Love is calling for liberation.
Love is hoarse from calling,
her voice raw from the decades
she has spent chanting at protests
and speaking from pulpits
and singing the songs of freedom.
Love is weeping into a white candle
she cups in her hands at a vigil
for one more Black life lost, ripped away, gunned down, forgotten.
She is holding the hands of a grieving mother
and praying aloud for peace.
This is where Love shows up, where Love has always shown up.
She is tugging at our hands and sleeves, begging us to lay down our egos
and take up our courage
and dedicate our lives to justice.
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Poem - When You Are Weary - Jess Reynolds
Waking up is enough. Putting on shoes
before you walk out on the wet leaves
that plaster the driveway is enough.
It is enough to love one person,
one dog, one tree in a neighbor’s yard,
one fifty-cent mug at the thrift store.
You turn on the radio in the car.
You let a minivan merge into your lane
during rush hour. After three weeks
of half-darkness, you change the light bulb
above your desk. It is enough to breathe,
to put your face in your cold hands
and tell your palms and the empty kitchen
that you don’t know what else to do.
You open the blinds just enough
to see if the mail carrier has come today.
You turn your head at the sound
of a musician on the street corner,
their guitar slightly out of tune.
You buy bananas at the supermarket
and eat all but one before they turn
to mush. It is enough to be here,
to drink cold water from the tap,
to fall asleep on the couch
with a cat in the crook of your knees.
It is enough to be alive.
before you walk out on the wet leaves
that plaster the driveway is enough.
It is enough to love one person,
one dog, one tree in a neighbor’s yard,
one fifty-cent mug at the thrift store.
You turn on the radio in the car.
You let a minivan merge into your lane
during rush hour. After three weeks
of half-darkness, you change the light bulb
above your desk. It is enough to breathe,
to put your face in your cold hands
and tell your palms and the empty kitchen
that you don’t know what else to do.
You open the blinds just enough
to see if the mail carrier has come today.
You turn your head at the sound
of a musician on the street corner,
their guitar slightly out of tune.
You buy bananas at the supermarket
and eat all but one before they turn
to mush. It is enough to be here,
to drink cold water from the tap,
to fall asleep on the couch
with a cat in the crook of your knees.
It is enough to be alive.
Sermon at First Unitarian by the Rev. Bob LaVallee
9/27/2020
Racism is not a failure of character.
[It's a failure of persistent practice.] Only consistent effort is rewarded.
When we see the divinity in everyone, we allow the divine to show up.
Our faith intentionally contraverts empires of oppression.
Anti-racism is aligning ourselves with the world as it should be and will be.
Poem - We Are Worthy - Elandria Williams
We are worthy
Not because of what we produce
But because of who we are
We are divine bodies of light and darkness
You are not worthy because of what you offer, not because of what is in your mind, not for the support you give others, not for what you give at all
We are worthy and are whole just because
In this great turning, in this great pandemic, in this radical readjustment and alignment
We are not disposable, we are needed, we are the very people that have withstood everything that has been thrown at us as a people and as Maya Angelou would say
Still I Rise
We arise from the pain
We rise from the grief
We arise from the limits people place on us and the limits we place on ourselves
We rise to be the children and the ancestors
We rise to be our true selves
Our true selves in relationship to our families and communities
Recognizing our liberating and whole selves
Honoring them and others as we strive for abundant communities, abundant lives, abundant relationships, and abundant values and cultural manifestations
We are worthiness personified
I, you, and we are worthy and deserve a life where we are not always fighting for our existence
Imagine what we could create if we were not always in the struggle
Imagine what we could envision if we could just be let to just go there
So tired of always having to resist, to fight, demanding, pushing...
To everyone that has the courage, the power, the ability to co-create what we want and need while rooting in what we can’t lose and who we are
You are the visionary
You are the hope
You are our ancestor’s dreams
No, you might not ever end up on some list somewhere
But you are on a list in someone’s heart and mind
And if it’s in how you move in the world so people can see by example
You are the embodiment of what we need
Thanks to all that are the embodiment
The embodiment not of productivity but the embodiment of radical love, care and sanctuary
It’s time
Embodiment time
Embodiment
Living one’s values out loud
Let me everyday live my values out loud
Let us everyday live our values out loud
Embodying our values
Not the productivity quotient
Beyond productivity
Past productivity
True embodiment
Life —
Not because of what we produce
But because of who we are
We are divine bodies of light and darkness
You are not worthy because of what you offer, not because of what is in your mind, not for the support you give others, not for what you give at all
We are worthy and are whole just because
In this great turning, in this great pandemic, in this radical readjustment and alignment
We are not disposable, we are needed, we are the very people that have withstood everything that has been thrown at us as a people and as Maya Angelou would say
Still I Rise
We arise from the pain
We rise from the grief
We arise from the limits people place on us and the limits we place on ourselves
We rise to be the children and the ancestors
We rise to be our true selves
Our true selves in relationship to our families and communities
Recognizing our liberating and whole selves
Honoring them and others as we strive for abundant communities, abundant lives, abundant relationships, and abundant values and cultural manifestations
We are worthiness personified
I, you, and we are worthy and deserve a life where we are not always fighting for our existence
Imagine what we could create if we were not always in the struggle
Imagine what we could envision if we could just be let to just go there
So tired of always having to resist, to fight, demanding, pushing...
To everyone that has the courage, the power, the ability to co-create what we want and need while rooting in what we can’t lose and who we are
You are the visionary
You are the hope
You are our ancestor’s dreams
No, you might not ever end up on some list somewhere
But you are on a list in someone’s heart and mind
And if it’s in how you move in the world so people can see by example
You are the embodiment of what we need
Thanks to all that are the embodiment
The embodiment not of productivity but the embodiment of radical love, care and sanctuary
It’s time
Embodiment time
Embodiment
Living one’s values out loud
Let me everyday live my values out loud
Let us everyday live our values out loud
Embodying our values
Not the productivity quotient
Beyond productivity
Past productivity
True embodiment
Life —
On the eve of Yom Kippur
How have I failed to live up to my values?
I see the ways I have failed.
I have compassion for what I still have to learn.
I am on the path.
I honor my journey, my awareness of where I am, where I am going, and my dedication to taking the next step.
I see the holy in myself.
I vow to begin again in love.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
This article from the Atlantic by Mychal Denzel Smith!!!
Police Reform Is Not Enough: The moral failure of incremental change
"Incremental change keeps the grinding forces of oppression - of death - in place. Actively advocating for this position is a moral failure."
This seems to be a definitive answer to the question posed by my Senior English teacher, Ms. Firstenberg, who had us read Rousseau and Hobbes (both thinking about the social contract and whether people are inherently good or inherently flawed) and then write about which one was right - the one advocating for revolution (Rousseau) or the one advocating for incremental change (Hobbes).
Other quotable from this article:
"Progress is wrestling concessions from the behemoth of systematized oppression."
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Poem - Little Lesson on How to Be - Kathryn Nuernberger
The woman at the Salvation Army who sorts and prices is in her eighties
and she underestimates the value of everything, for which I am grateful.
Lightly used snow suits, size 2T, are $6 and snow boots are $3.
There is a little girl, maybe seven, fiddling with a tea set. Her mother
inspects drapes for stains.
Sometimes the very old and lonely are looking for an opening.
She glances up from her pricing and says something about the tea set
and a baby doll long ago.
I am careful not to make eye contact, but the mother with drapes has
such softness in her shoulders and her face and she knows how to say
the perfect kind thing—“What a wonderful mother you had.”
“Yes, she was.”
Why do children sometimes notice us and sometimes not?
From the bin of dolls: “What happened to your mother?”
“She died.”
The woman at the Salvation Army who sorts and prices is crying a little.
She seems surprised to be crying. “It’s been eighty years and I still miss her.”
When my daughter was born I couldn’t stop thinking about how we were going to die. If we were drowning, would it be better to hold her to me even as she fought away or should I let her float off to wonder why her mother didn’t help her? What if it’s fire and I have one bullet left? I made sure my husband knew if there were death squads and he had to choose, I’d never love him again if he didn’t choose her. If I’m lucky, her crying face is the last thing I’ll see.
The mother with drapes is squeezing her daughter’s shoulder, trying to
send a silent message, but children are children. “Why did she die?”
“She was going to have a baby and—And she died.”
“But she was a wonderful mother.”
I’m holding a stack of four wooden jigsaw puzzles of farm animals,
dinosaurs, jungle animals, and pets. Each for a quarter.
“It’s silly how much I still miss her.” She takes out a tissue and wipes
her eyes and then her nose.
When my grandmother threw her sister, Susie, a 90th birthday party, one hundred people came, including 5 of the 6 brothers and sisters. At dusk only a few of us were left, nursing beers with our feet kicked up on the bottom rungs of various walkers.
Susie said then to my grandmother, “Can you think of all the people
watching us in heaven now? And our mother must be in the front row.”
Grandma took her sister’s hand. “Our mother—Estelle.”
“Yes—her name was Estelle. I forgot that.”
They looked so happy then, saying her name back and forth to each
other. Estelle. Estelle.
and she underestimates the value of everything, for which I am grateful.
Lightly used snow suits, size 2T, are $6 and snow boots are $3.
There is a little girl, maybe seven, fiddling with a tea set. Her mother
inspects drapes for stains.
Sometimes the very old and lonely are looking for an opening.
She glances up from her pricing and says something about the tea set
and a baby doll long ago.
I am careful not to make eye contact, but the mother with drapes has
such softness in her shoulders and her face and she knows how to say
the perfect kind thing—“What a wonderful mother you had.”
“Yes, she was.”
Why do children sometimes notice us and sometimes not?
From the bin of dolls: “What happened to your mother?”
“She died.”
The woman at the Salvation Army who sorts and prices is crying a little.
She seems surprised to be crying. “It’s been eighty years and I still miss her.”
When my daughter was born I couldn’t stop thinking about how we were going to die. If we were drowning, would it be better to hold her to me even as she fought away or should I let her float off to wonder why her mother didn’t help her? What if it’s fire and I have one bullet left? I made sure my husband knew if there were death squads and he had to choose, I’d never love him again if he didn’t choose her. If I’m lucky, her crying face is the last thing I’ll see.
The mother with drapes is squeezing her daughter’s shoulder, trying to
send a silent message, but children are children. “Why did she die?”
“She was going to have a baby and—And she died.”
“But she was a wonderful mother.”
I’m holding a stack of four wooden jigsaw puzzles of farm animals,
dinosaurs, jungle animals, and pets. Each for a quarter.
“It’s silly how much I still miss her.” She takes out a tissue and wipes
her eyes and then her nose.
When my grandmother threw her sister, Susie, a 90th birthday party, one hundred people came, including 5 of the 6 brothers and sisters. At dusk only a few of us were left, nursing beers with our feet kicked up on the bottom rungs of various walkers.
Susie said then to my grandmother, “Can you think of all the people
watching us in heaven now? And our mother must be in the front row.”
Grandma took her sister’s hand. “Our mother—Estelle.”
“Yes—her name was Estelle. I forgot that.”
They looked so happy then, saying her name back and forth to each
other. Estelle. Estelle.
Poem - Self-compassion - James Crews
My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, and today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?—
or considered the mess of the next election,
or remembered in just a few more minutes,
I’d have to climb down into the cellar and empty
the bucket I left beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, and today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?—
or considered the mess of the next election,
or remembered in just a few more minutes,
I’d have to climb down into the cellar and empty
the bucket I left beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.
Quote - prayer
Prayer doesn't change things;
prayer changes people,
and people change things.
prayer changes people,
and people change things.
- Adapted from quotes by Mother Theresa / Joyce Meyer
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Poem - Translations - Kathryn Nuernberger
I want to believe we can’t see anything
we don’t have a word for.
When I look out the window and say green, I mean sea green,
I mean moss green, I mean gray, I mean pale and also
electrically flecked with white and I mean green
in its damp way of glowing off a leaf.
Scheele’s green, the green of Renaissance painters,
is a sodium carbonate solution heated to ninety degrees
as arsenious oxide is stirred in. Sodium displaces copper,
resulting in a green precipitate that is sometimes used
as insecticide. When I say green I mean
a shiny green bug eating a yellow leaf.
Before synthetics, not every painter could afford a swathe
of blue. Shocking pink, aka neon, aka kinky pink,
wasn’t even on the market. I want to believe Andy Warhol
invented it in 1967 and ever since no one’s eyes
have been the same. There were sunsets before,
but without that hot shocking neon Marilyn, a desert sky
was just cataract smears. I want to believe this.
The pale green of lichen and half-finished leaves
filling my window is a palette very far from carnation
or bougainvillea, but to look out is to understand it is not,
is to understand what it is not. I stare out the window a lot.
Between the beginning and the end the leaves unfolded.
I looked out one morning and everything was unfamiliar
as if I was looking at the green you could only see
if you’d never known synthetic colors existed.
I’ve drawn into myself people say.
We understand, they say.
There are people who only have words for red
and black and white, and I wonder if they even see
the trees at the edge of the grass
or the green storms coming out of the west.
There are people who use the same word for green
and red and brown, and I wonder if red
seems so urgently bright pouring from the body
when there is no green for it to fall against.
In his treatise on color Wittgenstein asked,
“Can’t we imagine certain people
having a different geometry of colour than we do?”
I want to believe the eye doesn’t see green until it has a name,
because I don’t want anything to look the way it did before.
Van Gogh painted pink flowers, but the pink faded
and curators labeled the work “White Roses” by mistake.
The world in my window is a color the Greeks called chlorol.
When I learned the word I was newly pregnant
and the first pale lichens had just speckled the silver branches.
The pines and the lichens in the chill drizzle were glowing green
and a book in my lap said chlorol was one of the untranslatable
words. The vibrating glow pleased me then, as a finger
dipped in sugar pleased me then. I said the word aloud
for the baby to hear. Chlorol. I imagined the baby
could only see hot pink and crimson inside its tiny universe,
but if you can see what I’m seeing, the word for it
is chlorol. It’s one of the things you’ll like out here.
Nineteenth century critics mocked painters who cast shadows
in unexpected colors. After noticing green cypresses do drop red
shadows, Goethe chastised them. “The eye demands
completeness and seeks to eke out the colorific circle in itself.”
He tells of a trick of light that had him pacing a row of poppies
to see the flaming petals again and figure out why.
Over and over again Wittgenstein frets the problem of translucence.
Why is there no clear white?
He wants to see the world through white-tinted glasses,
but all he finds is mist.
At first I felt as if the baby had fallen away
like a blue shadow on the snow.
Then I felt like I killed the baby
in the way you can be thinking about something else
and drop a heavy platter by mistake.
Sometimes I feel like I was stupid
to have thought I was pregnant at all.
Color is an illusion, a response to the vibrating universe
of electrons. Light strikes a leaf and there’s an explosion
where it lands. When colors change, electromagnetic fields
are colliding. The wind is not the only thing moving the trees.
Once when I went into those woods I saw a single hot pink orchid
on the hillside and I had to keep reminding myself not to
tell the baby about the beautiful small things I was seeing.
So, hot pink has been here forever and I don’t even care
about that color or how Andy Warhol showed me an orchid.
I hate pink. It makes my eyes burn.
we don’t have a word for.
When I look out the window and say green, I mean sea green,
I mean moss green, I mean gray, I mean pale and also
electrically flecked with white and I mean green
in its damp way of glowing off a leaf.
Scheele’s green, the green of Renaissance painters,
is a sodium carbonate solution heated to ninety degrees
as arsenious oxide is stirred in. Sodium displaces copper,
resulting in a green precipitate that is sometimes used
as insecticide. When I say green I mean
a shiny green bug eating a yellow leaf.
Before synthetics, not every painter could afford a swathe
of blue. Shocking pink, aka neon, aka kinky pink,
wasn’t even on the market. I want to believe Andy Warhol
invented it in 1967 and ever since no one’s eyes
have been the same. There were sunsets before,
but without that hot shocking neon Marilyn, a desert sky
was just cataract smears. I want to believe this.
The pale green of lichen and half-finished leaves
filling my window is a palette very far from carnation
or bougainvillea, but to look out is to understand it is not,
is to understand what it is not. I stare out the window a lot.
Between the beginning and the end the leaves unfolded.
I looked out one morning and everything was unfamiliar
as if I was looking at the green you could only see
if you’d never known synthetic colors existed.
I’ve drawn into myself people say.
We understand, they say.
There are people who only have words for red
and black and white, and I wonder if they even see
the trees at the edge of the grass
or the green storms coming out of the west.
There are people who use the same word for green
and red and brown, and I wonder if red
seems so urgently bright pouring from the body
when there is no green for it to fall against.
In his treatise on color Wittgenstein asked,
“Can’t we imagine certain people
having a different geometry of colour than we do?”
I want to believe the eye doesn’t see green until it has a name,
because I don’t want anything to look the way it did before.
Van Gogh painted pink flowers, but the pink faded
and curators labeled the work “White Roses” by mistake.
The world in my window is a color the Greeks called chlorol.
When I learned the word I was newly pregnant
and the first pale lichens had just speckled the silver branches.
The pines and the lichens in the chill drizzle were glowing green
and a book in my lap said chlorol was one of the untranslatable
words. The vibrating glow pleased me then, as a finger
dipped in sugar pleased me then. I said the word aloud
for the baby to hear. Chlorol. I imagined the baby
could only see hot pink and crimson inside its tiny universe,
but if you can see what I’m seeing, the word for it
is chlorol. It’s one of the things you’ll like out here.
Nineteenth century critics mocked painters who cast shadows
in unexpected colors. After noticing green cypresses do drop red
shadows, Goethe chastised them. “The eye demands
completeness and seeks to eke out the colorific circle in itself.”
He tells of a trick of light that had him pacing a row of poppies
to see the flaming petals again and figure out why.
Over and over again Wittgenstein frets the problem of translucence.
Why is there no clear white?
He wants to see the world through white-tinted glasses,
but all he finds is mist.
At first I felt as if the baby had fallen away
like a blue shadow on the snow.
Then I felt like I killed the baby
in the way you can be thinking about something else
and drop a heavy platter by mistake.
Sometimes I feel like I was stupid
to have thought I was pregnant at all.
Color is an illusion, a response to the vibrating universe
of electrons. Light strikes a leaf and there’s an explosion
where it lands. When colors change, electromagnetic fields
are colliding. The wind is not the only thing moving the trees.
Once when I went into those woods I saw a single hot pink orchid
on the hillside and I had to keep reminding myself not to
tell the baby about the beautiful small things I was seeing.
So, hot pink has been here forever and I don’t even care
about that color or how Andy Warhol showed me an orchid.
I hate pink. It makes my eyes burn.
Poem - Harold & the Purple Crayon - D. Gilson
Berkeley psychologists told Harold
his anger was justified. What parents
let their child go for a midnight walk
under no moon? I couldn’t have
been more than four, Harold told
the doctor in her crisp beige office.
Doctor, could it ever be OK
for a four-year-old to eat nine
different types of pie? Harold asked her.
Call me Lisa, the doctor replied.
Everyone knew Harold could draw.
By sophomore year, he was critiquing
grad students. By twenty, Harold knew
exactly when to quote Sontag. Standing
in front of a professor’s latest pastel
of Mojave succulents: This just makes me think
how in place of a hermeneutics, we need
an erotics of art. Harold’s professors
would hum & nod their dragon heads
(though none of them understood, exactly,
what Harold said). By senior year, Harold
became distant, his work increasingly angry:
apple trees, their fruit rotting in monochrome
purple, under the notable lack of a moon.
his anger was justified. What parents
let their child go for a midnight walk
under no moon? I couldn’t have
been more than four, Harold told
the doctor in her crisp beige office.
Doctor, could it ever be OK
for a four-year-old to eat nine
different types of pie? Harold asked her.
Call me Lisa, the doctor replied.
Everyone knew Harold could draw.
By sophomore year, he was critiquing
grad students. By twenty, Harold knew
exactly when to quote Sontag. Standing
in front of a professor’s latest pastel
of Mojave succulents: This just makes me think
how in place of a hermeneutics, we need
an erotics of art. Harold’s professors
would hum & nod their dragon heads
(though none of them understood, exactly,
what Harold said). By senior year, Harold
became distant, his work increasingly angry:
apple trees, their fruit rotting in monochrome
purple, under the notable lack of a moon.
Poem - Where the Wild Things Go - D. Gilson
The night Max wore his wolf suit
made him infamous, bred the child star
never sent to bed. Middle school,
Max started drinking. Not in my house,
his mother begged, No, no, no, wild thing.
Max reminded her who bought
this condo, who paid for her meds.
Freshman year, Max raved. Roared
his terrible roar, rolled, and almost
wound up in a warehouse dead.
Where, oh where, do the wild things
go? To rehab in high school.
To college on residual book sales.
Max kept his head down. Laughed
at drunken frat boys. Bro, let the wild
rumpus start. Max said, No thanks,
and volunteered for the Peace Corps
instead. Two years in Kenya, one
in Belarus, the president thought
Max might be of some use. Max
moved to Washington, appointed
at the State Department a cultural
attaché. One important day Max wore
his wolf-gray suit, then drove home
well past rush hour in a freak snow storm.
Max drove on the deserted beltway,
thought it his throne. Yes, Max belted,
this is where the wild things roam.
made him infamous, bred the child star
never sent to bed. Middle school,
Max started drinking. Not in my house,
his mother begged, No, no, no, wild thing.
Max reminded her who bought
this condo, who paid for her meds.
Freshman year, Max raved. Roared
his terrible roar, rolled, and almost
wound up in a warehouse dead.
Where, oh where, do the wild things
go? To rehab in high school.
To college on residual book sales.
Max kept his head down. Laughed
at drunken frat boys. Bro, let the wild
rumpus start. Max said, No thanks,
and volunteered for the Peace Corps
instead. Two years in Kenya, one
in Belarus, the president thought
Max might be of some use. Max
moved to Washington, appointed
at the State Department a cultural
attaché. One important day Max wore
his wolf-gray suit, then drove home
well past rush hour in a freak snow storm.
Max drove on the deserted beltway,
thought it his throne. Yes, Max belted,
this is where the wild things roam.
Poem - Excerpt - Theories of the Soul - Karen An-Hwei Lee
If you’re a bird or soul
I am only one mile
from the sea. If you
are a soul in two bodies
life is more complex
and we must labor
twice the field of sorrow
after sleep, bath, and a glass
as Aquinas whispers, the things
we love tell us who we are.
I am only one mile
from the sea. If you
are a soul in two bodies
life is more complex
and we must labor
twice the field of sorrow
after sleep, bath, and a glass
as Aquinas whispers, the things
we love tell us who we are.
Poem - Prayer of Radiolucence - Karen An-hwei Lee
After I turned forty, I received my first 42 millirem dose of X-rays.
I heated the machine with my uncupped body, tabled my rib cage
to cool shoulders dear as a beloved relative who could no longer see
due to intraocular weather in her eyes. Women in an outer room
awaited bone scans. Backscatter is 5 microrems or .005 millirems.
A dental bitewing X-ray, around 0.5 millirem. Mammogram, 40 to 70.
Do not know about bone scans. Annual background radiation is 300,
higher if we live on a mesa or often fly. Ozone plus uranium decay,
daughters of radon gas.
How about our radiogenic thyroids, butterflies
shimmering with table-salt iodine? Peonies of bone marrow spun
rails of flesh in a waiting room of jacquard chairs,
of round mirrors and water lilies, paper hydrangeas, African violets.
If I broke the silence, then I drew the flame of your sun into my chest.
Unshielded, I entered an inner room to don a rose-colored cotton kimono.
For a minute, I thought of flying fish roe and forgot its Japanese name.
What is the risk of carcinogenic harm while estrogen acts on my cells?
Coralline of the radiology room inside my mouth, the clinical air
exuded an odor of magnolia powder although no one wore it, a scent
riper than radical scavengers of blackberries. I uttered a prayer
of radiolucence
then remembered the word, tobiko.
I heated the machine with my uncupped body, tabled my rib cage
to cool shoulders dear as a beloved relative who could no longer see
due to intraocular weather in her eyes. Women in an outer room
awaited bone scans. Backscatter is 5 microrems or .005 millirems.
A dental bitewing X-ray, around 0.5 millirem. Mammogram, 40 to 70.
Do not know about bone scans. Annual background radiation is 300,
higher if we live on a mesa or often fly. Ozone plus uranium decay,
daughters of radon gas.
How about our radiogenic thyroids, butterflies
shimmering with table-salt iodine? Peonies of bone marrow spun
rails of flesh in a waiting room of jacquard chairs,
of round mirrors and water lilies, paper hydrangeas, African violets.
If I broke the silence, then I drew the flame of your sun into my chest.
Unshielded, I entered an inner room to don a rose-colored cotton kimono.
For a minute, I thought of flying fish roe and forgot its Japanese name.
What is the risk of carcinogenic harm while estrogen acts on my cells?
Coralline of the radiology room inside my mouth, the clinical air
exuded an odor of magnolia powder although no one wore it, a scent
riper than radical scavengers of blackberries. I uttered a prayer
of radiolucence
then remembered the word, tobiko.
Poem - I wish I loved lawnmowers - Mark Waldren
I really do wish I did. Because if I loved
lawnmowers I could go
to the lawnmower museum I just heard
about on the radio in a piece
about small museums.
It’s in Southport apparently —
a seaside town “fringed to the north by
the Ribble Estuary,” according to Wikipedia.
It would be quite a trip to go up there,
and I’d almost certainly
have to stay the night. I think I might stay
in the Prince of Wales Hotel, which looks
conveniently situated for the station
and the museum too. I can hardly bear
to think how much I’d be looking forward
to making that trip if I loved lawnmowers.
On the radio they said they have all sorts
of models from Victorian ones all the way
through to a state-of-the-art robot one
that’s powered by solar energy.
If I was planning the visit I’d probably
have a bit of a virtual walk-round
on Street View, and in fact I’ve just done
exactly that in an effort to capture
the feeling I’d have if I was actually
anticipating a trip to the lawnmower museum.
Exploring the area I discovered
that Southport looks very much like
Weston-super-Mare, where, as it happens,
I stayed in a halfway house many
years ago after doing a stint in rehab.
Now crack cocaine — that I loved.
lawnmowers I could go
to the lawnmower museum I just heard
about on the radio in a piece
about small museums.
It’s in Southport apparently —
a seaside town “fringed to the north by
the Ribble Estuary,” according to Wikipedia.
It would be quite a trip to go up there,
and I’d almost certainly
have to stay the night. I think I might stay
in the Prince of Wales Hotel, which looks
conveniently situated for the station
and the museum too. I can hardly bear
to think how much I’d be looking forward
to making that trip if I loved lawnmowers.
On the radio they said they have all sorts
of models from Victorian ones all the way
through to a state-of-the-art robot one
that’s powered by solar energy.
If I was planning the visit I’d probably
have a bit of a virtual walk-round
on Street View, and in fact I’ve just done
exactly that in an effort to capture
the feeling I’d have if I was actually
anticipating a trip to the lawnmower museum.
Exploring the area I discovered
that Southport looks very much like
Weston-super-Mare, where, as it happens,
I stayed in a halfway house many
years ago after doing a stint in rehab.
Now crack cocaine — that I loved.
Notes:
This poem originally appeared in The Poetry Review. You can read the other poems in this exchange in the May 2017 issue.
Poem - Socratic - Jacqueline Jones LaMon
The students know the agenda. When I step
inside our classroom, the PowerPoint is loaded,
the student presenting her report stands poised
to begin. And so she does. This day is her
second try, the first a wash due to our failed
technology. I ask, Do you think you will earn
another chance each time error is out of your hands?
This day, a new day, she stands confident,
prepared for questions from her peers, the one
question she’s noted that I ask of them all —
What is it that this artist has allowed you
to achieve? This day, I forget the other
questions I always wait to ask. This day, they ask
no others, just stare outside at the lot
of parked cars, play with the ends of their hair.
They want to hear voices that give them reason
to listen. They want the blare of car horn,
tires screeching without a final thud. They
want a lecture, a formula that does it all,
a recitation of the method that always gets
things done. And one woman says it, that she
is sad, and all of them nod, and another says
that she is angry, too. And how could they
not indict. And why won’t justice ever be
served. And why won’t anyone do anything
to change the America in which we live. And
I look at my classroom — the brown, the black,
and the white of my room — and I ask who
it is that must make the change we need.
And they talk about the Government. They
talk about the System. They talk about our
Economics. And our Judges. And our Juries.
They. And they tell me of their lives, their fears,
their boyfriends and their fathers, our illness
and our poverty, their rights and their desires,
how none of us are ever safe. And the room
becomes their last surrender while they wait
for me to teach. I say, This is the part where
you wait for me to synthesize your words
then tell you what to do. And every face
grows hopeful, just as we all did the night
before, before we knew what we’ve always
known, that knowing the truth doesn’t save
us. And I take a sip of water and tell them
every true thing that I know — that they are
the power who will save what needs saving,
then answer their next questions with more
and more questions, asking until time is up.
Source: Poetry (June 2017)
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Poem - Yes, We Can Talk - Mark Nepo
Having loved enough and lost enough,
I am no longer searching,
just opening.
No longer trying to make sense of pain,
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.
These are the irritations that rub into a pearl
So we can talk awhile
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea
And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions down,
and water every living seed.
And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone, but seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it is a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather
into the surf that human shells
call god.
I am no longer searching,
just opening.
No longer trying to make sense of pain,
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.
These are the irritations that rub into a pearl
So we can talk awhile
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea
And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions down,
and water every living seed.
And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone, but seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it is a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather
into the surf that human shells
call god.
Sunday, September 06, 2020
Quote - John Gardner
"Life pulls things out of you... You have within you more ... strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given."
-- John Gardner, "Personal Renewal"
Delivered to McKinsey & Company, Phoenix, AZ
November 10, 1990
domestic poem - Eileen Moeller
nightfall I sink
into dishwash meditation
steaming china prayer wheels
crystalline bells of the lost horizon
crockery mandalas
chanting din and lull of running water
breathing slows
moist heat muscles soften
zen poems drip from silverware
my air humming out
in a cleansing melody
washing the frantic stew of a whole day
down the drain
along with the suds
those transient rainbow things
with the thin skin of
a passing instant.
Poem - Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note - Amiri Baraka
for Kellie Jones, born 16 May 1959
Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...
Things have come to that.
And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.
Nobody sings anymore.
And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into
Her own clasped hands.
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