1Che Forever
Dan Brook
Che Forever
Dan Brook
Copyright © Dan Brook 2011
Published at Smashwords
They killed a man
Yet he is far from dead
Indeed
He is more alive than ever
They killed a working man
With sinister CIA & military might
Hired by cronies of Capitalism
To do this disgusting, dirty work
Instead of the usual & daily dirty work
That vital “work of civilization”
Lifting & hauling
Digging & scraping
Cooking & cleaning
Bending & aching
The work that pays
Much less in money than in meaning
The work that must be done (by somebody else)
Compulsory
Contracted
Coerced
Constraining
Condemning
They killed a romantic man
With heady ideas & lofty ideals
He was real
He was realistic
He was really murdered
Following the Summer of Love
“To make a better world”
Dead half a year after I was born
Dead way too young for an epic life
Dead but still shining
A New Man
For a new society
For a new world
A Wild Man
A Man of the Earth
He is a man of dreams
Dreaming of an awakened life
Dreaming of a compassionate community
Dreaming the realistic
Dreaming the impossible
Dreaming of us
Fantasizing
Surprising
Maximizing
Uncompromising
Prescient
Present
Offering a present
Full of presence
Beautiful & dutiful
Even in death
He is totally full of life
They cowardly killed a man
They could never confront,
Could never convict
Could never convert
Could never control
Could never copy
They could never corrupt him
They cowardly killed a courageous man
To whom they could never compare
From Latin America to Africa
Through Europe and Asia
Back again & infinitely beyond
Searching
Traveling
Unraveling
Roaming the world
With insight
For justice
Having fun
A thirty something scrawny man
An employee of humanity
Public servant par excellance
Bearded with black beret
Strategist, tactician, thinker, doer
Intellectual, athlete, doctor, poet, player of chess & more
A human being
Being human
Being humane
Being humble
Being hungry
Hungry for adventure & meaning
Hungry for words & ideas
Hungry for justice, justice
Did he pursue
Aggressive
Sometimes excessive
Sometimes ruthless
Pursuing what is necessary
They killed a human being
With ego subsumed under society
A moral commitment to morality
Galilean
Newtonian
Pasteurian
Competent
Confident
Consistently ethical
Critical
Careful
Cavernously concerned
With & for the people
Rational & international
Sensational & inspirational
Caring & daring
Energetic & energizing
Reckless but not feckless
Fun, free, & fantastic
Empathetic more than simply sympathetic
Pragmatic
Charismatic
Asthmatic
Nothing is automatic
It has to be done
“Of the people, by the people, for the people”
Doing community
Doing justice
Doing democracy
Doing socialism
Doing revolution
It is not his fault
As he coyly said
That “reality is Marxist”
Reality is Capitalism
Imperialism
Exploitation
Suffering
Yet reality is also Camaraderie
Cooperation
Hope
Happiness
Love
Reality is what we make it
What we believe
What we do
Like Auden
He knows that
“No one exists alone”
That “We must love one another
Or die”
An atheist filled with faith
Believing the job of a revolutionary
Is to make revolution
He had to do it
To make it happen
He chose to be
Full of the powerful passion of compassion
Leading to action
Overcoming capitalism
With conscientiousness
With his conscience
With collective consciousness
Dissolving the differences
In his daily dialectical duties
Reader/writer
Student/teacher
Leader/follower
Worker/volunteer
Guerrilla/patriot
Thinker/doer
I/thou
An economist against money
Dedicated to justice
Predicated on fairness
Seeking & speaking truths
He lives in the moment
Of perilous revolutionary truth
With “everyday heroism”
Living completely
Complete authenticity
Authentic simplicity
Simple integrity
Integrated living
Living completely
I/thou
He/us
Now/always
He realized that he “must be the change”
He “wished to see in the world”
No less true for each of us
Trying to make the commonwealth
A metaphorical and literal reality
The creative tension of dissension
Never too little to mention
Social incomprehension
Against a capitalist system
Systematically demonic
Culturally hegemonic
Economically supersonic for the few
Tragically ironic for the many
Alienating for all
Poised against
Fantastical “free-trade fallacies”
The gods of grotesque growth
Angels of avarice
Devils of so-called development
Pirates of privatization
Prophets of profit
Arrayed against
Vast deserts of desperation
Empty promises of prosperity & progress
Empty pots & purses
In pursuit of liberation
The “globalization of freedom”
Lives worth living
Life & death with dignity
For people that matter
For people who struggle
For people who yearn to be free
For everyone
A maker of revolution
Recognizing that revolutions
Do not occur in (even nominal) democracies
He did not realize it
Until he was (illegally, immorally) murdered
Proving his point in the worst way
Teaching a lesson that we (not he) needed to learn
Facing death
He fought
He sought
He taught
Teaching by example
His exemplary life is a textbook
To read
To study
To use
To critique
To inspire
To transcend
To continue
Writing another edition
As we collectively live our individual lives
In struggle
For progress
Toward equality
With each other
To continue fighting
To continue lighting the way
To continue righting wrongs
To continue writing human rights
To continue writing
The (auto)biography of our society
The stories of us
With a happy ending
They killed a thoughtful man
Fresh from fixing the world
Universalism more than internationalism
Believing
“That a small group of thoughtful, committed”
Comrades “can change the world”
It is a difficult way
A dangerous way
A fulfilling way
It is the only way
Affirming
That people interpret their world in many ways
He had to change it
Adventurously & altruistically
All alone, yet with others
In Cuba
The Congo
And elsewhere
Countries wracked by cruel colonialism
Stinking of sickening slavery
Reeking of callous corporatism
Wreaking its havoc
Reaping the deadly profits of capitalism
Killing the prophets along the way
He was heading home to Argentina
Stopping off to make history
Not of his choosing, as Marx knows,
Not under circumstances chosen by himself
In Bolivia
Experimenting with truth & justice
Equality & humanity
Personal issues & social problems
Desire & love
Enlarging our circles of compassion
Concern
Conscience
Creation
Community
They killed a better man
In search of a better way
A better world
A better we
He was rethinking his job
Rethinking our societies
Rethinking resistance
To the tyranny & terror
The tightness & torture
Of market fundamentalism
A system of pervasive & perpetual violence
Chronic condemnations
Endless hope and habitual despair
A system of mass destruction
Riddled with the grossness of inequality
With the suffering of humanity
With a planet’s pain
Riddled with the bullets of reality
The painful & poisonous sting of poverty
The virulent “vampirism” of capitalism
Opportunistically
“Sucking the lifeblood
From the open veins”
On every continent
In every way
Of every people
Of everyday people
Ruthlessly running roughshod
Commodification
Incarceration
Stratification
Stultification
Strangulation
Of all facets of life & death
The ‘democracy’ of the ‘free’ market
Rewarding & reproducing golden greed
Disregarding the social
The metaphorical
The alchemical need
Dislocating dreams