a pinko commie under every bush

Patty Hearst

Yes! I admit it!

When I was fifteen years old, I read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

In an era when hordes of university students were toting around copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, this wasn’t anything unusual.

Who, after all, could ignore these glorious words?

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

“They have a world to win.

“WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”

Can’t you hear the fist-pounding and finger-pointing in those words? Can’t you hear the stampeding hordes and gunfire behind those phrases?

ALL GLORY TO THE REVOLUTION!

We already had the Women’s Liberation Movement, La Raza, the Black Panthers, the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, Earth Day, peace-loving Hippies, the Free Speech Movement, Timothy Leary, the Sexual Liberation Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. Tune out, drop out. Question authority. Don’t trust anyone over 30. If it feels good, do it!!

The anti-establishment revolution. Black is beautiful. All Power to the People!

“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles . . .”

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,

The government becomes a little bit bolder

And a little bit colder

And you know that we told her it would happen.

The Left of the Right began to struggle with all its might

And decided to declare a revolution.

It’s the only solution to the capitalist institution,

And you know we’ve got to do it for our own evolution.

written spring 1971

a pinko commie under every bush

ring out the old, bring in the new

the clash of two opposing ideas morphs into Hegel’s dialectic

Cold War, a flash of nuclear destruction

and death.

Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

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