A Poem for Woody Guthrie on his Birthday

"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people."

— Woody Guthrie

The great Woody Guthrie was born on this day in 1912 in a small town somewhere in Oklahoma. Anyone familiar with his songs knows that he was a poetically raw songwriter, a troubadour for the troubled, a rough-around-the-edge songster who captured the voice of the disenfranchised.

He had the gritty voice of a weary traveller singing around a campfire. Songs of working-class defiance coalesced with the warmth of storytelling and authenticity. He once said, “Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.”

He sang for the migrants and the factory workers and the people struggling through the Great Depression. He sang for the wanderers and the vagabonds and the people toiling through the Dust Bowl. His most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land," became an anthem of American folk music.

Bob Dylan once said: You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.

In honor of Woody’s birthday, I’d like to share a poem written by the great outlaw poet, Kell Robertson. I hope you enjoy it.

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For Woody Guthrie

Out of the dust
coughing
toward the cool waters
of California
your people
my people
Charlie Arthur Floyd people
your voice
a dry spell on the plains
a rusty nail
a creaky windmill
songs with hard words
dry throats
working man's hands
right down on the ground
walking on grandma's grave
and a scorn for 
laws to make money from
music
that music
which came out of 
hard times of people

And the face of a starving child
turns into dollars
for slick-eyed boys 
stars only
when the rhinestones glitter
under the spotlights

But back there
Zapata swings his rifle around
you play your guitar
sing everybody's songs
and the eyes of man
retain the fire
to fix the fences
or burn the world down. 

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