Dee Rimbaud: "A New Clean American Dream"


 

 

 
 Copyright © 2001 by Dee Rimbaud and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 

“Lipstick” copyright © 2001 by Dee Rimbaud  

A New Clean American Dream 
(for Jerk Van Gay*) 

 

Dee Rimbaud 

  

We have been puritanically purged: 

Sanitised in the technological laundromat 

Of bible-belted, mythological, silicon-chipped America: 

The poetry of graffito and Sappho 

Washed out of our dirty, despoiled, collective soul. 

Unclean unclean, call out the synthesised bells: 

Unclean and obscene, a mesh of fornicating flesh 

To be extricated from the slathering sensuality of hell. 

Worry not, Mistress of your children's edification: 

Where there is science and education 

There is unstoppable will: a force for good 

That will cleanse us of all gratuitous filth; 

And your children will be forever safe 

To sleep in the sweet innocence of dry dreams. 

We will reduce the seductive syllables of sexuality 

To an electro-static hush of perfect tranquility; 

And between your legs they only be able to see 

Moon beams and rainbows and chim chim cheree. 

  

  

 

 

*The new rendering of Dick Van Dyke's name by "The TV Guardian": a device which censors TV subtitles 

and bleeps out expletives