HYPOTHESIZING

I am hypothesizing that
the next
great American revolutionary
maybe was born in a trailer
shortly after the devastation brought by
hurricane Katrina

her mother is single (I’m just imagining)
and working on three jobs
and ill
but she doesn’t have access to health care
and she dies of exhaustion in ten years from now

she leaves just enough money for her girl to
undertake graduate studies in philosophy
and history
especially,
the history of the Russian revolutionaries
because, let’s say,
the girl’s great grand-father was Russian,
and she keeps an old pistol from him
that was used,
the legend goes,
to shoot on a cruel general
during the reign of Tsar Alexander II

but a lack of financial support
forces the poor girl to abandon her studies

she doesn’t care
because she has a boyfriend she’s in love with
who is a well-known peace activist
for whom she writes numerous speeches
good ones, excellent ones, extraordinary speeches,
until one day
when a private security officer tasers the boy to death
for no apparent reason (of course)

from that day on
the girl reads her speeches herself

“my words are too dangerous for anybody else
but me to read aloud,” she declares

she moves away from the peace movement
and closer to something else
some new system, her own invention
which goes beyond peace

maybe she’ll believe
as Lenin did
that an imperialist war like the so-called,
never ending war on terror, ought to be turned into a
civil war between the classes

she might be able to achieve this
by throwing the predictably disillusioned veterans
of any future (imperialistic) war
against the corrupt establishment,
against the war profiteers,
against their already degenerate society

I wouldn’t support such a position
but I doubt she’d be listening to me or to others

what storm listens to man?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Silhouettes, head by reading_is_dangerous] (Spring 2007)

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, a former lawyer turned revolutionary, became the first leader of the Soviet Union in 1922. He died in 1924 at the age of 54, either from syphilis or because of a fourth stroke caused by a bullet lodged in his neck since an assassination attempt six years earlier. He spent the last ten months of his life bedridden, unable to speak.