Blue Moon, Broken Chad freewrite

Wide-open, anything: blue moons in July, birthdays of good friends, of a nation, out of Iraq, Saddam’s continued arrogance, Bush’s too. Speaking of broken chads, they even have a name for it, Chad. And Bush is Bible beating the south into submission, seeking parishioners to vote. It’s going to be that kind of close. Anything to do with conflict of interest? It took an act of Congress to put God into the Pledge of Allegiance, the dollar bill, and into the national anthem, which was once a drinking tune called Anacreon. The original subject: makes love, not war. Anacreon was a poet of Greece who fled fromCyrus the Great. I envisioned that he fled to Thrace, because he, like Homer was no fighter. He flung down his sword and shield and fled to live in another day. Many other days in the courts of Polycrates. He lived so long that Heradotus, who was forever trying to stick one foot into the same river twice, commented upon it. 85 years! A marvel. But Pliney (the Elder?) says he choked on a grape stone. Grape stone? Cherry stone? Pits? Chads? The chad of the grape, voting for vino, no fish here, just wine, and women and song. But that’s how it was, pleasing the despots and tyrants, give them what they want. Nubile maidens and lads and popped cherries. That’s what Anacreon lived to write another day for, and then Thomas Moore translated him, a song written to Anacreon, time traveling across the centuries to settle in and find a new home. Oh say, can you see? As the rosy-fingered dawn rises to the rocket’s red glare….

7/2/2004 Writers’ Group