Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Sonya Renee Taylor, unknown source

Economic disruption has always impacted political decisions. That was the Boston Tea Party, right? Destroy property for political protest. It is as old as this country. Secondly, what you are seeing is eruption of anger and exhaustion. Anger and exhaustion are not always ‘strategic" or “thought out” they are manifestations of pain. What you are seeing is people in pain. What the world is being asked to look at is the Black community in anguish. Imagine someone you love profoundly, your child, and imagine they were killed and not only was the person who killed them allowed to walk around with no accountability but then they were allowed to kill new kids in your community every week and all the news ignored it or said it was your kids fault. No imagine your pain. Really imagine your pain. Then imagine someone asking you again and again to be calm and rationale. To think of everyone and everything but your child and your pain. This is what this country asks of Black people. How absurd it would be to ask that of you. Right now, no one has been killed except Freddie Gray in this incident. So destruction of property is happening yes, but violence is severing a man’s spine and crushing his voicebox. Violence is 5 bullets in the back of a man running for his life. Violence is 4 bullets in the chest of 12 year old playing with a toy gun. Violence is choking a man to death on a new york sidewalk. Violence is shooting a woman in the back of the head in a dark alley. That is violence. Breaking windows in CVS is not violence. It is pain.

-- Sonya Renee Taylor

Monday, April 20, 2015

Elbows, The Intimate Nature of Knife Fights, Steve Connell

It has nothing to do with sex actually. It has to do with developing an intimate knowledge of elbows. Sex without that is meaningless. It's an activity, like playing Nintendo, merely hand-eye coordination, cause-effect relationships, and lasting. For most people the first person they had sex with serves no importance, save being the first. He's an asterisk, footnote of a young girl's journal, an afterthought. Beyond the first is less, it's midnight fumbling and stains on the rug. Incidental blurs of skin. Lying alone: with someone beside you. Memento. I want to more than last....When you breathe... I forget to. I do not want to be incidental. It's not enough to be noteworthy. I want to know every freckle on your body. I want to know from the tone of your voice that you need another blanket. I wanna be unextractable. It is not about sex. And it starts with the elbows.


 -- Steve Connell, Elbows, The Intimate Nature of Knife Fights

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

To Be of Use by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

  -- Marge Piercy, To Be of Use

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Moving Water, Rumi

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river
moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling
disappears.

Don't let others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,
fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness. You've seen a magistrate
inflict visible punishment.

Now see the invisible. If you could leave your selfishness, you
would see how you've been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?

Don't insist on going where you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. Your living pieces will form a harmony.

There is a moving palace that floats in the air with balconies and clear water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained under a single tent.

  --  Rumi, Moving Water

Monday, April 6, 2015

Negotiations, by Rae Armantrout

      1

The best part
is when we’re tired
of it all
in the same degree,

a fatigue we imagine
to be temporary,
and we lie near each other,
toes touching.

What’s done is done,
we don’t say,
to begin our transaction,

each letting go of something
without really
bringing it to mind

until we’re lighter,
sicker,
older

and a current
runs between us
where our toes touch.

It feels unconditional.

      2

Remember this, we don’t say:

The Little Mermaid
was able to absorb
her tail,

refashion it
to form legs.

This meant that
everything’s negotiable

and that everything is played out
in advance

in secret.

  -- Rae Armantrout, Negotiations

Thursday, April 2, 2015

The Burial of the Dead, from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
        Frisch weht der Wind
        Der Heimat zu,
        Mein Irisch Kind,
        Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

  -- T.S. Eliot, from The Waste Land