Five days and counting til the Curtain goes up on the Bad Poets Society...

Still so much to do, flyers to drop, readers to finalize and of course last minute publicity...tons of details really. After eight years this event gets no easier to organize, I am however surprisingly free of pre-show anxiety. I figure I've already hit rock bottom with this sumbitch the worst has already happened.
Below is a Burroughsian "cut up" of various key sentences from Warren Harding's inaugural address in March 1921.
Harding was such a maladroit writer and speaker I've always thought that his stumblebum syntax would make a great free-verse found-art poem According I post herein for the first time "The Love Song of Warren Gameliel Harding:

My Countrymen:


Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring.

one ambiguity,

I can vision the ideal republic, where every man and woman is called under the flag for assignment to duty for whatever service, military or civic, the individual is best fitted; where we may call to universal service every plant, agency, or facility, all in the sublime sacrifice for country, and not one penny of war profit shall inure to the benefit of private individual, corporation, or combination, but all above the normal shall flow into the defense chest of the Nation.

one ambiguity,

There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports.

one ambiguity,

With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order.

one ambiguity,

This is not selfishness, it is sanctity. It is not aloofness, it is security. It is not suspicion of others, it is patriotic adherence to the things which made us what we are.

one ambiguity,

I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.




Whether it works or not...and perhaps it doesn't..let me nonetheless note, this poem was not considered bad enough to make the final cute for this year's Bad Poets Society. Take that as your benchmark.