A Poem About My Rights

Ain’t nothing that I’m gonna do
And you can’t ever make me
Blackmail, email,
I ain’t never talkin’ to thee

Why you gotta add this pressure
To an already heavy heart?
Stop it please; I’ve had enough
I’m gonna fall apart!

Ain’t as easy as Sunday mornin’
Not peaceful as the night
Don’t worry—get off your high horse
So?—The bruise is from a fight

Why you cryin’ huge-ass tears
All fallin’ off your face?
You don’t know the half of it
So let me find my pace!

Ain’t ready to cross the finish line
How dare you push me through?
No trophy won, no medal gained
I ain’t doin’ this for you!

Why I wanna keep inside?
Some things are just for here.
Go away; leave me alone
Don’t focus on my fear.

Ain’t you getting’ off my back?
Forget you ever seen this.
Cut my strings off of your heart
For me don’t give a piss!

Why you even bother
Makin’ me part of your life?
Leave it be; and please fuck off
You got your own damn strife!

Ain’t I gonna do somethin’?
And you can’t ever know
Witnessing—you call tonight
To me—another blow.

1-15-08

(Lately inspired by June Jordan’s 1989 poem, “Poem About my Rights")

In writing my critical essay on Stephen Crane’s poem, “A Man Said to the Universe,” I was inspired to compose the following:


An open letter to Love: April 21, 2008

Love,
Are you the meaning of life? If I asked the universe to help me find you, what would her answer be? You puzzle me . . . muzzle me . . . and yet I still return. Why? Because are you not the nature of existence?
When I think of you, I hear every word you’ve ever spoken in one incomprehensible sentence—the sentence of death? Why? I see you as the scar on my soul, your image seared to the core of my being . . . my existence. I fear you while seeking your name: Love! Love! I call. Do you answer? I exist! I am here! Do you feel obligated to me?
You’ve created in me a cove in which I cannot remain. So many restrictions! Inhibitions! Contradictions! Why?
Love, do you hate me? I must know before I am born; are you the meaning of life?
Skeptically,
a fetus

Haiku. They’re simple in form yet complex in meaning. It’s because of their seeming simplicity that they’re often disregarded as masterful wastes of time. But to the poet they convey everything that ever needs to be said; for the most intricate thoughts imaginable can be articulated perfectly, magically, beautifully through three lines of verse. What cannot be said in seventeen syllables is not a strong enough emotion in the first place. A haiku communicates beyond the language of literature. It may sound ludicrous, but haiku express what cannot be said in words. They’re short so we can glance at them and instantaneously feel overcome with the ardent ambiguities or potent passions implicit in their auras. Sometimes a glance is all we need to understand. “Sometimes irrationality is the only clear, healthy choice.” We’re finished before we’ve begun.

Where do I begin
With seventeen syllables?
And where do I end?

jesus-christy, crusty capitalism

christ in concrete
immobilized,
immortalized,
enshrined in the stone-chiseled heart of Industrialization.
Automations,
we pray AMEN to McDonalds and Wal-Mart
to our father who art in Starbucks.
we GENUFLECT at the gas pump
eat COMMUNION of capital punishment
entreat the Almighty Dollar to save us from the American Delusion.
dream on, dream on
of a day father don’t drop down offa his tree
climb from his cross to take a swipe at me
FATHERSONANDHOLYGHOST
christ at worship’s whipping post.

4/7/08

Twentieth century writer/poet Langston Hughes wrote “Drum” in 1931:

Drum

Bear in mind
That death is a drum
Beating forever
Till the last worms come
To answer its call,
Till the last stars fall,
Until the last atom
Is not atom at all,
Until time is lost
And there is no air
And space itself
Is nothing nowhere,
Death is a drum,
A signal drum,
Calling life
To come!
Come!
Come!


I’ve read of death as the “Great Equalizer”; I’ve also read of death as the ultimate dehumanization. Death beats through our veins not as a drum, but as Hughes twice points out, “Death is a drum” (ll. 2, 13) (italics added). If death is a drum, then what is life? Does the heart beat for death? Is death, as opposed to life, what keeps us alive? These questions presuppose definitions of both “life” and “death," when they need not separate analyses per se; give ‘em thin and thick readings. View 'em as intersecting, signifying entities . . .

palm2palm
my 2 hands meet
1 life
1 death
2 allies in alienation
joined 2 pray
4 what or 4 who?
2 what or 2 whom?
joined conversely in conversation.
life greeting death
like the pain in surrender
they meet 2nite
like peace in the struggle
in the 4m of a thought
a wish
a hope
2gether lifeanddeath
handinhand
4ever

12-15-07
4-1-08

A tribute—No—Felicitations! for Amy Lowell and Gertrude Stein

Fierce Females
(Free from Foremothers’ Fallopians)
Fight
for Freedom,
falling further forward
from Forced Fragility & Frilly Frostings
— a Foreshadowing of Femininity
— a Fierce Female Figure
Fabricated
Formed
for Future Feminists
— Future Fighters
and even Flimsy Flibbertigibbets (Fie!)
or Ferociously Fanged Feminazis feeding from Fantastical Fratricidal Fictions (Fie!)

Oh, for the Future Feminists!
for Future Feminists!

3.14.08

Shall I accept it -- a statement, not a question

We can try to become who/what we know we’re not. And we can use society as our excuse to fulfill that "Professional Instinct". . . or not. We can use our intellect in spite of its seeming sagacity to give the appearance of authenticity, the impression of compassion, or the form of friendliness; this would determine nothing, everything, and anything . . .


Everything buried beneath a sheet
Waiting to sleep on this street
Cheat
Everything in the soul
What role do we play?
To Live? To Decay?
If we had Anythings
Everythings, what would they be
Life? Death? Liberty?
Why not ask for it all?
Too much gall?
Or should we ask with no regret?
Fight for it; they get upset.
But do we must
Before we bust
Lust or
Turn to Dust.
Laugh aloud, be proud
Wonder what to do
Be You?
Be Me?
Be Them?
Be It?
Be Anythings
Everythings buried beneath a sheet

1-7-08

The Weight is not Mine: It's OURS

Cinnamon Brown Skin
Of a land I call home
Claimed
By savagery of Spanish conquests not long ago.
Then overtaken by my European ancestors
Trampled on by their contadini shoes
Air tainted with their meridionali accents.
Roman Catholic tongues denouncing Peyotist praises
While you, my tan Brothers and Sisters
Looked on bearing the cross
Making the way to your Native Calvary
To crucify your ways
And accept ours that deserved execution before Ellis’ birth.
I – indigent
On indigenous terrain
Rain, wash away my guilt,
My shame
My history
My whiteness

Oh, Women of America . . .

“Oh women of America . . . demand justice, simple justice, as the right to every race!” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (a mouthful of a name for a woman with a mouthful to say) wrote in her short essay titled, “Women’s Political Future” (1894). What is a woman’s political future? Look at Hillary Clinton.

The 1993 TIME Magazine cover to the right questions the “Ascent of Woman”— the woman being Hillary Clinton. Have we “ascended?” What have we “ascended” from? Toward what are we “ascending?” Over one hundred years ago Frances Ellen Watkins Harper analyzed the same questions. She writes that women should not make attempts “of discovering new worlds, but that of filling this world with fairer and higher aims than the greed of gold and the lust of power.” Here the issue (and the “cure”) isn’t a binary; rather, it’s dialectic—as it should be.

Advocating change is nothing new; both men and women have been at it for years (no pun intended). We see this clearly today in the midst of presidential primaries. But what if Hillary, the first, serious, female presidential candidate took advice from Harper? How would her campaign look? Clinton centers her campaign on the notion of ‘change.’ But if we change things too drastically where will that leave us? We must, as Harper’s piece indicates, take a dialectical approach to transforming society, for too many changes too quickly leads to chaos—the last thing we need more of in politics.

The ‘sociological equation’ for change (thesis + antithesis = synthesis) fits well here: Instead of trying to revamp society in one fell swoop, we have to look at history & our current circumstances (thesis), and identify the ‘wrongs’ in society & determine a plan(s) for improving them (antithesis) to create a ‘new,’ more ‘useful’ concept of ‘change’ (synthesis). Can Hillary Clinton do this? I have a feeling Harper would’ve said YES.