I Went to the Communist Party: Chris Faiers (poem)

 

I Went to the Communist Party


I went to the Communist Party
but no one was dancing or drinking beer
I went to the Communist Party
but no one was laughing or listening

I tried to join the Communist Party
but a shorthair in a suit turned me away
because I was a hippie draft dodger
so I cut my hair
and they let me join
but now no one trusted me
because I was too normal

I went to the Communist Party for help
when I was organizing a union at work
but the Party wasn't interested in small numbers
of kitchen slaves in a nonvital industry

I went to the Communist Party
because I believe in Canadian independence
but they told me American imperialism
isn't in this year

I went to the Communist Party
and they printed my poems
but when I wouldn't move to a small town to organize
they stopped publishing me

I went to the Communist Party
and they kicked me in the head
I went to the Communist Party
and they kicked me in the head harder
I went to the Communist Party
and they really knocked the shit out of me
even my pup has more sense
than to go to the Communist Party

Chris Faiers



published in my 1978 chapbook Dominion Day in Jail, Unfinished Monument Press, Toronto
also in Foot Through the Ceiling, 1986, Aya/Mercury Press, Toronto (this book received the
inaugural Milton Acorn People's Poetry Medal in 1987)

I was listening to a CBC Radio program about francophone music last night, and the host, Jim Corcoran, raved about a folksinger whose song, Banned from the Christian Coffeeshop, reminded me an awful lot of this old poem of mine. The folkie's song was about being thrown out of The Christian Coffeeshop - same structure and rhythm, same theme, same humour, different times. Damn, wish I'd learned to play guitar & sing!