscience
After all.
The misery
In surround sound…
Is out of sight;
Out of mind
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning.
Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate
Mitt Romney does poetry?
Maybe?
just seems like something he could have written.
I had to think about it for a few minutes. I wrote the original poem in about 1969 and the theme remained consistent. Had I written it today, the answer might be yes, but in 1969 I was seeing the beginnings of a world I did not particularly care for and it has gotten progressively worse.
Thank you for the reflective and thought provoking comments and time to consider it in full context, It is appreciated and good for the heart of an old rebel.
Ivon