11-26-2012, 09:28 AM
Kipling is Kipling. I know he has a poem called "White Man's Burden", but that's not what the poem's about. It is a generic something. The idea of White Christian Males in America seems to be a generic race idea to me. If you're not white in America, you're a minority. Really? Whites simply took Christianity and America, and other things, as generically as I took the title "White Man's Burden". Though I was thinking of the way it was said in "The Shining" movie. That tone.
I have three other versions of this. This one seemed the most finished.
After the line about counting money and singing, I had some quoted line from a blues song. I took it out to see how well it did without it. The last few lines are only saying that gravity creates the illusion of a burden. In a similar way as the "White man" in America is either felt to be a pure race (there's KKK around here leaving letters on my lawn), or the big bad bogey power; when really white people are just generic people when you lump them altogether. "Native Americans", "Blacks", and others often simply blame things on "white people". I attack the idea of "white people", both in the people that think they are white and therefore better, and those that scapegoat white people. Many "white people" I know scapegoat Mexicans; why? I guess they'll always find someone to scapegoat.
This is a poem I didn't feel satisfied with even before I started writing it. So I can see some of Todd's not following the end of it.
I have three other versions of this. This one seemed the most finished.
After the line about counting money and singing, I had some quoted line from a blues song. I took it out to see how well it did without it. The last few lines are only saying that gravity creates the illusion of a burden. In a similar way as the "White man" in America is either felt to be a pure race (there's KKK around here leaving letters on my lawn), or the big bad bogey power; when really white people are just generic people when you lump them altogether. "Native Americans", "Blacks", and others often simply blame things on "white people". I attack the idea of "white people", both in the people that think they are white and therefore better, and those that scapegoat white people. Many "white people" I know scapegoat Mexicans; why? I guess they'll always find someone to scapegoat.
This is a poem I didn't feel satisfied with even before I started writing it. So I can see some of Todd's not following the end of it.