What happens when a clueless First Lady invites the wrong poet to the wrong event? You get Poets Against the War and A Culture of Resistance.

You also get some interesting parallels between the current attempts to marginalize antiwar artists and the attempts to do almost the same thing with the same arguments to the punk artists almost 20 years ago.

I've been tossing around the idea of diving into verse to try and order my thoughts on the mess that is current politics, but nothing worthwhile has come of it. However, what *did* get my dander up were varous comments in a few Op-Ed pieces and from the First Lady's office that injecting some current political debate into a literary event was inappropriate. That politics and art should remain separate and involiate. To which I reply:

Art should not be political?
What would you have art be, then?
Useless, sitting in a corner or
worshipped from afar on ivory pedestals?

Words have power, and images too
that once were acknowledged with honor.
Would you squander such a resource
hiding with your nose in the air?

Foolish academic with your airs
come breathe less rarefied air
and use your art for something better
than proving your own stodgy worth

Prove to me that the blood of bards
runs strong and bold in modern day
and art is worth more than the posturing
of puffed up academia.

Else regulate yourself to forgotten
dusty corners with your fellows
while youth, vibrant and immature though it be
moves the passions of the world - without you.