How to be Thomas Jefferson
How to be Thomas Jefferson
by Barry Lane
Write like an angel.
Live in your mind.
Have your heart broken many times.
Declare all men equal,
and never release your 200 slaves.
Buy lots of real estate from Frenchmen
without looking at it.
Live beyond your means
and owe lots of money.
Never finish the house
that years later will appear
on the back side of a nickel.
Poet is not a big fan of Thomas Jefferson i would surmise. lol. Very succinct and to the point! The poem seems to suggest: Why the hell do we hold this fellow in such high esteem? –And an encyclopedia slea of others with just as many idiosyncrasies. Good points! …His was a very contradictory lifestyle for such a proponent of the ‘common man’. Political philosophies just don’t amount to a hill of beans, do they? Nice job.
Idealism crossed with pragmatism results in hypocrisy. I’ll forgive a hypocrite because someday I might be remembered as one.
There is a lesson in this “How-to”. The instruction I got is 1:to do what good things you can do 2: The burden of an education is knowing things can be different 3: Learning the limit of your own chain does make you free.
Bit of irony there where his home is the tail-end of coinage(a national bank, as it exists, being an idea he opposed). Live with paradox too long and it will claim your house as it’s own(finished or not).