And so traverses, gun in hand, the creek.
We on the other side waiting dreamily
as for a wave. The head of the tree
is heavy. The pears are not ripe.
I do not dare look up, seeing as
the day has splurged against my face
and you are on the other side
where the grid breaks into tiny oracular
tiles, wafer thin, distorted, pale.
The huge sound is mechanical, not
expressionistic: things
into other things, exploding.
The serial furthers.
Were you wearing a sombrero or
just a hood to keep hot chords
from your skin? Serial, as in many
tunes, many kills, weeping
additions and accumulating, dry
remainders; the cost of endurance.
Browsing category: Political
Quiz
Invaders invariably call themselves:
a) berserkers
b) marauders
c) frankincense
d) liberators
Our enemies hate us because:
a) we’re sadists
b) we’re hypocrites
c) we shafted them
d) we value freedom
Our friends hate us because:
a) we’re bullies
b) we hate them
c) we’re hypocrites
d) we value freedom
Pushed to the ground and kicked by a gang of soldiers, about to be shot, you can save your life by brandishing:
a) an uzi
b) a crucifix
c) the Constitution
d) a poem
A poem can:
a) start a war
b) stanch a wound
c) titillate the masses
d) shame a nation
Poets are:
a) clowns
b) parasites
c) legislators
d) terrorists
A nation’s standing in the world is determined by:
a) its buying power
b) its military might
c) its cultural heritage
d) God
A country is rich because of:
a) its enlightened population
b) its political system
c) its big stick
d) its geography
A country is poor because of:
a) its ignorant population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography
A man’s dignity is determined by:
a) his appearance (skin color, height, etc)
b) his willingness to use violence
c) his command of English
d) his blue passport
Those willing to die for their beliefs are:
a) idealists
b) terrorists
c) suckers
d) insane
Those willing to die for nothing are:
a) principled
b) patriotic
c) insane
d) cowards
Terrorists:
a) abuse language
b) hit and run
c) shock and awe
d) rely on ingenuity
Smart weapons:
a) render hopeless and dormant kinetic objects
b) kill softly
c) save lives
d) slaughter by science
Pain is:
a) payback for evil-doers
b) a common misfortune
c) compelling drama
d) suck it up!
Humiliation is:
a) the ultimate thrill for bored perverts
b) inevitable in an unequal relationship
c) a fear factor
d) sexy and cathartic
The media’s job is:
a) to seduce
b) to spread
c) to sell
d) to drug
The Internet:
a) allows us to be pure minds
b) connects us to distant bodies
c) disconnects us from the nearest minds and bodies
d) improves illiteracy
Pornography is:
a) a lie that exposes the truth
b) a needed breather from civilization
c) class warfare
d) nostalgia for the garden of Eden
Correct answers: c,d,d,b,b,a,b,a,a,c,b,b,b,c,b,d,b,d,c.
—If you scored 14-19, you’re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year.
—If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day.
—if you scored 7 or less, you’re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.
What Kind of Times are These
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
Radical Hope is our Best Weapon – pdf
“From the bottom will the genius come that makes our ability to live with each other possible. I believe that with all my heart.” These are the words of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz. His hope is fiercely reality-based, a product of centuries lodged in his body of African-Caribbean suffering, survival, and genius.
Krista Tippett, host: In the aftermath of America’s cathartic 2016 election, The New Yorker collected a series of 16 reflections by varied authors. The one that most riveted me was by the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Dominican-American author, Junot Díaz. His essay was titled “Radical Hope Is Our Best Weapon.” Díaz’s hope is fiercely reality-based, a product of centuries lodged in his body of African-Caribbean suffering, survival, and genius. I can truly say that no conversation I’ve had in all my years has felt more searing, important, and eloquent than this one.
This is an Exhumation
/ which begins / with the Roman history professor / saying he got stopped / by the cops / the night before / and of course / your default / in this situation / is to shrink / because of course / he is white / like most of the bodies / in this class / and his voice / does not sound / like anyone you know / who has been stopped / by the law / which is to say / his voice balloons / floats / is not snatched / so quickly / out his lungs / that blood / still drips from it / which is to say / he brags / he’s never been stopped / by police before / “i’m the least / threatening person / possible” / he says / and of course / so were you / the first time / a cops hands / squeezed every part / of your body / as if / you could hide a gun / in your bones / every cell / is a weapon / every atom / is resisting arrest / and you wish it would end / but the class / keeps laughing about it / as if trayvon’s killer / isn’t about / to go on trial / and you look / to the only other black person / in this class / but of course / she’s silent too / after all / we pay respects / to our dead / we mind the dirt / from these upturned graves / caking the walls / of this classroom / say a prayer for the bodies / still / fresh / laid out before us / and clean up the mess / after all / it’s time / for today’s discussion / to begin
Chorus
Listen: there are those of us from somewhere else,
the names of birthplaces, of hometowns,
under our skin, tattoos always felt, never seen.
We live here now, though we always meant to leave.
And there are those of us who were born here,
passing the landmarks of our lives so often
we don’t think about them. We never meant to stay.
This place was marked as just for now, as stepping stone,
as temporary on our well-drawn maps.
But for one reason or another, years pass
and we find ourselves hot-stepping with jobs and kids
and this and that and a million little possessions.
Now, the kids say they want to move away. They point
their faces the same directions our faces used to point.
We’ll let them go, of course, knowing more of them
than they think will come back, and that various wayfarers
too will stop for lunch and find themselves
staying for years’ worth of dinners. They will all
find themselves here with the earth spreading
out around them, whispering a welcome
they will be more than a little surprised to hear.
Nine-Eleven
You passed me on the street
I rode the subway with you
You lived down the hall from me
I admired your dog in the park one morning
We waited in line for a concert
I ate with you in the cafes
You stood next to me at the bar
We huddled under an awning during a downpour
We dashed across the street to beat the light
I bumped into you coming round the corner
You stepped on my foot
I held the door for you
You helped me up when I slipped on the ice
I grabbed the last Sunday Times
You stole my cab
We waited forever at the bus stop
We sweated in steamy August
We hunched our shoulders against the sleet
We laughed at the movies
We groaned after the election
We sang in church
Tonight I lit a candle for you
All of you
… Black Opinion on White Privilege … pdf
We can begin to understand each other by asking the right questions — and listening to the stories we receive in turn. Lori Lakin Hutchinson sheds frank and essential light on the reality of racism in America.
https://cflcc.womenwriting.org/article/black-opinion-on-white-privilege-pdf/
Let’s End Ageism
It's not the passage of time that makes it so hard to get older. It's ageism, a prejudice that pits us against our future selves -- and each other. Ashton Applewhite urges us to dismantle the dread and mobilize against the last socially acceptable prejudice. "Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured," she says. "It is a natural, powerful, lifelong process that unites us all."
Before European Christians Forced Gender Roles … – pdf
"It wasn’t until Europeans took over North America that natives adopted the ideas of gender roles. For Native Americans, there was no set of rules that men and women had to abide by in order to be considered a “normal” member of their tribe.
In fact, people who had both female and male characteristics were viewed as gifted by nature, and therefore, able to see both sides of everything. According to Indian Country Today, all native communities acknowledged the following gender roles: “Female, male, Two Spirit female, Two Spirit male and Transgendered.”
Interview with Mary Catherine Bateson – pdf
Krista Tippett's interview with world renown linguist and anthropologist covers a wide range of topics, including:
on being a participant observer ...
composing a life as building blocks of interdependence ...
'Life as an improvisatory art...'
on adulthood, active wisdom ...
the challenge of marriage, which 'requires a constant rhythm of adaptation between two people who are changing...'
evolutionary clusters ...
on religion, community, the meaning of being human ...
Candlelight
Crossing the porch in the hazy dusk
to worship the moon rising
like a yellow filling-station sign
on the black horizon,
you feel the faint grit
of ants beneath your shoes,
but keep on walking
because in this world
you have to decide what
you’re willing to kill.
Saving your marriage might mean
dinner for two
by candlelight on steak
raised on pasture
chopped out of rain forest
whose absence might mean
an atmospheric thinness
fifty years from now
above the vulnerable head
of your bald grandson on vacation
as the cells of his scalp
sautéed by solar radiation
break down like suspects
under questioning.
Still you slice
the sirloin into pieces
and feed each other
on silver forks
under the approving gaze
of a waiter
whose purchased attention
and French name
are a kind of candlelight themselves,
while in the background
the fingertips of the pianist
float over the tusks
of the slaughtered elephant
without a care,
as if the elephant
had granted its permission.
Pomegranate Means Grenade
“ The heart trembles like a herd of horses.”
--Jontae McCrory, age 11
Hold a pomegranate in your palm,
imagine ways to split it, think of the breaking
skin as shrapnel. Remember granada
means pomegranate and granada
means grenade because grenade
takes its name from the fruit;
identify war by what it takes away
from fecund orchards. Jontae,
there will always be one like you:
a child who gets the picked over box
with mostly black crayons. One who wonders
what beautiful has to do with beauty, as he darkens
a sun in the corner of every page,
constructs a house from ashen lines,
sketches stick figures lying face down-
I know how often red is the only color
left to reach for. I fear for you.
You are writing a stampede
into my chest, the same anxiety that shudders
me when I push past marines in high school
hallways, moments after video footage
of young men dropping from helicopters
in night vision goggles. I want you to see in the dark
without covering your face and carry verse
as countermeasure to recruitment videos
and remember the cranes buried inside the poems
painted on banners that hung in Tiananmen Square-
remember because Huang Xiang was exiled
for these. Remember because the poet Huang Xiang
was exiled for this: the calligraphy of revolt.
Always know that you will stand nameless
in front of a tank, always know you will not stand
alone, but there will always be those
who would rather see you pull a pin
from a grenade than pull a pen
from your backpack. Jontae,
they are afraid.
The Gatekeeper’s Children
This is the house of the very rich.
You can tell because it’s taken all
The colors and left only the spaces
Between colors where the absence
Of rage and hunger survives. If you could
Get close you could touch the embers
Of red, the tiny beaks of yellow,
That jab back, the sacred blue that mimics
The color of heaven. Behind the house
The children digging in the flower beds
Have been out there since dawn waiting
To be called in for hot chocolate or tea
Or the remnants of meals. No one can see
Them, even though children are meant
To be seen, and these are good kids
Who go on working in silence.
They’re called the gatekeeper’s children,
Though there is no gate nor—of course—
Any gatekeeper, but if there were
These would be his, the seven of them,
Heads bowed, knifing the earth. Is that rain,
Snow, or what smearing their vision?
Remember, in the beginning they agreed
To accept a sky that answered nothing,
They agreed to lower their eyes, to accept
The gifts the hard ground hoarded.
Even though they were only children
They agreed to draw no more breath
Than fire requires and yet never to burn.
Secondary Boycott Ode
I had never seen anything like it. I was walking
out of the office of the braces doctor,
in the same building as the acne doctor,
I was on my way to the lunch counter
that had sandwiches on soft bread
with the crusts cut off—& people were blocking
the doors, following each other around
in a circle, like our junior high marching band,
& they were in the way, between me
& my sandwich. I went up to a lady who was watching,
& asked her what was happening,
& she told me about the segregated
lunch counters in the South—this was
a secondary boycott, of Woolworth’s. & I asked,
how do they choose who walks, & she said,
Anyone can. I had never seen anyone
saying no with their body, with their feet.
When I stepped toward the circle, a man walked a little
faster, & a woman walked a little slower,
& there was a space for me, to sing
without making a sound, at last to be
unfaithful to my family,
stepping out on silence.
We’ve come a long way toward getting nowhere
My obsession with Jews is an obsession with one Jew. I look at her walking
and wonder what anyone could have
against Jews, at her sleeping
or hunting for her keys in the morning,
which she does often, lose her keys
when she has to go to work, suggesting
she doesn’t want to, and maybe this
is the problem with Jews:
they don’t want to leave. Or they eat
lots of chicken. Or worry the black
of their skirts doesn’t match the black
of their tops. Or like children more
than babies. Or fret over their mothers.
My Jewish problem is figuring out
why America in 2016 has a dab
of 1930s German Fascism to it—
people at political rallies
yelling crap about the Jews.
If I thought it would do any good,
I’d go to Topeka or wherever
and bring Eve with her troubled wardrobe
and her love of chicken and fascination
with children between two and thirteen,
when they can talk but before
they’ve begun planning the murder
of their parents, bring her face-to-face
with the screamers and ask, So these
are the freckles you hate? I would—we have
a lot of Amex points and I’ve never been
to Topeka or wherever, and I’m sure wherever
is very nice. And whenever we travel
to wherever, whatever people say
and however they say it, Eve’s freckles
will be the same, kind of cute
and kind of Jewish,
just like all her other parts
that do and do not have freckles,
in an inventory I alone
get to take, though trust me—
after repeated inspection, I can attest
that underneath it all, she, like many
of the people you know or are,
is ticklish, wrinkly, sexy, scarred—
since Jews really are relentless
when it comes to being human.
What we Did in the Resistance – Part I
In the beginning, we wept.
Well, some of us wept.
Some of us walked around stunned
as if pieces of sky
had fallen out of the sky and revealed themselves
to be chunks of blue plaster.
We examined the chunks.
We shook plaster dust out of our hair—there was so much dust!
We craned our necks and stared up.
Now we saw the scaffolding,
the what-do-you-call-it—sheetrock?
The drywall, the lath. We saw the insulation,
full of asbestos, we saw how the walls were stuffed
with it, like money. Everything
was revealed, yet nothing was clear.
If we were in a cunningly devised structure
not of our making, was it a theater
or a prison, a shopping mall or a mausoleum?
In the beginning, as I have said, we wept.
And raged and questioned. We embraced on the street
when we saw each other. We sat together
in cafes drinking coffee, digesting our grief.
The rest of the time we sat in front of glowing screens.
We gathered at night and made signs:
Not My President and Pussy Grabs Back;
we stapled them to sticks
and marched in exultation all over the world.
We had never seen before how many of us there are.
We clicked and liked and signed and donated and called
our Congresspeople, and sent postcards and checks.
We spoke of girding ourselves for the long fight.
We spoke of a marathon, we spoke of walking
in the footsteps of the elders, we spoke
of coal miners in Pennsylvania and Kentucky
who had voted for Trump.
And still the cat box needed to be cleaned, the oil in the car changed,
classes taught, bills paid, dishes washed.
And still the rains came down, especially, biblically—
we joked about End Times—and the witching trees
with their bare black branches
sprouted the tiniest of new buds,
almost invisible at first, a red tip at the nodes, a subtle fire,
and then overnight, purple blossoms;
the trees who knew nothing of elections,
the trees who outweighed us and would outlast us
and despite everything the earth continued to turn
from light to darkness and into light again, over and over it rolled,
as it had been rolling through generations of empire and uprising,
extinction and evolution, and once again
to our surprise we noticed that it was spring.
When I Heard About the Gunman
who opened fire in a movie theatre,
armed and armored, neck, groin and head;
gas-masked, with automatic rifle
killing and wounding as many as he could,
I was endeavoring to wedge my car
into the space left between hulking SUVs
at the crowded grocery store
and the radio was on; it always is.
Inside, pushing a cart—bread, raspberries, half and half—
I thought of him, but more,
I thought of us, as we maneuvered
politely around each other, avoiding eye contact,
murmuring excuse me, sorry, thanks.
The crowded aisles, the lady with thin
stringy hair who paused too long in front of the eggs.
I could see her inner debate: free-range or vegetarian feed?
Organic? Brown or white?
while disgruntled rush-hour shoppers
log-jammed around her
and I stood on one foot then the other, practicing deep breaths.
Notice how none of us, at that moment at least,
were killing each other, except perhaps in our heads,
where who knows what kinds of bombs were going off.
But the surface seemed normal, if a bit frayed.
Am I saying normal is the same as civil
or its opposite?
We’re part beast, part angel,
most of us, and now I’m remembering a woman I knew
who went crazy, that is to say her mind
crazed like a pane of glass after an earthquake—
the form still clinging to its familiar frame
but spider-webbed with cracks.
She went there, as if crazy were a place you’d go
like Winnemucca or Hackensack.
I could see her packing her bags for it,
her eyes and stories getting wilder,
all the while pretending she had a choice
in the matter, she might be back next week.
But of course she wasn’t.
Corn’s looking good today in its pale green sheath,
its tassels intact despite the drought,
despite what the news says about everything dying.
I nod at the man who’s jockeying
to get ahead of me in the check-out line,
then remember I forgot paper towels and coffee,
so park my cart to run and get them.
When I return it’s still there, filled
with all the stuff I plan to eat and use,
and this is how we live our daily news.
One Among a Thousand Possible Versions
The backyard lilacs were my mother’s favorite.
You could swoon from their scent in the spring.
You could lie on your back all afternoon
looking up through their purple calligraphy
to emerge hours later with a damp shirt back,
light-headed and dizzy.
I remember her thin, tensile arm,
the flashing cuts of her engagement ring
when she gripped our skinny wrists.
My fragile, ferocious mother
denied ever raising a hand against us,
even when my father caught her
washing my sister’s mouth out with soap.
Her denials were epic and dazzling,
cathedral-like in their complexity, and unending.
She taped a poster to our front door:
“War Is Not Good for Children and Other Living Things”
and wore her MIA bracelet for decades,
long after the U.S. had left Vietnam.
Her missing soldier was never found.
“Her missing soldier was never found.”
As good an epitaph as any.
The war in our home went on and on.
She took me to Washington with her,
and we marched, in protest, at Nixon’s inaugural.
Black shrouds covered our faces,
and around our necks we hung signs which read
“Hanoi” and “Saigon.”
A poem like this should have flowers in it,
or at least the skreel of bagpipes.
Because she wore so many veils I go naked
and tell and tell, too much of everything.
She would have fought and died for us
if only we’d lived under siege.
We lived under siege.
Still, she made sure I went to France,
and took me to plays where she cried in the dark.
The closest I ever felt to her
was the one time, parked in the car,
when I blurted out, “I always felt
you weren’t really my mother,”
and she shocked me by saying, “I know. I’ve never felt
it either.” Afterwards, of course, she denied it.
But even a few words of truth create their own star.
And that’s what she is for me now,
a fugitive beacon, often obscured
by smog or cloud cover,
but blazing relentlessly, bright and far.
September 1, 1939
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.