His was the voice of the silent: The indigent. The destitute.
His music elicited sympathy for the displaced and dispossessed of industrial agriculture, who were to America’s growing fascination with wealth, as dust beneath the boots of its prospectors and excavators.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Whenever a fresh battle erupted, he would arrive at the scene — armed with nothing but his songbook, a ragged voice and the guitar he carried, sporting the now-famous slogan:
He died in 1967 of complications from Huntington’s Disease, a malady that had already ravaged his mind and body for two decades.
……………….……However…
.
As Woody Guthrie ailed in sunny California, a second Woody began to rise from the forsaken wasteland of Cook County, Illinois.
.
"This isn't your father's democracy anymore, Mario."
… he fearlessly observed. He had witnessed a windy city brought to heel: not by the howling gusts that roiled lake Michigan, but those which sucked every organization and factotum into a single, insidious current.
__——____——____——____——____——__
It was a torrent of expropriation by numerous Mafia outfits, colluding to “manage” the citizenry into moral bankruptcy and rank poverty.
Inspectors and constables were corrupt, right hands washed leftward, and at the heart of everything was a truly diabolical engine:
!!! MACHINE POLITICS !!!
Woody Cataquack twisted fresh strings over the board of his 1937 Martin 000-18 guitar, and started to write.
.
Thereafter, North America’s newest folk hero would regularly perform This Fascist, a song the likes of which the embroiled continent had never before heard.
.
Here are the words of that most prescient number, as transcribed by the American poet | Rafa Joseph | in | February of 2010 | during his adventures with an old Smithsonian Folkways LP and equally-ancient gramophone:
.
THIS FASCIST
The Ship
O Fishing Boat of Jesus, ever gentle in your way:
you spill your catch upon the docks — to savorless bouquet.
Although the stench is quite a menace to my little seaside town,
you sport a levitating halo, with no smokestack to be found!
Because you lowered your unloading ramp, I acted like a fool
and boarded on that fateful Sunday: when you hauled me off to school,
where Father Herring tried to teach me everything he knew.
I couldn’t hang, or whistle — but got good at turning blue.
We drank your magic sacrifice, and met your daughters there.
One even let me take her to the Minnesota Fair!
I tossed a baseball through a hole, and led her through a dance.
We sat together in between the sugar and the ants.
She told me I should fear her dad and fill myself with shame.
I said I didn’t even wanna know her father’s name.
She shunned my purple monkey, tie-dyed cross and slender genes.
This fascist was a dream deferred, and now he kills machines!
The Robot
O Android of America: you have a woman’s charm.
You hold the sculptor’s hand, and then he chisels off his arm!
In high school, you invited seven princes to the ball.
Your father had to referee while standing in the hall.
Your brother went to college, then rebounded promptly back.
He’s doing ten to twenty, now. Upon the center rack.
When daddy sent you after, for his ludicrous amusement,
you graduated with a focus in disrupting music.
Of all the singers in the world for you to tamper with,
you boast you used to hang with Portland’s famous Steven Smith!
He came with a guitar strap, asking how to tie a noose;
you kicked his sunken face… to knock some golden trinkets loose.
You tend the sick and wounded like a bandit, taking pulses.
Your heroine was kind to me. And sadly, no one else was.
Your uncle ran the numbers, ‘til he jumped the gun in Queens.
This fascist was an engineer, but now he kills machines!
The Cavalry
O Riding Crop of Israel, so civilized in motion
running over the Romani (and then patenting the potion),
first the Warsaw burghers sussed you out, then secondly the Yanks
who'd put their trust in Meister Rothschild — for their vaudevilles, and banks.
When Woody Opera Glasses came to duel, and shook with righteous rage,
you told him: “Meet me at the show tonight. We’ll work it out backstage.”
The latter was a pefect circus, but you double charged for bread.
For special benefactors there were black girls giving head.
Indeed, the union-buster’s daughter drew a trumpet from her bust.
The critics called it provocation! All the oilem felt was lust,
until the strumpet trotted out beloved doctor Paul Dobransky
to speak praise of Mayer Amschel — for protecting Meyer Lansky.
When the ticket sales were counted, you decided on a tour
to benefit the starving children… but the Ashkenazim more.
Your stagehands placed the setting twenty miles above the scenes.
This fascist painted watercolors. Now, he kills machines!
The Spacecraft
Keen Rocketship of Islam, so autonomous and spry:
I sent you my ambassador; you gouged him in the eye.
With all the Caucasus at your command, Caucasians all to ruin,
you would sooner stone your daughter than let Armstrong near the moon.
When I went skiing in Afghanistan, I heard a soldier tell
about the muddy glaciers of Iran, and ice cream made in Hell —
which bore the emblem of your enterprise, with Joseph and the calf
beneath a crescent, bloody dagger — and I couldn’t help but laugh!
Although I tried to do things your way (smoking hookah with a harlot
who was actually my cousin, veiled in silk and painted scarlet)
still you took my treatise on The Origins of Superstition,
as impeding Western research is incumbent for submission!
So I wrote this with my brother, Rushdie, high atop Mount Shasta.
Some bright morning we may have to decamp high into Alaska,
lest my publicist, Muhammad, move to abrogate the means!
This fascist was a cosmonaut, but now he kills machines.
The Mainframe
Contraption of The Universe, relentlessly expanding:
all your middlemen just grift themselves, and orbit while remanding —
and The Globe is but a stage, and burning lights occlude the actors,
so poor Woody tried to shut them off… but sadly got it backwards —
for we’ll never reach the common good, ‘til we unite to clean
the bloody pistons of the engine-Hanse, empowering the machine
that always situates between the product and the worker’s pay
and wraps its chains around enlightened man (to take him out of play) —
with a mad scientist, Moreau, hunched over levers in the bridge
and sickly scoundrel, named Rousseau, applying bandages to him!
When Friedrich Moustache fought the mecha, his own constitution soured
so Goldwater’s emerald fleet just chased behind the will-to-power.
Now, the mystics keep on shouting that The third time is the charm!
I say: “No action fosters deafness quite like sounding an alarm,
so really, who am I to speculate? A song is just a dream.”
Another line, and it shall drift away… like carrion on a stream.
.
Now them sum good’ol donness fightin’ words!





Rafa, everything you write feels the size of a stage play—you stage it all, and readers become the audience, watching it with the mind’s eye. I really love your style.
Ok, that was a lot!! Fucking amazing :)