Wednesday, August 3, 2016

August 3: Opening Ceremonies, Kyle Dargan, "Olympic Drive"

Well, in two days the Summer Olympics in Rio kick off with the Opening Ceremonies.

I'm not usually a fan of sports.  I go to high school football games in the fall simply to see my daughter play in the marching band.  I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.  However, I love watching the Olympics.  I think it has to do with the combination of competition and cultures.  Learning about a country's history and people.

Well, I came across a poem by Kyle Dargan that I thought was about the Olympics.  It's not.  It's about race and poverty and the end of the world.  Another quasi science fiction poem.  It's a great poem, but has little to do with the Olympics.

Saint Marty thinks there should be an Olympic event in poetry.  How about a sonnet slam?  Or a villanelle vault?  Haiku high jump?

Olympic Drive

by:  Kyle Dargan

Across from the gorgeous dog park,
men dream against poodle-pissed trees — 
their pillows made from breath captured
in milk cartons. Only arid, temperate
climate offers respite. Let us suppose
they have tales, here in this city
where filmed stories turn a mint.
All around, one wide screen — the dark hills
due north pixel-pocked with villa lights.
Below, streets hemmed with haggard
brown men — jack-in-the-box bodies
ever unfolding. Who is pitching
this script? Title: “The Child of 1968.”
Voiceover: After the Integration Apocalypse,
one man must find his way in a land
where the sole survivors who look or speak
like him are those rendered disturbed
and indigent. Assume the Motion Picture
Association eager to levy a “Rated R,”
then remember that those who judge
violence never shared your definition
of savagery. A culling is all your eyes
decipher — your herd thinned. No urban
wildlife anywhere to be found,
yet hunger for a hunt remains.
Tagline: A hero must choose — 
between starving or bartering one’s own
skin. Plot: Amidst the solar famine, bio-
electric studies revealed melanin’s subtle
charge — the brown population gone
mad from being sapped like CopperTops.
Imagine The Matrix without the extra-
terrestrial machines. Imagine that among us
there have lived men churning statistics,
devising a human harvest, a brutal method
to subsist off fellow men and leave their bones
for the gnawing of next century’s mutts.


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