Self Evident, by Ani Difranco. A poem about Sept. 11

I remember hearing Ani Difranco perform this shortly after the September 11th attacks in 2001, and I thought it was a brilliant piece. I came across it again this morning, and thought it was worth sharing with my fellow ATSers.

This is a poem about September 11th, 2001, reactions, and governance. I think it expresses what a lot of people feel.
What do you all think of it?

I'm providing two mp3 links, one of a live performance of the piece, and another with a studio version..


STUDIO VERSION

LIVE VERSION

TEXT OF POEM

Here's a snippet of the poem:

yes,
us people are just poems
we're 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it's part of a pair
there on the bow of noah's ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please

and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky

The remainder can be found at the link immediatley above.

No interest in this??

Here's another snippet of the poem for those who didn't bother to check the text, or give a listen.

It's a very interesting poem, and well done.

cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don't take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks
and boy did he ever

and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i've got no room for a lie so verbose
i'm looking out over my whole human family
and i'm raising my glass in a toast

I am, of course prbably the wrong person to lsiten because:
a: was thinking, "Hey! thats a good expression of spretchstemme!" --German for sing/speak
b: I'm a pretty staunch Republican, so I dissagreed with much of her opinions

but thank God someone is doing this.

The one that made me want to laugh is that we aren't a democracy. No, is that wh'y we're called a Democratic Republic?

Glad to hear you say that, even though you disagree with much of what she said

And you're right, but I suppose it's a common misconception that it is a democracy?

Part of the problem is tha we, as a country don't teach the differences in belief between the Declaration of Independance and The Consitution of the United States .

We were looking for our freedom from the tyrannical Brittain, and believed that we all must be free, but when we got to make the Articles of Conferderation and we saw how much apsolute freedom corrupts, so we went back to having the few in control of many. We fuss about it so much, now, but it was there proactically from the begining. Remember, the Bill of Rights were added after the document was ratified...

I refuse to become a boring history lecturer...

That's one long poem! But a nice one!