iii. Why Layer Icy Intent but to Remain Cool
Barack Obama is competent.
Maybe he is more than we know.
I think he told us so.
But only he can say what he meant.
Hearing him is consent
By measuring meaning less than his show.
Fresh as falling snow,
I find reminders of his constant intent.

Barack means unity.
That is his salvation and mine.
Dogs of division hound him
And I am held in a segregated city
To confine my crime
To singing verses into tuneful hymn.

To be competent and cooperative is the acknowledged path to success for an American from a minority group. It is an aspect of many temperatures resolved to cool. Barack Obama is the first such person to be top dog of the United States of America. Cool is the symbol, by popular scrutiny, that adores him. This top dog presides over gangs of dogs that have attacked each other and left each other their ruin of America. Other top dogs of America have presided over ruin or peril of the country. Notably Washington, Lincoln and F. D. Roosevelt salvaged the nation in their cool ways. But they did not set the nation is a cool direction. That is to say, they did not unify the nation, for all their coolness, to deal with the enduring dire of America, its gang of economic dogs.

Obama may be the last top dog of the cool before the country is ravaged by the rest of the world on account of weakness in the trends of its catastrophically deep categories and dangerous superficial divisions. (Elaborations in subsequent texts, e.g. "Healthcare versus Wealthcare.")

The American painter/ philosopher, Mark Rothko has hypothesized that cultures may be of long duration, but eras change and the role of artists is to elicit the sensuality of their era, leaving scientists to reveal the era's chapters of the story of nature and historians to manifest the era's living arrangements. Rothko's thesis necessarily leaves the artist in an existential situation. But the Obama epoch of the cool is mandated by hope that is necessarily projected on a future. Obama has demonstrated a word artistry sensualizing a cool hope for a unified America.

The artistic alignment is oracular to my need for Obama's success. Thus I venture from the cool unity expressed by Obama in his "Race Speech" in Philadelphia during the electoral campaign, through his temperate presentation of an "Afghan Strategy" at West Point in December 2009, to his crisp Nobel Peace oration and onto the legislation (or not) of "Healthcare Reform." Obama's imaginative context for his legislative agenda items arouses me to give them textual relief as works- in- progress by me in the form of this present text serialized as Sensualizations for an Epoch of cool Obama Unity.

Tom Gale had a 40-year career in civil rights advocacy. His role was statistical analyst. He holds degrees in mathematics from MIT. For balance, he read and wrote poetry. Since retiring in 1998 from New York City to Cragsmoor, he has experimented with the use of poetry in political commentary. He posts samples and notes on these experiments on a website: www.tomgale.info.