Romancing Utopia

Tahrir Square Cairo 2011 upraised fist.
A new day JUSTICE, FREEDOM. EQUALITY!
Tahrir boom dee yay Tahrir boom dee yay.
May a new day dawn in Cairo today?

Utopia a place desired and wished for.
Adam & Eve, New Harmony, Brook Farm
Dream, dream DREAM.

1917 Russian wish a utopia born?
Strawberries & cream for all.
Frostbite from Siberia shatters the dream.
Utopia on a slow fade to Armageddon.

“Ideology & Utopia” Carl Mannheim 1936
“Social movements must have a Utopian vision.”

Oh, did we ever!

The vision never dies. It just goes on hold.
Is Utopia like an orgasm?
Chillingly glorious but--- short.

1938 Union Square “Hold the Fort
For we are coming” down Fifth Avenue.
Dawn of the new day. Karl Marx said it,
“From each according to ability
To each according to need.”
It talked, Utopia, Was it?

Socialist picnics were all love and skittles.
Beer, bratwurst, frankfurter and honey-cakes.
It was the “Long long dream
of a world that’s pure and free.
When the world is owned by labor.
In the commonwealth of toil that is to be.”

We used the word free so much
Even love was to be.

Little Utopian summer camps practiced it.
Fresh air, clean water plenty to eat
For a fleeting moment or two.
Singing made it feel “WE MADE IT.”

I loved those little utopias. “IS THAT ALL THERE IS?”

The Holocaust births a Jewish Utopia, Israel.
Yet, another dream?
Drowned in a sea of Palestinian upraised fists?
Marching for their dream-------of--------yes!


Here we are. The Arab Spring, Dreams of utopia.
This one is democracy.
Awakened by tanks in the street
Screams from the prison walls.

Do we ever stop dreaming of utopia?
Webster say’s it’s “No Place,”