You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
Hillary Clinton and Maya Angelou
Dominance of Pink
Looks like the world’s imploding,
while some poor soul got shot out
of a chimney. The rest of the people
are rushing toward center. Why even
the trees seek the white-hot light.
Will we recognize the world when
the wind stops blowing, the brush in
the hand still painting acrylic?
.
Based on Painting the Pinks
**
But Not From the Dark Side
The green river is
covered with slime. Trees
are growing at an angle on
the side of the hill, where
two people on horses climb,
where there may be a path,
but I can’t see it. The wind whips
through the aforementioned trees—
green, blue, a touch of purple
looks like berries.
The beast is nowhere in the picture.
I think she might have just given
birth to wonder rather than danger.
“Nothing gold can stay,” says Frost.
Nothing here spells D-A-R-K,
nothing but slime for imagination.
.
based on Fantascape #12 - The Beast
Voting for the 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere has come to a close with Tony Brown edging out rob mclennan 355 to 310.
Vote For The 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere.Selection
Bill Knott 56 votes
Rethabile Masilo 29 votes
Sue Turner 12 votes
Leonard Blumfeld 8 votes
Tiel Aisha Ansari 14 votes
Michael Wells 31 votes
Melanie Bishop 3 votes
Steve Caratzas 62 votes
Jodi Herman 9 votes
Steven Schroeder 3 votes
Rob McLennan 310 votes
Dale Favier 6 votes
Levari 3 votes
R.K.Singh 3 votes
Montgomery Maxton 9 votes
Helen Losse 31 votes
Reginald Shepherd 8 votes
Tony Trigilio 52 votes
Gautami Tripathy 9 votes
Jay Sizemore 43 votes
James Steerforth 8 votes
Tony Brown 357 votes
Rebecca Loudon 6 votes
1,042 voters
Congratulations to Tony Brown. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.
Hi DQ,
I don’t know where to start. I just left the URL for the Malcolm X speech at Bookworm’s blog. Here it is again.
.
Okay. You’re a lawyer, right? Now we all know lawyers use a specific kind of language in legal documents - the kind most of us, including lawyers, don’t speak conversationally. And we all know that black folks can speak among themselves so that white people catch only a bit of what they’re saying. In other words, groups of people (people in given professions, etc.) often use dialect, tone, or vocabulary that complicates communication with those outside the group. Literary criticism uses references to images that are useless unless one has read the work from which they come.
Black preaching (preaching in the slave tradition) includes several elements that make it different from white preaching. Black preachers use what’s called “set pieces” - parts of a sermon that are memorized - and combine them in various ways to make new sermons. These set pieces often included quoted material. Unlike white preachers who usually hold up the book from which these quotes are taken, black preachers do not. Black preachers (and some white preachers) borrow freely from one another. King’s “I have a dream” is a perfect example of a set piece. Not the whole speech, but the part where he deviates from his prepared text. Entire books have been dedicated to the study of King’s 1963 speech. You think I’m dodging the question. Come on lawyer. :-)
What I’m saying is that when Wright’s congregation heard “chickens come home to roost,” they knew immediately that Wright was quoting Malcolm X. They knew what parts of the speech were quoted. Likely they had heard them before in other sermons, maybe by other preachers. What white people think is racially divisive is fact to black folks. Wright isn’t “breeding hate and racist discord”; he’s telling it like it is. And then, in a part of the sermon, I’m sure we didn’t hear, he gave an altar call and beckoned the sinners to bring their burdens to Jesus. Wright’s goal is reconciliation - sinner to Christ, black to white.
Not all churches with black pastors and black congregations are considered Black Churches in the historical sense. There are seven historic black denominations (elsewhere on this blog, maybe in a comment.)
**
Let’s try again. We have that proverbial partially filled water-glass. Is it half full or half empty? It’s both, but how we express it says something about us. Some Americans think that it’s half full: America isn’t perfect, but it’s the best nation our world has ever seen. Other Americans think it’s half empty: America is flawed, but with some very hard work she has the potential to become the best nation the world has ever seen. I think you are half-fuller, and Wright is a half-emptier. Who’s right? I say both are.
But the person who sees the glass as half empty speaks as a pessimist (from the point of view of the other, the optimist). The optimist screams that pessimists should be happy with what they have. The pessimist states what he sees as the flawed status quo. Does this mean he is without hope? I don’t think so. I see lots of room for discussion. There is more common ground than uncommon: Both groups love America. But one is more likely to be satisfied with the status quo than the other. Does that make the unsatisfied “evil”? Pointing out positive facts is “good,” but pointing out negative facts is “evil”?
**
Now let’s jump back to the racial issue and throw in the glass illustration. The whites are the optimists, who see America as doing “better” in race relations that ever before. They are right. The blacks are the pessimists who see that America has not yet achieved racial equality. This is over-simplified and stereotypical (in other words, only partially true). Some blacks fit the half full mold, and some whites fit the half empty one. Combine that with conservative and liberal views, different religious understandings, etc., and no wonder we don’t know what a person means by what he says.
But it’s too easy to call everyone who doesn’t see things the way we do a liar. It just isn’t true. It’s like all the folks who scream I live by emotion only I’m the one who knew that “chickens come home to roost” was quoted, and I knew where. That’s a fact. It’s a fact they didn’t know. Let’s not play “my facts are better than your facts,” okay?
I do not know the source of all that Jeremiah Wright said, but I do not think he is a liar. If he said he was quoting, I think he was. But it has been very hard to hear Wright in context. Primary sources are the best way to make valid judgments on what is and isn’t said. But if we are unfamiliar with the subject matter, we might need some secondary sources as well. When I wanted to find Malcolm X’s speech, I used Google. But I had two facts to go on.
**
Another aside. Do lawyers ever criticize other lawyers? Other than the public battles in the court room. Do one lawyer ever question another lawyers judgment? I bet they do. Do lawyers ever question the law? Poets criticize other poets. Historians make a living criticizing other historians. Okay. Do American have a right to criticize America? Do you? Why? Is Wright an American? How did he loose this right? Why is he “evil” by offering a view whereby dialog may bring change and change may bring us closer to equality?
What Wright offers America is hope.
Making Our Lives Available to Others by Henri Nouwen
“One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: “I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to.” This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.
We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.”
Emphasis mine.
**
So “there’s nothing new under the sun.” Well, duh! And if we concentrate on message, we probably will be repeating something that already been said. But if we tell our unique story by formulating an image we have seen, we will be adding to what has been previously written.
One lesson I learned when I returned to school is that life is too important to begin with analysis. We must start with our stories. One might think I leaned this in a creative writing class. But no, it was a class in the sociology of religion. Our lives are our stories. From our stories come the lessons. (A big thank you to Alton B. Pollard III.)
**
Balcony Room
—for Alton B. Pollard III
Rustling leaves welcome the breezes,
but tree trunks remain silent.
I recognize the cry of an owl,
not the scuffling: that I cannot explain—
nor Jesus in Alton’s face.
Both. Shining. From the dark.
It is not the day that holds the fire—
nor is there consolation in moonlight,
but rather: where time and place
don’t seem to matter,
nor the colors of skin,
falsely bleached by the bright sun
into a feigned harmony,
’til I’ve forgotten if it is hue or tone
of which we vainly speak. Yes,
the night embellished as it deepened,
enhancing, as the night will do,
that which by day remains shadow.
I know what I saw in the upper room:
what cloaked me in gooseflesh—
and beckons gently now.
from Gathering the Broken Pieces, “Poets On Peace #5,” FootHills
Publishing.
“This [airing of snippets of sermons taken out of context followed by accusations of anti-American behavior and racism] is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. This is an attack on the black church [on preaching in the slave tradition and on blacks' audacity to be 'different."].”
“Maybe now, an honest dialogue about race in this country will begin.”
Jeremiah Wright
Emphasis mine
Read more about it.
Read entire transcript on Wright’s Speech to the NAACP.
Why did Wright speak out now? We been playin’ the dozens.
The halls are buzzing—here at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. So much excitement about Poetry. So much excitement about Ann Hite. So much anticipation. Even rumors, once in a while, concerning the upcoming Southern-style Garden Party honoring Ruth at which time Poetry Editor, Helen Losse, will meet Fiction Editor, Phoebe Kate Foster face to face, fill corridors and classrooms. Flowers will sing and food will proclaim. Val’s grandballons will dig in the dirt. Might the shy Rebekah Cowell make an appearance? Time will tell.
Poems-on-the-Odds winds down. We’ve outdone ourselves this year.
Tomorrow the Mule will feature Carolyn Krieter-Foronda, Poet Laureate of Virginia. She’s our second Southern Poet Laureate. Readers will remember that North Carolina’s Kathryn Stripling Byer made her appearance on the Mule last April. Will others join them? Who will we ask next year? Time will tell. We’re the Dead Mule not a dead school, and as we speak ten poets stand in the lecture hall ready to shine in June and July. And we’re open for submissions.
The very next day, the first of Ann Hite’s short stories, “Life on Black Mountain” begins, getting a jump on May. According to Phoebe Kate, sister woman to our beloved editor Valerie MacEwan, the Mule all but “discovered” Ann Hite. She’s been in the Mule before. Her “ Introduction” was published days ago. And as I said, the halls are full of noise. I heard some kind of chatter about a new series by the editors. Just a rumor. Might not work out. But check back. The Dead Mule School’s always up to something that only time will tell.
Thrilled and excited, I write.
Also posted at the Dead Mule.
Writing, Opening a Deep Well By Thomas Merton
“Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: “I don’t know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down.” But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.
One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.”
Emphasis mine
**
Writing is a process whereby we create and expand our thinking. This is why I object to using only Bible verses to answer a question. Not that I object to Bible verses. Not that the Word of the Lord doesn’t matter. But if we stop there, without paraphrasing what we read, we learn nothing of what we really think.
“If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of all an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother and sister, to make the world better, more free, more just, more livable, more human. And it has now become transparently obvious that mere automatic “rejection of the world” and “contempt for the world” is in fact not a choice but an evasion of choice. The person, who pretends that he can turn his back on Auschwitz or Viet Nam and acts as if they were not there, is simply bluffing.
The great problem of our time is not to formulate clear answers to neat theoretical questions but to tackle the self-destructive alienation of man in a society dedicated in theory to human values and in practice to the pursuit of power for its own sake.”
Thomas Merton. Contemplation in A World of Action (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1973: 164-165, 168.
Go to oet Laureate of the Bloggosphere and vote for me!
Writing to Save the Day by Henri Nouwen
“Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.
Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be ‘redeemed’ by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.”
Emphasis mine.
**
You see, it’s the same message. This is why I write: That the message may become “life saving” for some of my readers.
I have two poems in Right Hand Pointing Issue #20.
See “ Waking Dream” and “ Freedom,” two very short poems in an issue of poems less than, or equal to, 30 words, edited by Dale Wisely.
Go to oet Laureate of the Bloggosphere and vote for me!
Vote For The 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere.Selection
Bill Knott 49 votes
Rethabile Masilo 27 votes
Sue Turner 11 votes
Leonard Blumfeld 5 votes
Tiel Aisha Ansari 9 votes
Michael Wells 23 votes
Melanie Bishop 2 votes
Steve Caratzas 53 votes
Jodi Herman 9 votes
Steven Schroeder 3 votes
Rob McLennan 234 votes
Dale Favier 6 votes
Levari 2 votes
R.K.Singh 3 votes
Montgomery Maxton 7 votes
Helen Losse 28 votes
Reginald Shepherd 5 votes
Tony Trigilio 50 votes
Gautami Tripathy 9 votes
Jay Sizemore 32 votes
James Steerforth 6 votes
Tony Brown 253 votes
Rebecca Loudon 5 votes
805 voters
Ann Hite’s Introduction to “Life On Black Mountain” Is now on the Dead Mule.
And while you’re there, don’t forget “ Poems On the Odds” continues through April with a chapbook by Scott Owens tomorrow and six poems by Carolyn Kreither-Foronda, Virginia’s Poet Laureate, coming on Tuesday.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
There’s an echo against the cliff
below the castle where the sand is
wet with tears, seaweed
a faded shade of brown. A tide-driven froth
coats my bare white feet.
Beachcombers in lingering shadows
rummage through fragments. The only light
is an orange moon.
The tide is green.
. . . Listen, listen.
All dreamers hear sounds, whispered by shells.
Some hear the Atlantic as she softly moans.
While the story travels, up, riding the flotsam
and sea foam, and slowly unfolds,
the trees near the ocean’s edge hint at
what happened.
Yes, they only hint,—
but oh! Oh, at the point of departure,
how the spirits speak! Sounds like
horrible groans. Sounds.
Like the rattle of chains. Sounds.
Listen. Listen hard. For the voice of the echo
is joined to the cliff by salty tears,
the tears who married that dark, dark sand.
The bones of kings,
who last saw Ghana as they
sailed away, crossing the vast and silver water,
are preserved by salt and have settled,
though probed now by small, mean fish,
several fathoms deep on the ocean floor,
where the whole world is as black as it was—
in the hold of the slaver’s ship.
first published in Independence Boulevard
Ann Hite ’s “Life on Black Mountain” contains over 15 stories and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature is going to publish one every other day throughout the month of May. Oh, shades of Poetry on the Odds, now we’re doing short stories on the evens. The symmetry of odd-to-even really appealed to Val. Like her dear friend Janis Owens, Val MacEwan (editor of the Mule) watches way too many “Monk” reruns. The Mule is planning on offering the entire collection Of Hite’s stories as a .pdf download by mid-June so ya’ll can have everything in one nice place. More on that later…
***
A taste of our Black Mountain tales — this clip from “The Sight” which will be available May 10th.
Mama always said Shelly had the sight, ever since she was two and saw Daddy standing behind the cabin. He died two weeks before she was born, selling corn whiskey for Hobbs Pritchard, a mean white man down the mountain a ways. Mama always believed Hobbs killed Daddy, but there wasn’t no proof, and Hobbs got what he had coming to him in the end. So, it all came out in the wash.
Shelly never gave spooks and such much thought until the summer of 1944. The war with Japan and Germany threw Black Mountain into the real world. Mama had worked for the Dobbins family since she was old enough to help her mama make the beds. Shelly Parker started even earlier because Elizabeth Dobbins—the only child of Pastor Dobbins and his wife—took a liking to her as a baby. Elizabeth turned six the month Shelly was born and used her for a play toy. The girl was everywhere Shelly went so Shelly didn’t even notice the change from adored toy to personal maid. She fell into caring for Elizabeth real natural: washing her clothes, making her bed, and later when she went off to college, readying her room when she visited.
Miss Elizabeth came home that summer moaning and groaning about a vacation. Mrs. Dobbins reminded her that the war was serious and it just wasn’t time to have fun. Pastor Dobbins preached at Black Mountain Baptist Church. Shelly never heard him preach because colored folks couldn’t attend. Her and Mama had their own beliefs and read the Bible regular. But, Shelly could imagine his sermons, dry as three day old bread with hard crusts. But, something about Miss Elizabeth made that man bend over backwards. So, he decided to take the family to the coast of Georgia. Some friend of his had a family house on the beach. Shelly heard all this talking from her perch in the kitchen where she chopped greens and radishes for a salad.
“I will die of boredom. Who in the world goes to Darien, Georgia?”
“It’s settled Elizabeth. We’re going to have a nice family vacation.”
Mrs. Dobbins sounded so sweet, but an edge rode her words.
Shelly snickered as she tossed the salad.
“Shelly Parker, you know not to use your bare hands on Mrs. Dobbins’ food. She’d faint over dead.” Mama named her Shelly because she always wanted to leave the mountain and go to the ocean. . . .
***
Come back to the Mule tomorrow to read Ann’s introduction, under Fiction. Oh, how we love our Mule! :-)
Jeremiah Wright, pastor to Barack Obama for twenty years, spoke publicly in his first television interview since clips of his controversial sermons circulated the Internet in an interview on PBS set to air Friday. Wright expressed frustration with how his sermons had been portrayed by the news media and critics of Obama’s presidential bid.
“I felt it was unfair,” he told Bill Moyers according to released excerpts. “I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt that those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons.”
“The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate,” he said, adding later, “I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ — and by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That’s what they wanted to communicate.”
read entire article
PAstor_front.jpg
A couple of days ago, I found an editorial, “ Managing Ignorance,” by the Rev. Dr. John Mendez, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, in The Chronicle. The article appeared in the April 3 issue.
I should have seen the editorial earlier, but racism doesn’t go away, you see, just because I’m slack. So I’m going to excerpt it now.
.
The Rev. Dr. John Mendez
**
“In recent days, the American public has been bombarded by a series of video clips, relentless isolated sound bytes, and lots of frenzied, misinformed overcharged rhetoric by the news media, commentators, and right-wing bloggers, caricaturing and demonizing my friend, Dr. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Christian Church. Dr. Wright is under attack for the use of language and sentiments uttered while preaching a sermon that criticized and condemned American violence at home and abroad. In my estimation, however, the real reason Dr. Wright is under attack is that he was the pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family for over 20 years, as UCC President John Thomas pointed out. Those who sifted through hours of sermons looking for a few lurid phrases and those who aired them repeatedly were only seeking to discredit and harm Obama by associating him with the historic prophetic ministry and social gospel preaching tradition of the Black church, as if that is a bad thing; and to divide the American people along racial and religious lines by subtly playing the “race card.”
I have known Dr. Jeremiah Wright for over 25 years. He is a brilliant preacher and scholar. He was recognized by Ebony Magazine as one of the top 15 preachers in America. He has preached in Winston-Salem several times to overflowing audiences. Trinity Church is located in Southside Chicago, where the consequences of racist public policies are manifested in a crumbling infrastructure, a failing school system, and a lack of economic development. For decades, Trinity Church has been hailed as a model church for what Dr. Martin Marty, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School and frequent visitor to Trinity worship services, describes as a place of ‘hope, hope, hope.’”
Read the rest of the article here. Emphasis mine.
**
Dr. Mendez was instrumental to my understanding of black preaching. He spent hours of his valuable time talking with me and recommending books, so that I could understand this aspect of my thesis on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And now I hope others will listen to this man of God.
You see, I love John Mendez, and I respect him. In my heart, he will always be my pastor, whether I sit in his pew or not. He has helped me educate my ignorance and become a recovering racist rather than a practicing one. And in that, dear reader, there is hope, hope, hope.
American can yet become the nation we dream of.
**
White Into Black
Sin.
Freed
into that darkened sky—
Friday.
How can one be born
when one is old:
washed—
in the flood from His side,
beneath the piercing sword?
Surely
I will abandon my watery grave—
alive:
pale as ancestors, plunged
into its flow—
black as my Jesus, comely:
a bride.
first published in Domicile
Fulfilling A Mission by Henri Nouwen
“When we live our lives as missions, we become aware that there is a home from where we are sent and to where we have to return. We start thinking about ourselves as people who are in a faraway country to bring a message or work on a project, but only for a certain amount of time. When the message has been delivered and the project is finished, we want to return home to give an account of our mission and to rest from our labours.
One of the most important spiritual disciplines is to develop the knowledge that the years of our lives are years ‘on a mission.”"
.
Emphasis mine.
**
The devotional by Nouwen explains, at least to me, why I must continue presenting a battle against the triple evils: racism, poverty, and war (as identified by Martin Luther King Jr. in Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community in 1964), why I must continue to explain that in race relations “better” (the term white people insist upon, and is true) does not mean “equal” (the goal for black people that hasn’t been reached).
I am on a mission. I’ve been sent here by God. I will continue on my mission because of Calvary. God will call me “home,” but maybe not until more people have heard the message.
**
On another note, Vote for me for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. I had eighteen votes this morning.
Vote for me for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere.
VISUAL UPDATE: 5:10 pm EDT
Vote For The 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere.Selection
Bill Knott 12 votes
Rethabile Masilo 23 votes
Sue Turner 6 votes
Leonard Blumfeld 1 vote
Tiel Aisha Ansari 4 votes
Michael Wells 16 votes
Melanie Bishop 1 vote
Steve Caratzas 2 votes
Jodi Herman 4 votes
Steven Schroeder 2 votes
Rob McLennan 36 votes
Dale Favier 5 votes
Levari 1 vote
R.K.Singh 1 vote
Montgomery Maxton 1 vote
Helen Losse 14 votes
Reginald Shepherd 4 votes
Tony Trigilio 44 votes
Gautami Tripathy 4 votes
Jay Sizemore 0 votes
James Steerforth 2 votes
Tony Brown 80 votes
Rebecca Loudon 4 votes
260 voters
The rocks that protrude
divide the river
into natural rivulets.
After crossing the Atlantic,
we formed a nation
where forbears walked
on needle-covered ground.
The air beneath the pines
bears witness, whispering
of what we have done.
The gray mist that falls
on rich and poor alike—
becrying equality—
cries, “Alas.” And still,
we pretend that debt
is not our call to justice.
By following a link in my blog stats, I just found out that I’d been nominated again this year for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. (Thanks to Kevin Craig) You can cast your vote for me, or anyone else for that matter, by clicking here and checking the appropriate box and clicking on vote.
Thanks in advance, if you vote for me. As you can see, I need all the help I can get. :-) Voting ends April 29 at midnight.
Vote For The 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere.Selection
Bill Knott 7 votes
Rethabile Masilo 19 votes
Sue Turner 5 votes
Leonard Blumfeld 1 vote
Tiel Aisha Ansari 4 votes
Michael Wells 13 votes
Melanie Bishop 1 vote
Steve Caratzas 0 votes
Jodi Herman 2 votes
Steven Schroeder 2 votes
Rob McLennan 2 votes
Dale Favier 5 votes
Levari 1 vote
R.K.Singh 1 vote
Montgomery Maxton 1 vote
Helen Losse 2 votes
Reginald Shepherd 3 votes
Tony Trigilio 39 votes
Gautami Tripathy 1 vote
Jay Sizemore 0 votes
James Steerforth 2 votes
Tony Brown 58 votes
Rebecca Loudon 1 vote
165 voters
Consider me,
A colored boy,
Once sixteen,
Once five, once three,
Once nobody,
Now me.
Before me
Papa, mama,
Grandpa, grandma,
So on back
To original
Pa.
(A capital letter there,
He
Being Mystery.)
Consider me,
Colored boy,
Downtown at eight,
Sometimes working late,
Overtime pay
To sport away,
Or save,
Or give my Sugar
For the things
She needs.
My Sugar,
Consider her
Who works, too—
Has to.
One don’t make enough
For all the stuff
It takes to live.
Forgive me
What I lack,
Black,
Caught in a crack
That splits the world in two
From China
By way of Arkansas
To Lenox Avenue.
Consider me,
On Friday the eagle flies.
Saturday laughter, a bar, a bed.
Sunday prayers syncopate glory.
Monday comes,
To work at eight,
Late,
Maybe.
Consider me,
Descended also
From the
Mystery.
“Poems On the Odds” continues at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. We’re publishing new poems every other day. On the odd days, ya’ll!
.
Published so far:
April 1 Daishi Miyazaki
April 3 Jason Ozolins
April 5 Sam Eagle
April 7 Andy Major
April 9 Trisha Hart
April 11 Torrance Stephens
April 13 Bruce Fuller.
April 15 Maria Nazos
April 17 Ellen Kombiyil
April 19 Geoff Balme
Yet to come:
April 21 Kevin Blankenship, former Dead Mule Poetry Co-Editor
April 23 Clare L. Martin - A Mini-Chapbook - Growing Into Myself
April 25 Felicia Mitchell – A Chapbook - There Is No Map
April 27 Scott Owens - A Chapbook - Deceptively Like a Sound
April 29 Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, the Poet Laureate of Virginia
While you’re at the Mule, don’t forget to scroll down under Poetry for previously published poems and to click on Fiction and Essays to read some excellent prose.
Mules rule!!! Mules rule!!! Mules rule!!!
The many contradictions in our lives - such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts - can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed.
But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God.
It was a dream like no other
with Pam and me in a tree-house.
We had a small, brown blanket. There was
more than one door to enter the room.
Each door had at least one latch.
Yet the stairs and the landing had
no railing at all: nothing to keep us from
falling into the sky
or down to the ground with a thud.
It was a scene like never before.
Not that we were children in it,
nor that it was evening. Not that
Pam decided to go down
before it got dark, nor that Michael was
standing, yelling, on the ground. No, no,
it was Bill—
who, sleeping now beside me, planned to
shoot me with Cupid’s sharp arrow,
because he loved me. And I, being
the child that I was, took him literally.
first published in Domicile
My eyes left the women—dancing and worshiping—
went to the water, color and texture of broken glass,
the light, then the droplets falling. At one point
I thought the women could be mermaids but
abandoned that theory along with the one about ice.
The water is blue, green, purple, the women silhouettes.
Then I noticed the face—looking upward—
central to the red section: When God parts the water,
he looks like a snowman, blowing bubbles through
separated lips. See the power of the breath of God:
Is grace befalling. And even wonder.
.
Another poem based on Miki’s artwork. See picture here.
We always called maple seeds whirlybirds,
just as we always did so many things, as children.
We liked them best when they were yellow—
when tossed alone, in twos, or even bunches—
they came swirling down. Too green,
they fell with a plop. Too brown too thin to fly,
or they fell apart, exposing their spider veins
like the vertical strings on a badminton racket.
If we had rain: mush, beside the welcome mat.
But this morning, sailing swiftly by my window,
catching the light—white and lovely—
landing in a driveway crack
or in gutters in the fertile loam that once was
maple leaves, there those ’copters from the sky—
unshaken in purpose—became a circle of trees.
first published in TMP Irregular
The following is a portion of an e-mail message I received today.
“We just got back from Paris. A terrible mess with the dollar’s decline! We were not able to afford some of the things that we wanted to do. The French are terribly angry with the U.S. because of the higher Euro. They are having difficulty putting food on the table. They blame this on ‘Bush’s war.’ We got cursed out in French by an old man because we came out of a Nike store (we were there asking for directions to a certain street). He was ranting about capitalistic American companies! Wow!
France has always had a socialistic bent. But what we saw and heard put our country’s politics under a new light. There were many French people who, when asked if they spoke English, indicated no. It is my belief that they did, but since the U.S. called for a boycott of France and renamed the French fry, there has been an animus among the rank and file of the French population. We were told that this hardship was not confined to France, but to those countries who converted to Euros.”
NOTE: This is reprinted here with the permission of my friend.
The featherless has no teeth, no backbone,
no joints and no tail.
The featherless is boneless and toothless,
or so it appears.
The featherless lives in mud,
searches for honeycomb,
cavorts in chickweed, burns incense,
drinks wine. Yes, he drinks wine.
Why not?
Well, perhaps not, when he writes.
The featherless of which I speak,
who’s my creation, as opposed to God’s,
enters a flowering meadow,
where he drops to his knees.
The featherless feels the way
any writer or poet may feel,
knocked in bellowing rejection
by a story-telling editor,
who’s probably shoeless at the time
of his most negative decision-making.
We’re not one and the same—
the featherless and I. No,
the featherless did not see the snow fall
during the silent night nor the mist
that covered what proved to be
only a dusting that I myself saw.
**
first published in Left Facing Bird
This Thursday: Poem In Your Pocket Day
Celebrate the power of poetry to both transport a reader and be transported by carrying a poem in your pocket all day on Thursday, April 17, the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day. Join celebrants across the country and share your favorite lines with friends, family, co-workers, and even strangers. Download a selection of pocket-sized poems and poetry ringtones online. Carry the entire collection of over 2,500 poems on Poets.org in your pocket by simply going to www.poets.org/m from any mobile device.
On the web at: www.poets.org/pocket
Flamenco
The mighty river
hits slime-covered rocks—rhythmically—
and, in love with the goblin-spirit,
waits for ecstasy,
then, falls—majestic and turbulent—
into the calmer valley,
It disappears as it winds through the forest,
and thus, like a gypsy,
claims all the world
as home.
first published in Domicile
“Chesed, mercy and power, manifests itself visibly in the chasid, or the saint. Indeed the saint is one whose whole life is immersed in the chesed of God. The saint is the instrument of the divine mercy. Through the chasid the love of God reaches into the world in a visible mystery, a mystery of poverty and love, meekness and power.”
.
“The mystery of the Good Samaritan is this, then: the mystery of chesed, power and mercy. In the end, it is Christ Himself who lies wounded by the roadside. It is Christ Who comes by in the person of the Samaritan. And Christ is the bond, the compassion and understanding between them. This is how the Church is made of living stones, compacted together in mercy. Where there is on the one hand a helpless one, beaten and half dead, and on the other an outcast with no moral standing and the one leans down in pity to help the other, then there takes place a divine epiphany and awakening. There is “man,” there reality is made human, and in answer to this movement of compassion, a Presence is made on the earth, and the bright cloud of the majesty of God overshadows their poverty and their love. There may be no consolation in it. There may be nothing humanly charming about it. It is not necessarily like the movies. Perhaps the encounter is outwardly sordid and unattractive. But the Presence of God is brought about on earth there, and Christ is there, and God is in communion with man.“
Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950): 179, 181-182.
Emphasis mine.
“Poems On the Odds” continues at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. We’re publishing new poems every other day. On the odd days, ya’ll!
The Mule has a great lineup.
April 1 Daishi Miyazaki
April 3 Jason Ozolins
April 5 Sam Eagle
April 7 Andy Major
April 9 Trisha Hart
April 11 Torrance Stephens
April 13 Bruce Fuller
Already published.
**
Yet to come:
.
April 15 Maria Nazos
April 17 Ellen Kombiyil
April 19 Geoff Balme
April 21 Kevin Blankenship, former Dead Mule Poetry Co-Editor
April 23 Clare L. Martin - A Mini-Chapbook - Growing Into Myself
April 25 Felicia Mitchell – A Chapbook - There Is No Map
April 27 Scott Owens - A Chapbook - Deceptively Like a Sound
April 29 Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, the Poet Laureate of Virginia
While you’re at the Mule, don’t forget to scroll down under Poetry for previously published poems and to click on Fiction and Essays to read some excellent prose.
Mules rule!!!
The folks at Idylist are plagiarizing my poems. So far they have taken “The End of a Roman God” and Excerpts from “THERE IS A PRESENCE” without indicating that these are my poems. They act as though the posts on their site are original without linking back to me and without using my name as the poet. They don’t allow comments on their site unless one signs in, and they do not leave an e-mail address so I can contact them. I wrote these poems. Plagiarism is theft. The people who post at Idylist are thieves. They don’t want me to contact them. And they may not even realize they are thieves.
If this was an honest mistake, I’ll expect them to contact me pretty quickly with an apology .
EDIT: They’ve been un-linked now. Thanks to Jilly, who’s a poet and “a good guy.” Jilly’s having some health issues, please keep her in your prayers.
1.
This isn’t about prayer as such
but concerns the yellow flowers and the barking dog,
the coffee shop downtown, where memory floods
the mind in uneven scenes, and no one prays or even
pauses as though he might pray, drinking the depth
of the city’s drivel. This is a poem about living:
About visions in a world of dreams, about rough places
in the world’s basement, where we see, hear,
and smell the vomit, before drifting off to chase truth.
This is about the man who sits in the gutter, wearing mis-
mated socks—he’s a lot like us—and about
other common places the reverie might lead.
4.
Is there no love on this whirling earth,
only the urge to brainwash, with even
our government always watching, feigning
protection, so that every other Friday a suspect can
be penciled in to the some category between freedom
fighter and poet? Why, even our love-lives glow bright
in the havoc. The earth spins and spins,
through the floods and volcanoes, with rumors
and wars outside every window. The moderns
search their search engines for the language
of perfection. Our differences multiply daily.
We gather—in every impoverished temple—
where we forget the witch hunts of Salem.
The sins of many mothers drowned in the river,
in the low light of the morning’s hidden sun.
The sins of the fathers still bloody our hands.
This isn’t about prayer as such but concerns how
we might gather humanity together,
where God once hurled silvered confetti,
sweet children made snow angels. My reverie—
thankfully—leads me here. But will we kill our own
kind, without praying or even pausing, as though
trouble did not abound either then or now? This is
about human need.
first published in The Centrifugal Eye
Yep. Kyle Busch!
Jupiter sips his purple wine,
adorns a fountain
in mythic glee—manly
but broken. The new religion
rendered him harmless:
a mere statue—
useless as a butterfly, minus
a wing.
First published in Sanskrit
I’ve written about my friend Alice Parris before. Not only is she a poet and a songwriter (and a blues and gospel singer), but she’s also a committed Christian. She tires to spread the love of God wherever she is. She expresses this love through her art. To that end, she recently began a new web site Alice Parris Arts & Entertainment. And she has been kind enough to allow me to present a new poem.
**
INSIDE OF THE POD
I am a wiggling fish being scaled;
not quite dead enough…
With the shutting of the door,
my soul shutters.
Aloneness is overrated.
I walk between two realms.
You can never enter my
ether-space, earth-creature.
I am the unpredictable wind.
You are the earth clutching at
roots. My fury uproots all of your
mounting efforts.
Still, when thoughts flee, we
touch; an exquisite perfection-
bliss.
When you do leave me, I am the
timekeeper, blowing out meted,
still, suffocating,
desert-air.
Who said that a dungeon had to
be a cellar of hewn- stone & dried-blood?
The mind, the most tortured of all.
Inside of the pod is a crimson core;
the fruit of this planting is
bloody gore.
Alice Parris
**
Alice also has sites here and here, where you can hear her sing.
In the Art Gallery
Scarlet birds in the foreground
flocking toward hazy currents—
joining, further back, the bluish ones
arced in flight. Impressions mingle,
colors from three paintings
blur, create
a world of havoc. Pointing,
reaching skyward above the city—
the steeple stands. Purple wires
span the yellow distance.
On the opposite wall, blood
on alabaster hands.
Scarlet birds in the foreground.
first published in Domicile
The bold colors you have chosen
for the trees and the sky and the roofs
invite me to be more than an observer
of your art but rather to participate
in a place that is documented but not
interpreted for me. You have captured
the scene but invited me to create
with you. Your colors explode
around buildings built at odd angles.
Your tree on the left looks as though
a horse is jumping through it, and the trees
themselves look effervescent. You have
invited me to a quaint village and made me
long to return to a place I have never been.
You have located the spiritual within
the ordinary. And I stand corrected:
The horse is not a horse at all;
It’s a really thin Spanish bull.
**
When a poem explodes from a piece of visual art, the process is know as ekphrasis.
See the beautiful watercolor that inspired this poem on Miki’s site.
EDIT: After reading Miki’s comments, I added the last three lines.
The bird does not fly at night
but sits on her eggs and broods,
but since God is ineffable
to both birds and people,
she does not concern herself
with the business of the bird
on the next nest, and yet God
will not see either person or
bird fall without remorse.
Smiling and Looking Back
A student gave a photo, time and
time again, to the master,
who shoved it toward the reject pile.
“Why turn that photo in?” asked the
octogenarian. “Art’s not determined
by the effort expended in its making.”
But what good are words,
if they debar us of hope, offering
lessons sown not in peace nor
watered with love? Tom climbed a
mountain to get that shot,
labored all night long and well into
morning, not knowing what
the master who hated the picture knew.
“I’ve seen a duck become a swan!” he said,
ably dipping his print in a pan of toner,
mixed from the potent concentrate
in the brown glass bottle.
The stain of a teardrop is just above the bed—
the plaster yellowed chemically—
where the photo hung on the lonely wall,
not yet dry.
So the truth is out:
And this tale will pass from age to youth
like a joke that isn’t funny,
known for its keen didactic worth.
first published in Scorched Earth
Last night I inadvertently destroyed a post concerning my friend Alice. And today we have to be gone for a while. So look for news about and a poem by Alice Parris on this blog tomorrow.
“At 10:15 on the night of Saturday, April 5th, in Rock Creek, Montana, three friends decided, on a whim, to solicit for, edit and publish an entire one-time-only poetry journal by dawn of the following day. They contacted a list of admired friends, acquaintances and strangers, gave them, loosely, a few hours to send original work, and then awaited response. Several hours, a partial revolution of the earth and one-hundred submissions later, the results were born: LEFT FACING BIRD“
Now thanks to Lucas Farrell, Greg Hill Jr., and Brandon Shimoda, I have five poems, in this remarkable one-off project. LEFT FACING BIRD is subtitled “Proper Aesthetics of High Terror” and includes the writings of 100 writers. Amazingly, the entire project took only six hours.
See my poems, “Autobiography,” “Concerning the Amputee,” “Freedom of Expression,” “Nightmare In Purple,” and “Vicarious Living” by going to Left Facing Bird and clicking on my name. Some of these poems have appeared on my blog in early drafts.
“Each day is a new dawn of that lumen Christi, the light of Christ which knows no setting.”
Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950): 53.
Yearly, above the right of way—
late-summer-evening, air stagnant and dusty—
Queen Anne’s Lace continues its blooming.
Blackberry bushes produce under-sized berries,
if any at all. Small evergreens beside
Daucus Carota, whose flowers grow in clusters:
a white and delicate wonder, sacred wild carrot,
the tap root of the young plant edible, used
for jelly or cake. Beauty like heaven,
abundant like legends of England’s Queen Anne,
who tats delicate lace or dons her queenly
headdress. Or perhaps, it’s named for Saint Anne.
When taken medicinally, sometimes it’s for
contraception, other times fertility.
Frosty moonlight
filters through church-window prisms,
striking the cross—
the hungry one crying out of the dark,
words to the Sacred.
In the dark, no one remembers the sparrows.
An old man dreams
about a cheeseburger and hot fries.
Where will he lay his head?
Left half dead outside in the cold,
perhaps, through some oversight,
shivering and naked,
with no bowl of hot soup
to warm his belly. Might as well be dead.
Holy candles flicker as they burn.
The old man dreams a valid dream.
Dirty children line blasted streets,
sucking babes who cannot cry,
their parched throats
swelling amid the rubble.
Have they no homes, no mothers?
And, oh God—the men.
Yes, the men. Are they so guilty
as to die for those who govern with
trumped-up creeds, pitting brother against
brother, maiming for life, stealing
divine creation—one-by-one?
The world must lock the door to
keep war out, the people safe.
A woman rises from a third row seat
with stomach churning
and lungs that will not fill.
She’s a Pillar of Fire
who wants to burn like
God’s voice at midnight. But ice crystals
cast thin shadows in the place where she’s going—
a room filled with strangers.
There’s no make it plain in the buzz of this crowd.
The woman’s dream divorced from the cross,
small embers in fallen leaves,
the Promised Land in the incensed air—
and all she totes are borrowed words.
first published in TimBookTu
NOTE: According to Martin Luther King Jr., the triple evils are racism, poverty, and violence (war).
Trees that grow tall have deep roots. Great height without great depth is dangerous. The great leaders of this world - like St. Francis, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., - were all people who could live with public notoriety, influence, and power in a humble way because of their deep spiritual rootedness.
Without deep roots we easily let others determine who we are. But as we cling to our popularity, we may lose our true sense of self. Our clinging to the opinion of others reveals how superficial we are. We have little to stand on. We have to be kept alive by adulation and praise. Those who are deeply rooted in the love of God can enjoy human praise without being attached to it.
An article by my dear friend Alton B. Pollard III.
Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the death—the martyrdom—of Martin Luther King Jr. And while I am more interested in King’s life than his death, it does bring pause that we have still come so short a way toward the elimination of poverty in the US. King was in Memphis on April 4, 1968 to participate in a march being conducted by the local sanitation workers, when he was shot to death on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, now home to the National Civil Rights Museum. We will hear much about King today. But the question is, What will we do to eliminate poverty?
King died trying to rid our nation and world of the triple evils: racism, poverty, and war.
**
“Dr. King proclaimed in one of his final sermons, “Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God.” The goal of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was “to redeem the soul of the nation.” The soul of a nation is its social structures, political discourse, and quality of life – democracy.
In what is considered his most “dangerous” speech – “A Time to Break the Silence” – King employed the tortured phrase “vocation of agony.” King named the challenge of calling upon God in the struggle for social justice. He gave this speech in the midst of death threats, repudiation from SCLC’s board, and merciless attacks in the mainstream and African-American media. A major task of King’s public speech was to rebel against the monopoly on religious discourse shaped by conservative religious individuals and institutions, thereby creating space for the revelation of the prophetic God:
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate for our limited vision, but we must speak.
King carved out a place where the task of religion is to challenge the role of government. His notion of “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism” highlighted the role of the United States in both the manipulation of foreign governments and its treatment of the poor (at home and abroad) that has led to a crisis in American democracy.”
Read more
**
King’s last campaign
“By the late 1960s, King had helped secure historic victories in the fight for racial equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in government, employment and housing. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed.
King then turned to a new campaign for economic justice. He called for a bill of rights for poor people that would offer massive government job programs and guarantee livable wages.
He joined the Memphis sanitation workers on the picket line as an effort in that fight.
King argued that poverty was not a natural condition but resulted from bad economic policies, inadequate government investment and workers’ lack of bargaining power, says William Spriggs, chair of Howard University’s economics department. Spriggs co-wrote a report released Wednesday about King’s solutions to end poverty.
“He understood that if you pay workers a low wage, then who will buy the products, and who will buy the houses?” Spriggs says. “His desire to help the workers was rooted in that understanding.”
The national campaign, however, never fully took off. After King was killed, it withered.
“What he was talking about would cost millions, even billions,” says King’s oldest son, Martin Luther King III. ‘He called it a ‘guaranteed annual income,’ what we call a ‘living wage.’ He was prophetic.
“It’s radical,” King’s son says. “That’s why it has not happened.”
Read more
**
Martin Luther King was shot here Small Web view.jpg
**
Martyred At the Lorraine
I can see Martin.
On that balcony.
Hosea. Jesse. Martin. Ralph.
But you will say,
my mind is playing tricks.
That was the night before,
right? Before
he gave that speech
to those garbage men,
going to Mason’s Chapel in pouring rain,
tired as he was.
Sure he would march.
But who would guess,
his final speech
would come in Memphis?
The baritone softly hums “Precious Lord,”
and he smiles.
Wrong again.
That was the day
it happened.
I can see Martin.
At that Negro motel.
He throws out his chest,
waves his hand as he speaks,
guffaws
into the nip of an April twilight,
perhaps picturing his “four little children”:
a robust man, he tells
of what he sees atop the mountain—
in the land beyond,
in the view.
“Oh! . . . ”
The bullet pierced its intended,
and Ralph gently cradled
Martin’s dying head. Who, now,
will choose redemption,
suffering—to implement the dream?
I see Martin carried.
From the Lorraine.
A widening pool of still-warm blood
turns brown.
Helen Losse, “Making All Things New: The Redemptive Value of Unmerited Suffering in the Life and Works of Martin Luther King Jr.,” MALS thesis (Wake Forest University, 2000).
**
Today marks t