From WALMART
—For Alejandro Butters—

•

And hiphoppers
who want a music career
don't include that one great song
with an anti-war message on their new CD,

not if they want that CD
to be carried by Walmart,
upon which so much depends

if they are to ever
cross over
to that wider audience,

agents,
distributors,
club gigs,
airplay,

-—Walmart,
which is for the war,
backing the oil
and military factions
of the Republican Party,

just as it rose to the top
by waging war
against its
own workers,

denying them unions
and health insurance
safe working conditions
and overtime pay,

which is why you don't hear
a lot of anti-war songs on the radio
these days, as hiphoppers scramble
to the top,

Ludicrus,
but not The Coup,
not Dead Prez,
but Jay Z,

because you don't find
a lot of kids anxious
to bite the hand
that feeds them,

—Walmart, whose sales
now make up
25% of all
CD sales,

—yet whose music sales
consist of less
than one tenth of 1 %
of its total revenues—

"we are tadpoles
in the pond
to them,"

says an executive
whose company
marketed Ja Rule
and others,

"and yet they are
everything to us,"

which only goes
to show,
when monopoly
talks,

not just
plumbing
contractors,
sweatshop bosses,

president
of the united states,
but hiphop producers
listen,

it is not
censorship,
exactly,

as stores on Main street
close down,
as sweat shops in China
open up,

as more workers in this country
are laid off,
as Walmart quietly
sinks its tentacles
into a little bit of everything,

after all,
in the so-called
marketplace of ideas
those against the war
are free to follow
their own vision,

but without an alternative
means of distribution,
the struggle to build
a new way of doing things,

organizing on behalf of it,
rapping
marching,
agitating,

against Wallmart,
the banks
and corporations
behind them,

he will sing
that anti-war song,
and people won't hear
a lot about it,

breaking
on the radio
where the superhits
happen,

or else, the hot new video
being spun after
the word from the sponsor
on the MTV…..

singing that song
instead
in small halls
to a few others

who already think
the way he does
about the war
in Iraq… .

—"no blood for oil"
and the dinosaur
where it
leads ….—

unless he gives up
the ghost
of that jagged, flashing
wonderful song

and stops
thinking it