To Stop the Bleeding of America (or, thoughts on the "feminization of poverty"

Those "fleecing of America" reports always amuse me. Every new report makes me wonder if this is truly news or simply business as usual for many companies. I would like to use this space though to address a couple of issues.

1st. Behind every statistic is a human being. For some people, having 'no money' means having to forego shopping at the mall or fast food or purchasing something. For others having no money is so literal it hurts. It is hunger that keeps you awake at night and absolute fear that keeps you running all day. It is constant prayer for some people: prayer that their car won't break down, the baby-sitter won't be sick, the day care will accept your child an hour earlier because that's when your shift starts or won't penalize you for being fifteen minutes late because your boss wouldn't let you go. For some people it is the prayer that this ache or that ache isn't fatal. That your teeth won't literally rot out of your head. That your children's clothes will hold up for a little longer. For some people that money you spent on a mocha latte would've meant food or medicine or the ability to pay down old medical bills or extend payments on the obscenely high power bills because their tiny apartment lacks livable insulation.

2nd. Every budget cut that cuts "social programs" as pathetically skeletal as they are, turns another human being into a statistic. That human being could be you. It is a simple fact that most people in America would not survive a "catastrophic illness or accident" such as cancer or traumatic brain injury. In fact, I have personally seen families drain their entire savings and max-out their insurance and still end up on what people who have never had to be on "public assistance" scorn as "Welfare." If you knew how many parents put their children to sleep at night hungry as they themselves go to work hungry, would it change your view of those who receive "food stamps" or "cash assitance" or even "WIC?" If you knew how many parents cannot afford insurance for their children, would you look at your own children or someone else's children any differently, wondering how that might feel? To not be able to afford decent shoes for you or your children. To not be able to see a doctor at $80-100 for a fifteen minute check-up. To not be able to afford "organic, low fat whole foods" from the local co-op. To not be able to pay your electric bill, or put gas into your car, or to own a car that you can choose not to drive for conscience sake. There really are leeches that drain Federal and State budgets but we look for them in all the wrong places and mistake them for all the wrong faces. We do not see the corporations who bilk countless dollars from schools and health clinics to build more prisons and shopping centers. We do not have a condescending phrase or simple stereotype for the corporation that receives "Welfare." Nor do we have follow up stories to those heartwrenching commercials about hunger in America, that show just how many of those on "welfare" are children who CANNOT BY LAW earn a wage, let alone a living wage. Nor do we see hear stories about how the local welfare office won't "go after" those "deadbeat parents" for court ordered child supports due to consistent and relentless budget cuts. We only read the occasional stories about a tiny group lobbying the State to insure everyone within its borders. We do not however, get to read how many of those lobbyists are disproportionately non-white and unthinkably poor. Or how this relates to those countless white-faced, well-fed lobbyists who continue feeding off the those they manage to push into greater economic lows.

Behind every statistic is a human face. Every time some politician claims he or she is answering to their constituents' pressure to cut social programs, I wish they had to stare at the face of every human being who their cuts will cause to suffer hunger, illness and even greater poverty and most likely, even greater discrimination. What tools will succeed in dismantling the myth of "equal opportunity for all" and translate it into reality?

Is there such a thing as a "feminist poem"

If so, would these poems of mine qualify? Or would they quantify? Or would they simply echo like walls, stone-mute witness...

-Mother-
"You are just a mother"
he said
"you can't understand
how it feels to be me"
beaten on the playground
to be tough
to be tough
"you can't know my embarrassment"
at the first hint of tears?
at losing?
at being called "a girl"
"a pussy!"
"queer!"

I touch his face
catch those tears
but my hands clench in powerlessness
and rage
No.
I don't need balls to comprehend
the threat of punishment
or the push for conformity
when every breath is competition
and every pause is fingered by the accusation and implication:
"What, are you scared?"

No.
I want to wrap my fingers around each neck
and rip from the minds and the tongues
the words than tell my son
Exactly how "To be a man"
I want them to know that I won't let them beat him into hatred
Or beat him down
No.
Because I am his mother
Because I understand how wrong this feels
Protest uttered in brokenness silenced and repulsed by the taste of brokenness
Tears and rage the pieces of glass
stained by the blood of those trying so hard
to beat the man into every boy
and annihilate the woman in him.

*(For my son and any son and daughters too)
*******************************************

-War Poetry-
She said something years ago
joked about the ache in her hip
the constant limp from it
"resulting from a landmine"
shellshocked, her eyes still registered
the imprint of her husband's boot
"Such things bought with a single diamond ring
and a signature and an oath or was it the oath first, then the signature?"

There is no justice
no justice of the peace present
no peace process here woman
pressed in these sheets skin pressed flatter and colder
more rigid than the last leaves of spring
made hard, thin and brittle by relentless snow.

I stood I stared shocked and scared by the whispers of you
swelling into the twisted branches of a tree
the flood the bathtub unasked questions bone calligraphy thread
in the ebb of severed wrist-flesh torn in protest
an ever open toothless angry mouth and no
there is no justice just protest
and no answer that will satisfy
throw another thicker quarter inch stitch over
those eyes
those eyes that could mimic the twilight sky
ready to storm ready to steal another to drown another invisible her
before she reaches the other shore and declares a proclamation of liberation
Written in tears a song for her daughters, her sons, her mothers, her sisters, her lovers, herself
We simply cannot ever fill the demand
Fast enough
Supply
the demand
Well enough
to satiate the need
for newer fresher lambs
with newer fresher blood.

********************************************
-this strange occupation called woman-
did the word you just said stick in your throat
did it sting a little going down
or hurt
coming up
I felt it ripple in my head
cold against my temple
your coldness a loaded gun
and I write you letters with my eyes
rage (disguised as tears) knows its own language
years learn in time, to speak in code
always the same: asking for pardon apologizing for demanding
for failing to succeed in this strange occupation
called woman
when really,
You pull the trigger with every snicker
every time you ignore and pretend innocent oblivious indifference
as if to say, "What did I do to piss you off THIS TIME?"
********************************************
-assumed-
The myth goes:
all women who call themselves feminists
must hate men
because they have been hurt by a few
or are too ugly to "get men"
or are just happier when they are angry
when they can cry: "abuse"

How can I answer with the dirt heaped onto my head
the vines of the past all bloom flowers and fruit for wine
to deaden
to present anger as a garnish
and viable criticism
as an afterthought

"You can either eat it or starve." She said and handed me contentment
as a blue plate special.

*(this poem is NOT about the victimization of "all" women. What it IS expressing and addressing is the lack of language strong and skilled enough to resurrect what many today prefer to see (feminism) as something dead and better left buried.)
******************************************
-complicated-
i do not want you to make peace with me
to conceed without ever hearing or having to hear the demands
to do so is to place forever
however lovingly
your hand across my mouth
whether your lips or your fingers the result is the same
in this silence however long however calm however seemingly beautiful
in this silence it is always
one sinks so that the other can survive
when neither can seem to see nor say
if we continue on this way
we'll both drown.

*******************************************
-Massive head trauma-
Your mouth impales with words and silences sunk so deep they cleave bone
And write me in trace
Brain matter. My head splits apart with the force
Of falling. Of admitting that yes the desire exists but I hate it
And you are a fist and I am a wall and “love” is a force that Life throws us with, ever against, as if babies, just to see what we’ll leave when we splatter.

Dissect this…tissue from bone (you and I, spread thin against unyielding years) someone later can decide which moment can be classified
as “art.”

Need is massive head trauma. And I am in a state of perpetual annihilation...a universe reconfiguring itself within strands of black, identity-weary stars.

*(Despite the heaviness and visceral nature of this poem, it is written as a sort of Dantean divine comedy, which is what love is if you think about it or...if you tend to do what I do and step in it and go ugh, I really didn't have time for this...check please? Beyond that, I love the last line too much not to post it so...it's my way of saying that which is truly beautiful and unique should be left alone, not classified, categorized, calculated, dissected, observed or Othered. Just leave it alone.) :)
*********************************************
-Touch-
Gave birth to hope on a roadside
Redemption in a field far from the city’s eyes and ears
(Dreams and Fears)
There, we taught each other that life had more truth
Than what we’d been offered
That the Lady’s Home Journal roadmap of shit was really just a lie
And that in every body a human is buried waiting to be exhumed
And exonerated

With each kiss, purge this need to prove
There is something more to this life

*(I love hearing what others read in my words. It makes life like less of a one sided conversation and more of what is summed up in the word: Communicate). peace!
*******************************************

"...unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember
that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless"--Audre Lorde

"Say you don't want it, again and again, but you don't
don't really mean it
you say you don't want this circus we're in but you don't
don't really mean it
You don't don't really mean it"--Tori Amos, "Spark"

Beyond the Birdcage

-Beyond The Birdcage-
*
Non-harm. Ahimsa.
Written on the lips
Not to silence but to empower
Crowning the forehead
To guide thoughts in love rather than hate
Listed on both palms and fingers
So that touch is gentle open receptive
So that every offering is a gift, not something to be taken
Or claimed.

Can you feel, unfolding,
When you let yourself be still,
That which is crossing
Breaking within the shore
Of your chest—it echoes
(I don’t have to put my head there to hear) the
Wings, fluttering as familiar as the ocean waves
Or the rain—The single truth of this life
Chanted in a word
All the poisons and all that can ever heal:
Prajna. Understanding.
Sutra of the heart
Words
To form hands
To hold all that is. Sacred.
To hold all as one’s own
And then to let it all go.

This,
A kiss
Antidote to both
Desire and despair
The illusion of loneliness broken in six words:
Emptiness is Form, Form is emptiness

The words are there and love has written them
But fear won’t let the ink congeal
Until you forsake your preference for blood

These words
Can’t permeate your dreams
Those moments where you declared yourself
A gutted city
In that space where you agreed to pay tribute
Perpetually with the destruction of your soul

Hateful thoughts are merely fantasy
Wings on leaves that won’t guarantee flight
That temple within you bears two truths:
A thousand palm prints staining windows
With regret, loss, violation, anger, and fear
Ten thousand tears offering every time, a cleansing rain
This truth is etched in the smile of every child.

Hope is the call for prajna
Love is the demand for karuna
To love
Yourself and yourself in others
Is maitri, metta, loving kindness,
Can you see?
There is so much wisdom
Whispered from your scars
Visible and unseen,
Those bleeding
And those yet to form

Don’t

Destroy the temple that is you.

Open

The locked doors of your heart

Allow

The frightened and hurt bird within to

Fly free.

Sing.

And fall

Wherever it will.
Whenever it must.
Trust in that which is beyond the bars of thought
Beyond this cage is perfect trust
Perfect love
And perfected understanding.
*

*(the line "Don't destroy the temple that is you" is inspired by the line from a Thich Nhat Hahn poem that reads: "Do not destroy the structure of suchness within you." Thich Nhat Hahn's words have repeatedly nourished both my creativity and my spiritual practice. I wrote this poem for a friend who is hurting and hurting herself. When I sat and listened deeply to her, the words of this were born out of her pain but also out of the space of hope). peace!

Occupying a different space

Where shall she write it so that it can be seen?
This reservoir of self, ever sinking, small enough to fit behind her teeth
fist-clenched
shaking
with anger.

Today a friend and I had a very deep conversation about self-injury and the strange religion
of violence acted out on the body. She spoke of her friend who has an eating disorder, a problem with her temper, a problem being sexually inappropriate, a problem with abusing substances, with frequent illnesses, and now, she has starting cutting herself too.

We sat on a very cold park bench and watched kids play and I thought about all those words and all those problems as played out in one person. I said, she sounds very angry and hurt to me and it sounds as though she doesn't have a safe space to express that which is silenced by and articulated in pain. And yes, that is exactly what I said. People sometimes don't believe I actually talk that way but I do. Stumbling all over my words quite fluidly. :)

What does it mean when we become that compartmentalized and fractured that we begin to purposefully break our bodies, our minds, ourselves or others? Or allow others to do it for/to us?

I wish I had some profound thought or reflection on the matter. Wordlessness frightens me. I wish sometimes for something that could take the shape of hands or some giant listening body, listening with the whole body, like an ocean that could take all that hurt and just give it a space to exist without causing further harm. How do you create that? How do you sustain it?
Some of the most compassionate human beings I know either a. don't have immediate families to take care of or consider "the world" their family (i.e. spiritual leaders/nuns/etc) or b. they are people like most of us who tend to live rather divided. All of this energy spent fighting "the good fight" either demands immense sacrifice by those closest to them and/or sacrifice and at times vice on the part of the person who is trying to maintain such an exhaustive effort. I like to think that perhaps that fraction of a second spent listening to someone might help more than me talking over, to and around them. I like to think that words can replace and challenge that which is deemed unspeakable so that people like the girl I mention above, can find other ways of coping with emotions rather than hurting herself in so many ways. I think too though that you have to get to the root of the issue and the larger ramifications of silencing to see how you are silenced and where and when and how you silence others and where and when. My silence stems most often than not, from fear. Fear of my anger. Fear of pain. Fear of failure. Also fear of hurting others. I wrote recently about abortion and my anger over that issue is quite strong. Is it fair though in my anger to push someone else into a space where they must defend their views from feeling as though, in doing so, they are defending their selves? One of the biggest difficulties I struggle with is how to relate to an experience or to simply listen, without Othering, patronizing, trying to save or feeling the right to judge? How do you read about genocide, torture, abuse, domestic violence, murder, rape, incest or even self abuse without becoming an unwelcome voyeur into the lives and suffering others are experiencing? I can't step out entirely of this place of privilege that the color of my skin or my access to education affords and truly understand what another is going through that is a different race, ethnicity, gender, class or even religion. So language then becomes a commonplace through which I can try and at least imagine it. Or sympathize. Or empathize. Or get angry, sad, frustrated or motivated. I cannot find ways (with any sort of consistancy anyway) to force my thoughts into your shoes. We seem too small and too large and too awkward for another until whatever good intention or commonality that might've existed is left limping along, cursing every step. This is the way I see efforts of "diplomacy" both in the macrocosmic coccoon of international relations and domestic politics but also diplomacy in the purest sense. Where we bring it home. Where it resides within us as some strange force that says, hey I really want to hear you speak me to me so that I may finally reclaim a voice. A rich wordless space. To occupy a space and not another. To claim an identity rather than having it assigned to you and assumed for you. People talk, but do they listen? People want action and therefore turn words into bullets, podiums, loudspeakers, flags, and foot soldiers but how often does the rhetoric retain any sort of humanistic value? How often does a politican actually speak to you rather than at you or for you? I want to listen. I want to a see a safe space created where people's pain can be heard rather than acted out on themselves or on others. I don't think one person alone can do that though. People have written extensively on creating communities of non-harm, of creativity, but how do you create of truly humanistic socialism of thought? Do you even want to? I'm sure this rant has gone on long enough. I am a wordy soul though and I want to end with some quotes that I've read countless times over the past few days. I wish I had known of Audre Lorde's work before she died and Ginsberg's before he died. I did not. But lately I've found much food for my soul in their words and in their activism and the bridges that they built through their poetry. So these quotes are by Audre Lorde. Thanks for letting me rant. Any thoughts or comments are welcome. I'll try to be less long winded with future postings. peace!

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect."--Audre Lorde

"For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us." Audre Lorde

"Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy." -- Audre Lorde

quotes from http://www.nedrajohnson.com/audre.htm

Reproductive Rights as HUMAN RIGHTS

I don't care what your views are on abortion. I don't care if you are "pro-life" "pro-death" "pro-birth" or whatever else you want to categorize yourself as. Just don't assume that you have the RIGHT to choose what is best for others just because YOU occupy a certain space of privilege.
It pisses me off to no end to read stories such as the one linked above that speaks of "religion getting in the way of "abortion" pills." Please think about what pills they are speaking of. The "morning after pill" is EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION given to RAPED WOMEN. NOT WOMEN WHO ARE SIMPLY SEEKING A QUICKIE, 7-11 style ABORTION. I swear every time I read something like this I want to scream. The other part of the article talks about pharmacists who not only refuse to tell women that this pill is available to them but refuse to refer them to another pharmacist who might not have such overpowering religious leanings.
I don't care if you're against birth control. DON'T USE IT! Fine by me. I think birth control is also well over peddled primarily because doctors rarely alert women to the full side effects of such drugs (such as blood clots that can kill you, unwanted facial hair, unwanted facial blemishing, weight gain, nausea, anxiety AND depression...in "rare cases"). When I was in the military I had doctors issue (I'm NOT JOKING) me birth control pills. I thought, well that's nice. I never took them. Point though is that I don't have the right to choose for another person what is best for their bodies or their health based upon MY spirituality and I truly don't think anyone should limit anyone else's choices through disinformation, failure to provide information and ignorance. To me, this is just as bad as doctors throwing anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pills at a woman every time she comes to them for anything. I firmly believe and will argue readily that the pharmaceutical industry is extremely sexist in its dispensiary targeting of women for "certain lifestyle drugs" and for men, other drugs. What possible good does it do to give a woman a damned zoloft if she is depressed due to a violent marriage? What possible good does it do to give a child prozac for attention deficit disorder if the child is diagnosed from a four question quiz MADE and DISTRIBUTED BY A DRUG COMPANY who markets that particular drug? I think that women should ask the question, has the drug industry simply reformed the notion that all women's problems could be solved by removing the uterus, lobotomy, shock-therapy or by simply throwing a pill at her? These companies make SOOOOOOOO much money off of people's lack of education regarding trial studies, legal cases, side effects and the like thus ignorance is extremely profittable. Also, (back to the religion thing) I wonder if these same people who take issue with dispensing birth control or (god forbid) the "morning after pill" take the same stand on male contraception and male sex drugs? Are they equally turned off by the manipulation of genetics to produce the "perfect" or ideal baby or at the very least, to diagnose potential birth defects? I am so very tired of people using religion as an excuse for discrimination. Health care, especially INFORMED CONSENT, is just as much a human right as is the freedom to worship. I don't care if you feel compelled to refuse to distribute a drug but do not mis or disinform a woman when it regards her body and her choices for her body. Women are not infants. They do not need some institution to care for them as such and certainly not to make medical decisions for them according to the religious preferences of a few. The other big aspect of this that rarely gets addressed is the crazy hipocrasy between the idea of calling policies "pro-life" when really, really they are simply pro-birth. Policies that make no effort what so ever to ensure that these ever important fetuses are actually protected after birth into infancy, childhood and young adulthood are really only pro-birth and even there they fall short. Pro-life is such a misleading label. I am all for life. That is why I don't think that such political encroachments on a woman's choice and control over her body should ever be in the hands of those who wear whatever morality is in fashion or fashion themselves as forces of morality either. For every person that stands and passionately argues about saving a fetus, I would like to offer them an equally powerful image, one from before Roe vs. Wade and that is of the FULL TERM babies left in dumpsters, drainpipes or left to starve to death or left on doorsteps or left permanently brain damaged by a botched back alley abortion. Today there are countless children who are abused, raped, sold into slavery of various kinds (especially sexual), made into "child soldiers" and murdered by disease (often treatable), starvation, power politics, war, the demonization of "universal" healthcare and the ever increasing fleecing of money from social programs to fund prison building and empire building. So...if you really really really want to fight for life, there are plenty of spaces that could definately use your passion. If you want to continue to "fight for the life of the unborn" then please also fight for the right of the life, after it is born all the way up to its adulthood.

Liberate the female (and feminized) body from an age old designation of being the preferred place upon which to wage war. peace!

Multiplicity and Definition as Metaphor

"There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself--whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc.--because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else. But once you do that, then you've lost because then you become acquired or bought by that particular essence of yourself, and you've denied yourself all of the energy that it takes to keep all those others in jail. Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat. You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements. That's something that we have to do, too, in our own lives--keep it all afloat. It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it. But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That's what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it's the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it."
Hammond, Carla M. "Audre Lorde: Interview." Denver Quarterly 16.1 (1981): 10-27.

I love this. In an earlier conversation today I questioned the manufacturing of hierarchies of the heart that create a sort of trench warfare mentality. Who creates the decision to love X, Y, or Z only and exclusively as opposed to trying to nurture a sustainable center within yourself that loves equally and with equity? Is this even possible to truly defy categories of differentiation, particularly when "love" is involved? Can you see in your child, the face of any child and all children, even those that have hurt yours or caused yours to suffer? Can you see in your partner or spouse, the love of any and all humanity, extending well beyond the personal
confines of your home, your ideology, your morality and yes, the politics of your bedroom?
Think about how love changes when the person you are with admits cheating on you? Are you still able to love that person in the same way as you did when you didn't know? How too, could you "relate" to another who doesn't have anything in common with you, other than the fact that they are a human being? Where then shall you form your common language? Can you imagine a time in which you learn to harness the power of the words used against you, used to divide and conquer you and rather than reacting, act to reclaim them for the empowerment and validation of all? Just imagine how different things might be.

Regarding the pain of others

I'm working through Susan Sontag's book Regarding the Pain of Others for my term paper. She has some powerful (and debate-worthy) points in it that I wanted to post here to see what others think of them. Also, because I think they build upon the act of "witnessing" while reading texts and case studies of atrocity but also in studying the history, reading the newspapers and staring at the images of conflict, oppression and occupation.

First, a bit of context. Sontag begins her book with the questions raised by Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas which Sontag explains, "...offered the originality...of focusing on what was regarded as too obvious or inappropriate to be mentioned, much less brooded over: that war
is a man's game--that the killing machine has a gender, and it is male" (6).

From this basis, Sontag questions Woolf's belief that merely witnessing atrocity through pictures of it will unite people against it. Sontag asks, "Who are the "we" at whom such shock-pictures are aimed? That "we" would include not just the sympathizers of a smallish nation or a stateless people fighting for its life, but--a far larger constituency--those only nominally concerned about some nasty war taking place in another country. The photographs are a means of making "real" (or "more real") matters that the privileged and the merely safe might prefer to ignore" (7).

Sontag also argues that "...photographs of the victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus" (6).

Can one argue that the machinery of war is indeed male? Is this argument fair, given the integration of women into military service and into suicide bombing and torture?
Do you think pictures do indeed "create the illusion of consensus?" Whose consensus? For whom by whom?

Here is another quote from Sontag. She writes, "To those who are sure that right is on one side, oppression and injustice on the other, and that the fighting must go on, what matters is precisely who is killed and by whom. To an Israeli Jew, a photograph of a child torn apart in the attack on the Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem is first of all a photograph of a Jewish child killed by a Palestinian suicide-bomber. To a Palestinian, a photograph of a child torn apart by a tank round in Gaza is first of all a photograph of a Palestinian child killed by Israeli ordinance. To the militant, identity is everything. And all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. ...Alter the caption, and the children's deaths could be used and reused" (10).

Is identity is indeed "everything" to a militant? I wondered when I read this, well who gets to define whom as "militant?" Where is that line drawn between "militant" and ordinary soldier or patriotic citizen or freedom fighter or any other of numerous labels assigned to those who engage in armed combat? I do like her point though that all photographs depend upon captions for explanation or falsification. Last semester we read Edward Said's After the Last Sky which is a pictorial essay about Palestinians and their exile and survival as political refugees but also as human beings in very inhumane situations. I remember one of the students commented that the lack of captions under the pictures left them wide open for interpretation and manipulation. He said, "How do we know that this wasn't taken somewhere else or staged somehow?" Likewise, a fellow student in a class mentioned how the film "The Battle of Algiers" (and the fact of it being in black and white) impacts how one views the acts of torture, war, and terrorism.
How does such knowledge relate to the images on the screen that we know are manufactured for our consumption, of specific conflicts such as the one between Israel and Palestine but also between the U.S. and Afghanistan and the U.S. and Iraq? I read a headline recently that called Afghanistan "one giant U.S. prison." Torture photos from one prison (Abu Ghraib) came and went but did they stop the machinery of war? Did they stop prisoners from being tortured and dehumanized? What can? What will?

One last quote from Sontag I'd like to post regards violence. She writes (the first sentence paraphrases Simone Weil), "....violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing. No, retort those who in a given situation see no alternative to armed struggle, violence can exalt someone subjected to it into a martyr or hero. ...Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses. A call for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen. Who could forget the three color pictures by Tyler Hicks that The New York Times ran across the upper half of the first page of its daily section devoted to America's new war, "A Nation Challenged" on November 13, 2001? The triptych depicted the fate of a wounded Taliban soldier in uniform who had been found in a ditch by Northern Alliance soldiers advancing toward Kabul. First panel: being dragged on his back by two of his captors--one has grabbed an arm, the other a leg--along a rocky road. Second panel (the camera is very near): surrounded, gazing up in terror as he is being pulled to his feet. Third panel: at the moment of death, supine with arms outstretched and knees bent, naked and bloodied from the waist down, being finished off by the military mob that has gathered to butcher him. An ample reservoir of stoicism is needed to get through the great newspaper of record each morning, given the likelihood of seeing photographs that could make you cry. And the pity and disgust that pictures like Hicks's inspire should not distract you from asking what pictures, whose cruelties, whose deaths are not being shown" (13-14).

Sorry that was a long quote but I think a very relevant one. Her question, who could forget those images is especially striking to me given that I can't recall them from all the images I've seen and all the articles I've read. So, if after the crises and blood and horror is removed from our gaze and fades from our minds as "witnesses" to atrocity, what does that mean for those who lived it are living it or are dying from it still?

Also, what does it mean when you read about or view atrocity far removed from it in time, space and context? How do you do this without simply stepping into the world of an Other without ever having to assume what that does to them? For example, many women have traveled into places and cultures in which other women and girls have been subjected to cliteridectomies and have written of behalf of these women and girls to raise global awareness and outrage. What does it mean when you have the power to do something and do not? Or have the privilege to peer into the world of violation and atrocity when you know that you can always leave and others cannot?

Articulate

(For Kerri)

She learned to speak
when she learned to construct
entire languages of worth
out of the skeletal vocabularies
that had always hung themselves upon her
and from the knowledge that wrecked paths
could mirror, speak, hear, and heal
the wreckage of the body.

She learned to think
only when convinced
her thoughts were no longer anchors
dragging her soul down to unlivable depths
but guides working tirelessly
to help navigate that space
where consciousness is born
from the reclamation
and the reiteration of one's humanness.

She learned to feel
without fear
when her body was finally freed
from psychotherapeutic anesthetics
and the last pain of manufactured guilt
was purged in words
allowed to float in the air

so that others might see stars
where once was only darkness.


*For Kerri, who continues to care and to question
the word "justice" as silenced on the lips of the broken
and written on the bodies of despair and of the hopeful.
You always serve to inspire. peace!

Support the RIGHTS of Everyone

Marriage is love.

To Marry or not should be something decided by two adults. Not the discriminatory religious leanings of a relatively powerful few. peace!

Sustenance

Today it rained and was bitterly windy. I loved it. Took a long walk in the rain. Admired the spring trees and the heavy clouds and the snowy mountains. It's taken me nearly six years to truly appreciate the beauty of Boise because I was always comparing it to some other place.

I had the good fortune today to have both a stupid (and I mean stupid) crisis which turned my little world upside down for a bit but also to have that led me back to that which truly nurtures my soul: friends/family, poetry, and Buddhism. Right now I'm reading Audre Lorde's "Undersong" and Pema Chodron's "Start Where You Are." Finished Allen Ginsberg's "Death and Fame" yesterday though I imagine I'll be reading it for awhile. I have a difficult time staying on task. I'm supposed to be reading half a dozen other things but I can't stay focused on any single book at a time. Hence the reason why I'm reading all of these things as well as all of my other books. I'm also writing more. I think my next writing project outside of academics will be a play. I finished a short story over Spring Break and countless poems. Still intend to put together a book of my poetry. I've been saying that though for a few years now. We'll see. peace!

The Comfortable Noose of Thoughtless Words

Misogyny is not funny. I watched Chris Rock's latest HBO special and much of what he said was quite funny...up to and through the duration of his blatantly sexist jokes. Making fun of rape, pedophilia and murder isn't terribly funny. I'm sure someone will call this "overly sensitive."

I sat with this girl at a study group who kept calling everything stupid or annoying to her, "gay" and I wanted to ask her "Are you ten years old or what?" But I didn't. Silly me.

So many people, often suffering the affliction of "good intentions" like an ingrown toenail, will preface the most idiotic remarks with perfunctory disclaimers such as, "I don't mean to sound" or "I'm not racist, sexist, homophobic but..." or "I don't have a problem with _______, I just wish they wouldn't force their issues on me"

And in these situations I am often silent for fear that my last shred of optimism will run from the room screaming, leaving a trail of obscenities in its wake. I keep hoping that if I work at it long enough, I'll build a vocabulary strong enough to fight such crap logic. Here's hoping anyway.

peace!

Audre, I'm Tired

of pulling my punches
of forcing words into and out of spaces
dull contortionists
breaking themselves
pieces of a puzzle
I can never make fit the vision of the world
I'd like to see.

Audre, I'm tired
of pushing 'cause this baby won't come
they said, if I chose to have it
I'd have it alone
but have you ever seen a child cut along party lines
scarred by ideology
the fascists pull one arm
the liars pull the other
and everyone else sits laughing
clapping nervously while
eyeing the emergency exit doors.

Audre, I'm tired
and my body fears these memories
I can no longer carry or afford
to leave at their feet.

I wish you would
Take these
Arms from me
that hang by my sides
lynched by regretful tendancies
ache for that which I tried too hard to hold
leaving in this wake
broken hands still foolishly
addictively opening.
As if love (alone) could fix this ruptured world
as if it meant
(giving) anything less
than everything.


*Some people find religion to be a source of refuge. Others take salvation in different ways and words. I find myself running always to poetry as my preferred refuge and opportunity to converse with those I admire over all of those "unspeakable" things and ways of being.
I often feel that reading is its own critical space and I read poets searching to hear them speak, muse and critique this world. I'm currently reading Audre Lorde's The Black Unicorn which inspired me to write this yesterday at 5 a.m.

peace!


"if I believe in you, will you believe in me?
but I have no trust in anything
somehow I always end up falling over me"--VNV Nation "Holding On"

Too many words

(to S. A.)

too many words
and not enough Indians.

too many Cowboys
and not enough sons.

too much land
but not enough for mailboxes
three car garages
history packaged in museums
sold at Barnes and Noble and Wal-Mart.

too much Hollywood
and not enough bullets
to merit
the proper
romanticism
of
a squelched debate
that made famous
the argument that Churchill, Truman, and Hitler were opposite sides
of the same outdated coin.

"If you want to know genocide, ask a Jew or an Armenian"
said the instructor
who'd obviously never read one of your poems
in all his years of speaking on behalf of

One more thing

Child-brain-tumors could be an autumn birth thing

Rising Obesity rates in children is a parental responsibility
(9 out of 10 experts agree)

Personals ads lure from every corner of an inbox
competing only with diet and medication ads
promising perfection to the best of the Pfizer-WalMartian capability.

Pontiff dies. Millions mourn. Court denies last attempts to keep one woman on this earth.

Fewer and fewer headlines for the bombed. sanctioned. burned. starved or hacked to death.

Even fewer still, questioning the policies that churn corpses into profits.

No.
It is far more important that we read so we'll fear
and that fear keeps us buying. biting. running. denying.
consuming and feeling guilty. charging but losing bankruptcy.
searching for connection to the face on the computer screen.
filling out quizzes for clues and validations of our own "unique personality"

"Adopt a mile"

"Give the gift of life"

"________ in desperate need of your help"

"Anti-Depressants now linked to increased risk of ________"

"The President promises to fight _________"

"WMD 's apparently prove difficult to find."

"Buy one get one free"

"always the guaranteed lowest price."

Woman-Identified

(for amy on her 38th birthday)

when a woman writes of breast cancer
as a "survivor"
not "victim"
people pause
to applaud her courage


when a woman writes of motherhood
as a blessing
never a mixed bag, drag, fear or curse
people pause
and trust her authority
and praise her for all the "hard work" such a "noble job" assumes

when a woman writes of heterosexual love
as ideal
but never a case of socially constructed
philanthropy
never as economic necessity nurtured by the fear of God and family
people pause
to worship her
to glorify and befriend her
to market her words and face endlessly

when a woman remains loyal widow
to the relentless ritual slaughter of men and children
and never utter the question of race, class or religion
people pause
to see her as truly "woman-identified"
refusing for her, momentarily at least
title after title: "welfare mom, quota, promiscous, ignorant, lazy"

but

when a woman speaks of anger
speaks anger, forms the words fermented behind her carefully silenced lips

when she dares address the fear-sustained-maggot infested hole
in the center of her chest,
when she puts on display
the expanding shore of a hip, wrist and rib cage
that she has spent a lifetime hurling herself against,

when she attempts to save
this shipwreck of her bodymind
that doctors throw pill after pill at.

She must find herself beyond the words that suggest
they still long for the days that they could simply remove pieces of her
brain
or her uterus or shock her sane or lock her away
put her in her place
put. her. in. her. place.

but should she question all of this
her words become abortions
and her identity takes on aborted shapes
pieces unidentifiable
placed in containers marked:
"discard immediately. toxic waste."

should she do this
her body becomes a vile, defiled space
her anger is named: anything but righteous
her morality is depravity in a world that has no time to hear
let alone comprehend the depth or source
originating and intersecting points
of the tangled roots of her rage.
This simply isn't done. This simply isn't said.

Feminists spelled it out once.

Drug companies swore
under oath
that they alone heard.
that they alone listened.

Trouble is,
They responded with yet another clever way
to leave the woman part womb part doll and part grave
all parts, a prettily prepped and patented

vivisection.

*written to critique the lack of a safe space for or acknowledgement of women's anger and rage. When divorced of her anger and rage she is made less human than the other, more tolerable, emotions allow her. It is all right for her to be sad or anxious because they make pills for that but if she questions the root and dissects from it, the true cause of her depression,
this is unnacceptable. This is EXACTLY what she needs to do. I see this as sort of an evolution of thought beginning with Virginia Woolf's "A Room of her own" to Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique."

Confession of a poetry snob

I am, among other things, a poet. I say that flinching because I don't care for much of the poetry I read and yet I keep reading it. The way people stare at an accident even though the first instinct is to turn away. I want to see, I suppose, the mangled body of a poem and search the teeth for some sort of identity. A glimpse (or not) of the poet. That is a rather ugly image I've just offered, I know, but really, what do you look for in poetry? And WHY would you torture yourself reading all sorts of hideous poetry looking for that one that sinks its teeth into you and won't let go. The pit bull poem. I don't like flowery words and yet I am guilty of them. So, today I was poetry blog hopping looking to see (like you do) what poems/poetry books/anthologies are being reviewed. One of my favorite sites is Verse and yet, I often come across a review that is worse than the poems. A review that makes me want to run from that book, not read it. I realized then, I must be an absolute poetry snob. I just can't do it. I know my poetry isn't for everyone, particularly the depressed or suicidal as I use alot of visceral images that juxtapose life and death with ideology. I will never be able to sell myself to Hallmark. The thought makes me cringe anyway so...

Anyhow, after having read quite a number of the most recent reviews I felt inspired to write the following poem. It is not directed at any reviewer, simply the act of dissecting poems, pulling out the organs of it. Killer was my attempt at making an indigestable poem. I don't want you to chew this and feel happy having done so. I think poems should be able to stick in your throat or in your gut and make you think about why you think you need these words beyond what you think they might mean. I'm trying out new ways of writing and trying to grow within my own writing style so constructive criticism is always welcome.

-killer-
unable to
dissect the I
from the eye
the lid sticks to the white
a baby to the mother's breast
knowing no milk will come
chewing just the same
chewing just the same

drawing only blood

unwilling to
parade naked beneath paling sheets of verbiage
pissing intention in the direction
of most profit
of a name on a page in a book in the mouth of the world.

a single thought remaining:
how to turn this into a noose
to slip around you
or a knife to slit you
highly decorated stripped bare lines
unfit for consumption
the cracking pus skin
too ugly to commodify

in this insincerity oozing of anthologized worth
a temple built with the bleached and splintered bone
I'm sorry Adrienne
there are no music in these words
just the damp whisper-whimper of ghosts
all straining to avoid the sins
of admitting themselves tormented
poetry.


*a poetry of form defying form. the lust of the label: experimental but what becomes of words detached, floating like retinas? What becomes of words stripped for the purposes of display. This poem was directly inspired as a response to two things: A line from a review of poet Selima Hill by Robin Geddie who wrote: "She effectively avoids the clichés that can afflict tormented poetry;" and having scoured approximately 30 poetry anthologies (within a few hours) looking for something that would really speak to me, shout really, or just smile walk away. I am an impatient reader and a whiny adulterous lover of words. Thus "Killer" comes from that space in me which both loves the poem and wants to rip it to shreds.)

note: the nod to Adrienne refers to Adrienne Rich and in particular her criteria of seeking the perfect poems to anthologize. She wrote that she was listening for the music in them.