America’s quest for monarchy
Failed again
A triple crown thwarted
The quest for total domination
Foundering
Another cracker jack faux
A for-see-able sir prize
Californian gold transmuted
Into chrome
Bronzed
A tanned hide
Soon forgotten
A hoarse race
A poorer proxy
Of true human feat
Ruled by what is
Less swift
Needing powerful spectacles
To not see
Over and over
Hour consolation prize
Ever settling for the gaming
Of plutocracy
The royal fleecing
Of sheep
Buy domesticated wolves
For equestrian
Riding
To the end of the world
In minutes
Flat
Re-lying on vain hopes
Our ambitions
Running around in circles
An opulent haunt
Of who most dashing
How ever a ware
It is US
The 2014 odds on favorite to with horse racing’s triple crown, California Chrome, finished an unmemorable third place, leaving it’s legacy bronzed and lifeless.
It’s difficult to watch the spectacle of horse racing without at least some class consciousness. Perhaps this is a good thing. In this poem, I use the fodder of this most apparent “gentleman’s” sport as an opportunity to expose it’s more seedy underpinnings. Whether horse racing or NASCAR racing, sport is big business and a necessary distraction from less sporting, and even less gentlemanly, enterprises.
Americans love a winner. More so, Americans love domination. For Americans, there is something that resonates with one “competitor” so dominating others that it is scarcely a competition. This strikes me as something to do with America’s love affair with “exceptionalism,” specifically American exceptionalism. The shock and awe of being so much superior than any and all other competitors under-girds a dark morality where might makes right and vulnerability is banished from human, or at least American, or at least elite American, experience. And while not all of US may be playing on the super-achieving Team America, we can all at least root for the home team. In it’s most blatant form, this is killing all of our enemies, “terrorists,” who would dare challenge, or daresay “compete,” with the American weigh of life.
Since monarchy itself is déclassé, we have to repackage it into the monarchy of plutocrats and the aristocracy of celebrity. The plutocrats sell us celebrity, and the increasingly hollow American dream of becoming rich ourselves. Plenty buy such pablum. Any one of us running head to head or fighting toe to toe with the plutocrats may not even be in a horse race, but together we need not re-lie on singular saviors.
Our salvation rests in the masses standing against the few, the plutocratic oligarchs, and building communities based on egalitarianism, not exceptionalism. We need less spectating and more participating. We need less fans and more teammates. We need less co-opting and more cooperation. We need less jockeying and more mutual aid. Let’s make it so.
