Blood Money
Reading Walt Whitman’s bio
I smile when I see poem titles Blood Money
or Song for a Certain Congressman or The House of Friends
the latter referencing Doughfaces, Crawlers, Lice of Humanity.
Not much has changed in one-hundred-fifty years
one century to the next fighting for freedom and the voices
of the people. Walt was devastated when hero fighter journalist Margaret Fuller
drowned off Fire Island, New York in 1850 along with her lover and child.
She admired George Sand, same as I do. I wonder what she would have thought
of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, murdered in a plane crash with his wife
by the Doughfaces, Crawlers, Lice of Humanity politicians.
Voices are remembered, or forgotten, bodies lost at sea, or in cornfields
or paying for their own tombs, their names etched in stone. How do we remember our own
pending deaths? Words in the ether, poems printed, birthplaces memorialized, the world marches on.
pic: Walt Whitman's tombstone, Camden, NJ
Bio: Walt Whitman A Life by Justin Kaplan p. 163-164.
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