| I am |
[Nov. 23rd, 2006|07:46 pm] |
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You are The Wheel of Fortune
Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success
The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out. |
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| Dear America, |
[Nov. 6th, 2006|07:19 am] |
You can refuse to vote for an anti-gay marriage amendment; you can vote based on a belief that marriage doesn't need any protection, it simply needs people to fall in love and participate in it. You can vote against instantiating exclusionary practices and bigoted beliefs in your state constitutions. You can stand up and say "My gay daughter" or "My gay son" deserves the same rights and privileges my other children enjoy. You can do all these wonderful things and more--you can work to show your neighbors and colleagues, your friends that policies based on fear and animosity, policies that serve to divide and exclude, policies that allow people to stare down their noses at other people are not policies worth our country. You can do all these things and I will applaud. I will thank each and every one of you for your support, for your belief that my life is no less valuable than any other person's life.
But, I will also be sad. I will be sad because the ballot might as well have said, "Is Amy good enough to join our country club?" And you get to vote about it. You get to vote about whether I am good enough to be counted, good enough to enjoy the promise of America.
Perhaps I shouldn't be sad. America has, in some ways, always functioned like an exclusive club with certain people free to come and go as they please and others relegated to entering/exiting through the back door: members enjoying, exploiting, benefitting from the labors of the non-members. America though is not and never has been simply a country club. Despite the separate entrances, despite the inequalities, despite the injustice of it all, always at the core stood these words:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
These are the promises: Justice, Tranquility, Common Defence, General Welfare, Liberty. America has never been perfect at keeping those promises, far from perfect, but some of We the People never shied from working towards fulfilling those promises. Since the beginning, We the People fought, marched, boycotted, litigated, sat-in, voted. We the People pushed back the us/them divide, pulled ever-larger the citizen circle. We the People refused to simply be a country club. We decided that slavery was wrong, we decided that women should get to vote, we decided that segregation was unequal. (Paradoxically enough, it seems, self-evident truths are apparently not color- and gender-blind.) We the People decided that differences, unknowns mattered less than the promises to "ourselves and our posterity." We stood and proclaimed "We the Citizens of this United States welcome you."
Sadly, though, we've begun to retreat. We've returned to the country club model, begun to erect a fence around our freedoms, an exclusive list left at the gate with armed guards. We've taken to sending more and more (instead of less and less) people around back. They get paid; oddly enough they even pay their dues (taxes), but they need not make reservations for dinner; they're not allowed.
We act as if Justice is a non-renewable resource, that if we treat everyone Justly, none will be left for lunch tomorrow. That the General Welfare need not include the general populace. That the Common Defence is color-coded. That Tranquility wears a price tag. That Liberty should be quarantined lest someone take it.
Dear America, Dear America, when Freedom isn't free, it dies. When America isn't free, when we retreat from our promises and Our Promise because we fear and because we hate, when we turn our backs on our progress, when we refuse to go farther, when we shrink the citizen circle smaller and smaller, America dies. The oxygen, the food, the life-sustaining elements of America are its promises: Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Dear America, let us be a Country again. Let us break bread together. Let us become that more perfect union. Let us decide that we will not bow to our base instincts. Let us no longer fear sharing America's promise. |
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| Pressing News |
[Oct. 26th, 2006|03:42 pm] |
Also posted at Alive in CNY.
I have been preoccupied for a bit publishing 2 books. The first was the long awaited Monday Night Poetry Anthology called Coevolution -funded in part by a grant from the DeFrancisco Arts & Cultural Grants administered by the Cultural Resources Council. (It can be purchased for $10 at Monday Night Poetry or at Follett's Orange Bookstore in the Marshall Square Mall.) We received our 200 poems from a whole bunch of poets living near and far. Here's me Name Dropping: Rick Lupert, Mary McLaughlin Slechta, Jane Cassady, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Paloma A. Capanna, Therése Halscheid, Daniel J. McGinn, Omanii Abdullah-Grace, Martin Walls, Gregg Yeti--and that ain't even the half of it. (All the folks I didn't link to are very Google-able.) I was and am totally blown away. Special thanks to Rachel Schlesselman for all her editing help.
The second is a collection of poems by Jane Cassady (she is also found here) called An Awkward Kind of Faith . (It can also be purchased at Monday Night Poetry or Follett's Orange Bookstore in the Marshall Square Mall for $5.) This is my review:
"From the completely (un)biased editor of Turtle Ink Press: Sometimes the reward for having done the homework is the knowledge that water’s moving under snow, sometimes that instant evaporation is a possibility, sometimes knowledge sits somewhere between. Jane juxtaposes these bits of knowledge, wrestles with their implications, wrings them out, dips her pen into the drippin’s and writes into the morning. She proves that there are no still life's, no still lives: cities make us hot and sticky; history reminds we all have damn spots; the quest is worth passing on the bucket. Pay attention, Jane says, pay attention. Indeed, we should."
I certainly lead a beautiful life. |
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| Pressing Matters of Leadership |
[Jul. 28th, 2006|04:09 pm] |
The US Congress has really stepped up in the past couple of months, letting the American people know just what it believes to be important. In addition to such pressing matters as flag burning (that’s nipping the epidemic in the bud) and gay marriage (flower shops, groom & bridal shops, caterers will be so relieved to be free of such economic burdens, not to mention state licensing fees that won’t get collected now) and taxing the pimps (pimps only thought they had it tough), I thought I would begin a list for consideration. I hope to email a list of suggestions sometime next week. So, if you have some suggestions, let me know.
Other Business the Congress Should Be Tackling in this Election Year:
1. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.
2. Standardization of the location of tofu in grocery stores.
3. Pass tough, new, penalties for spitting one’s chewing gum onto the sidewalk.
4. Renaming food items to reflect the patriotism of the governing body.
5. Mandating that napkins be included in all drive-thru orders.
6. Standardize the measurement of umbrellas.
7. Settle the tomato—vegetable or fruit?—controversy once and for all.
8. Pass Constitutional Amendment regarding the pronunciation of “nuclear”—let’s clear this one up, right now.
9. Who’s the best at Tetris.
10. Where do those missing socks go?
Of course, some of these are more pressing than others; I don’t expect Congress to address them all. Some of these concerns have been with us our entire lives—who hasn’t lost a sock in the dryer or stepped on a piece of gum—and life has continued quite nicely; therefore, Congress might well pass some of these items along to future leaders without too much worry. Yet, others.... The pronunciation of “Nuclear” for instance. Does our distinguished leader speak of the same thing I do, when our pronunciations are so subtly different? How about those food items that still possess names that are, if I may, less than homegrown? And, tofu! By golly, the anarchy must stop! When I go into a store, I should not be subject to the whims of the grocery gods. |
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| What are we |
[Jun. 9th, 2006|01:29 pm] |
Here's a poem, conceived during MNP's writing workshop. We pasted words cut from magazines during it, the I finished the poem with some repetition.
But DaVinci Twists & Purple Shouts the Seasons
The Writer whisperer presents the taboo heart to the president
on behalf of a wounded nation, people shattered.
Whole-hearting is heresy in this scamming business.
We should be grateful for snacks and our limps
received in combat.
We are very good at strangling one another with our flags
until our purpled airways collapse. Our taboos
held high above the rising stench.
How many days will not end in such whys?
‘The greatest sacrifice a person can make is to give his (his?) life in service to his country.’
These are the ‘truths’ on behalf of a wounded nation we perpetuate.
Shatter me this, president, oh president, of resolve.
The heresy is the scam.
Whole whisperers are received into combat, seasoned, twisted into snacks.
The taboo heart is nailed
to the tree,
Da Vinci dines with the heretics, and
scamming businesses march onward soldiers.
We should be grateful for our whole hearting, shattered though they may be.
The writer whispers, no more shouts. |
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