Confederate Monuments in New Orleans - 20151217

The New Orleans City Council voted to take ‘em down today.  The Robert E. Lee circle statue was erected over 130 years ago in 1884.  Slave pens and over fifty human auction sites existed twenty years before that.  According to economist Thomas Piketty the Confederacy had more capital wealth than all of Europe during slavery.  The fear of losing the privilege and wealth endowed from that capital cascades through history in the pale ignorant maintenance of a status quo that was never valid and the obstinate denial and failed vulnerability in pockets of humanity to acknowledge that privilege still exists.   

A fellow New Orleans poet A Scribe Called Quess said to the council, “The symbols are the heart of the matter.  The symbols are the reason why we have a disparity fifty percent unemployment for black men – fifty percent.  They are the seed of the ideology that created the systems that keep us enslaved today.”  Another NOLA poet Kataalyst said, “Today we have come to speak about pieces of art. As an artist I have come to the realization that art is meant to push the boundaries of perception. However these particular pieces do nothing but make stagnate of a perception that has been far long outdated. That perception, human beings of a darker hue are made to be less than.”

Those still trapped in the gray-coated illusions of convenience are quick to suggest absolutism: as if this means the erasure of every cultural symbol someone might find offensive or that too often valid criticism of a cultural rampage of pompous political correctness.  This is not political correctness.  This is attempting to eradicate a visual tax-funded vestige of the greatest sin the world has ever known.  

I am proud the City Council let the people speak before voting.  I am proud of the poets burning a confederate flag on that monument before Charleston and who will continue to raise the beautiful African voice of New Orleans long after.  I flipped on the giant a.m. station to tap in on my drive home to hear what might be another sided reaction.  I heard the bewildered frustration of a receding step-stool grinding down into wood dust.  The what-is-the-point, the latent get-a-job, all-lives-matter mental plug that prevents the empathy to see from a perspective that excludes that step-stool, as if the lowering of Lee’s perch threatened a vantage point, an overlook, and harkens the fear a man like Trump stirs not-so alien to that of a revolt on a plantation when you are the one standing on the wrap-around porch.

James Baldwin wrote, “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”  Martin Luther King said, “On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”  Today was one more step in a journey about getting it right.  

Eidetic Web - 20151216

There are moments as a father where you realize you have to let go

Not in the normal ways of aging involving freedom or independence

Allowing a daughter to fail for the sake of earning knowledge through error,

But letting go knowing there is no replacement for certain experiences

There are indelible events in a lifetime affirming butterfly wings

Beating winds round hemisphere to scour oceans for organisms

Willing to recognize the differential in temperature

Heat created and energy distributed by the very act of growth

There are moments as a father where you realize you have to let go

To be back, not out of better for anyone, but because the pain you feel

In the absence of that person bearing your genetic material

Of witnessing that growth is an egoistic gift on one wing

A woman needs both to fly and a father cannot put that weight upon

Such a delicate appendage silk-like baring adolescence from the chrysalis

Bleeding enough into this world and a father has to bind his tongue into books

Poetry and a nightfall of seven minutes to a Superdome full of a nation of girls

Spectating a national soccer team, world-cup, last-night end of tour

With another step-of-a-man because seating locations refused to be divulged

Invitations were not offered and the first time a man taught you to kick a ball at your shadow

On fence boards at four and half years old no one was there to see you but me

I got that day and he gets this one; and all the others

Me being in my New Orleans and your mother having her farmed theater root

The onions, bell pepper, and celery and the red beans of a bowl

The two of us at a table quietly in an otherwise empty house two weekends a month

Eleven years old, you and me for seven, not what it looks like, but what it is  

A game, a field, grass in a building carted in, carted out

I keep a pile of all the moments and days you live, that I am not able to be there to see

Usually there is a shadow veiled over the lot, makes it easier to imbibe

Tonight I can picture where you are; I can feel how close

It is like the universe is vibrating in discord and I am trying to hold it still

What it means to love, to exist, to be, to bear witness to another human

Unfold, evolve, recollect and hold specific moments of youth in eidetic web

That as a sexagenarian marching in to help your father in an assisted living center

Seeing the string of what shapes tonight won’t be in there 

You’ll probably be fine, I may be ok, but there is just so much missing 

A Sponge and the Ocean

I have never heard the words

I am sorry

From a lover

Except when accompanied by a goodbye

The pairing is vinous

The dry drink pucker of lips stuck

For the second of a bitten upper lip

Eyes to a shoelace tasting blood curdled hard

The arrangement of fighting

For or against propositional

Like an empath and a narcissist

Imbibing the insecurity blushing the ego

Pain-drenched for the sponge-lover

Paralysis of give and take

One taking on the emotions of the one who will not give

One using the other as a toy to receive

Insatiable adulation for dark crevice validation plaque

Like a siren or a scorpion or crab queen

Teeth, stingers, and pinchers

Absolving the clench of the profoundly wounded the boy is drawn

Quartered insatiable hunger for one to eat away the pain

Toxic muscle tissue regenerative to the bone like ghost-meat

Zombie-love undead growing stronger

Stout connection teeth-into skull of the controlled

Marionette emotional lantern illuminating the country-side staircases

Until the mermaids dive into father-mirrors and slashed-wrist drips

I hope that whole denial thing works out 

Kerplunk

Maybe I wrote all these love poems

Because I wanted one in return so badly

Such a simple concept, lever of the universe

Fulcrum of energy type of deal

I saw in your masks what I wanted to receive

A human worth the receipt of another human’s energy

The invested effort of desire, of appreciation of presence

To lay down time in beads spun straw into words

Poet’s currency expensed in folded dough

Baked in heated letters rising inbox

That warm bath they gave you

Reciprocal all I wanted in return

The destructive force of sensing the appreciation, the bulb of impetus

Beginning to seed in you, not because I wrote

But because you wanted

Like light to stem after thirty consecutive winters

Your words were the hour after solstice

The break in the tide

The fulcrum shifting weight

For that measure of seconds breathing in me like that inch of dawn

I was a man beginning to fill his palms with blood

After holding his arms prostrate, seized and crimped

Hoping for notice that these bones were salvageable

You gave me a ray, a luminescent moment by the top of the stairs

Where I felt like I started to see you as a human being

Wanting me there and I weep in my bed at the beauty in that

Two and half revolutions of the sun later

Still in awe of the depth of how I thought I had found my person

Digesting the illusion, the gallery of costumes in pale skin

Not to harm me, but to preserve the routine of you

Cloistering me cold and wan in placid flour and butter oven-less 

Sterile unfolding this recipe crestfallen and flustered to drain

Days where to see that I pray there is no god, no taunt in this seesaw ambivalence

Thumping kerplunk in your indifference 

Ellipsis - 20151213

There is a barb inside, like an opened safety pin lodged in lungs that I feel on occasion when I breathe a certain way.  There is a drop of blood on the metal needle of the appliance congealed with an encrusted mathematic.  Ribs elongating, tilting the abdomen to stretch back into why I have made certain decisions or felt or perceived other human beings in the manner I did.

I think of your masks, how long you must have practiced wearing them, how I reacted, the haughtiness in my assumptions of witnessing this layered painting coating your inner canvas foundational in oils and emulsions of color, sensing the coats vibrating, pulsing as in ideas of novelty, intimacy, or fear.  It was all so atomic, quantum scale universe type of beads to observe, that daring sort of blasphemous naked.  

That breathing process got complicated in digesting that mask.  You probably show so many a mask allowing them to see what they want to see.  Holding still, against a wall, they do all the magic to spin lipstick into austere-pensive or stage-bombastic.  The illusionist suffers the illusion.  Maybe I had a bigger imagination as a poet or a broken-hearted romantic peering for Shakespeare in a digital theater generation.  I got cold mirrors wiped of shower steam reflecting an empath and a narcissist.  Pondering why I would fall so hard, the clunky teeth and lockjaw.  The nail through the foot of it all. 

I thought about why I wanted your empathy and forgiveness so badly, to explain, realizing how terrible you and the safety pin were for my health.  I realized the indestructibility, the permanence of wanting you to understand, to know, to drink this went way back.  That pull in me was fetal-like, basic human origin story concoction-type of cocktail lubricated in the umbilical.  I couldn’t figure out how you cracked me acorn-like, reactionary not-so-much requested, but a genesis-spark in the ruination of that mask in such a basic impetus dynamic of how one intakes being around another person, breathing, enlivening poetry.  The broken, the egg-like, fissure-shell, and mess-yolk whisked catalyst inspiration from a woman afraid of any punctuation mark besides an ellipsis.

You were a professional mask-wearer, you told me.  You warned me about emotional nihilism.  You saw all the other skulls against the rocks and how you liked and didn’t like to see them thrash the jagged.  The visual and auditory space kept between whomever you actually are and this impression the sailors invent in our heads.  Such a foolish game. 

I know why I did it now; that barbed romantic, writing incessant, the skullduggery of impostor investigative voyeuristic journalism, the embarrassment and the we-all-fuck-up garbage pail.  I know why I did that with you, why you got to me.  Thank you.  I just want to say thank you for those masks and what those rocks taught me.  I don’t blame you.  You have your own journey, but in mine I may always remember you as the woman who helped me see my own mask, who helped me look my fears dead-to-rights dive into a pool of writing and self-examination however queer, degrading, or raw to let go of and grab hold of exactly what I needed.  I am sorry and I thank you.  

Eso - An abundance of oral 20151202

Out here in the Southern woods two hundred miles away, forest, brush fires tittering, tent stakes and long leaf pines wavering in the crepuscular gray.  She and him on a bare blanket, a circle of flagstones heat for the temperature of night falling, gliding panties down across thighs like dilating heavens.

Orange sun lemon drop swirling pink mist as the horizon licks the orb clean.  Secluded water melon patch lush burst vines in the alcove of night approaching a horizontal spine.  The sway of trunks flush in autumn clutch brushing the folded troposphere soiled hands gripping lips with old Mississippi Blues guitar hands.  Tested crackled callused range of experienced fingers rough from the path and tender at the tip, delicate to pluck the chord aching to be struck, a melody of reverberation, vibration, bass guitar and harmonica sass tongue hum, Junior Kimbrough and Muddy Waters, north hill country blues dirty and juke joint, a fat opossum all-star on the lick, the crossroads ghost of Robert Johnson ready to make love in rhythm to hum with bulbous lips Hoochie Coochie feathered duet, the setting kiln of fire in the spread of the sky goddess, puffed and shaven of the day encouraging in twilight rain sponge, modal and undulating in a wave of sky buttocks arched goading the lunar gyration to be gripped with workman hands, strong, firm, and dominant.

Moon thrusts, thrusts, and seeks the song of his mouth, to find repose in the rhythm, to surrender sun to the vulnerable bastion of the lunar to wax across shadowed cloth eternal glorious illuminated reflection of the thigh gates stripping sensations of oxytocin engulfing zone to brain of the universe like cerebral lighting veins across the sky from parting legs to goddess strewn and crackling thunder struck clenching her fingers into clouded sheets of Earth pillow soft and wrenching the rain to explode upon the forest, a deluge of sensation as the rumpus tongue strokes and strokes and strokes, blues country testament ballsy and rhythmic building, building, until the face, the night sugar sweet trouble of moan goes farther and farther past boreal orchestra into dark-skinned Mozart cunilingus.

She and he like wolves, her howling into the echo of firelight.  Him muffled and grunting, guttural canine rough-patched and tongue-tied with the mouth of the world.  Fencing duel, wet like walrus tusks prodigious jaw adept at motioning with her movements.  Pert breasts kept under blouse, sweater and the chill of November clawing to rip fabric and his eyes peer into the darkness bolted against her skin the nest-like muff rustling his mustache.  Everything is open in the dark.  Huffing-pant ex and inhales like a beast is rising out of his arched back lycanthrope devouring her.  Beads of fear and ecstasy drip in the cold heat of the vampiric-hour that the fear of the unknown of what might rampage careening out of these woods with the no one but them becomes an animalistic voyeurism.  The bucks stamp hoofs to rut antlers against trunks.  Bears knock over timber to slam honeycombs from branch to the ground to lick honey and stinger after stinger.  He doesn’t speak English anymore, only tongue and mouth, a hirsute upper lip and the taste of her on this tongue in a beast that still looks hungry. 

Surrender pause echo silence to staccato inhales held, inhaled and held with no audible release but the eek muted vibration of tasting opioid brain waves undulating like entering a hibernation of mind burrowing into the cavern of a body, exiting the skyline, the blanket over roots and held in the quiet of succumbed tongue given felled parry to his rapier in her inner space, the swell of the clitoral wishbone’s radiating tingle in nature’s ocean where sound no longer exists.  

This Week 20151210: Thoughts in My Head Influenced By the Hive

• Zombie Nativity and Bill of Rights manger scenes are like bubbles of free thought staring down the Christmas American juggernaut of ‘everybody is comfortable with this why aren’t you?’ disproportionate taxpayer funding and psychological latitude for the majority’s religion.  Co-worker apologizing for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ as if my views assume some kernel of offense rather than a deeper understanding of the sociological subject matter about ubiquitous acquiescence to the Christ child’s eternal vaginal departure.  December is just December.  Eh to the tree in the lobby.  Distraction, misdirection, magic tricks.  Being together, gathering family, humans, empathy; the rest is icing.
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• Confederate monument removal is the civil war perpetuating a legacy of genocide through complexities embodied in simple-stone physical objects.  Proponents of the status-quo misinterpret structural racism as imaginary or a cop’s quick-trigger black target practice as not about itch-fear of plantation revolt.  Old-time chickens roost in systematic economic and sociological pan-drippings of the Confederacy owning more capital wealth than all of Europe.  The grease is smeared in profits of comfort and black blood.  That stone is built in the dust of dead black bodies, suffering in the name of greed.  Overdue.
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• Medical benefits for 9/11/01 first-responders left to die cancer asbestos zombie firemen left to wither, drop off one-by-one disrespected as if to care for one is to allow a flood gate.  Political game of token concessions support those rushing into the flames until the photo-op, then the picture is blurred.  Fox calls the President a pussy on television.  Obstinate petulant disrespect typically sublimated to the less overt surfacing like shark teeth rather than the dorsal. Stir-up the herd like Trump off the reservation, out of controlled-protocol with the Roger Ailes’ agenda.  Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, America drone pilot video game civilian blood mushroom spores seeking why’s and vengeance, not so much mending bones.  Lone survivor courage disrespected suicide muffled under interstate overpass, millions to helicopter out, no dollars left for self-inflicted bullet to the head, PTSD, cancer, rot-lung, shrapnel-skull.  This war is about empathy and we are losing. 
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• A Republican actually argued with me against the Electoral College system claiming Obama lost the popular vote in both elections.  I tried to explain the Senate, state’s rights; I started on math, and then decided to keep to beer.  Facts, ugh…
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• I like dodgeball; having tea in coffee shops with smart women; looking forward to spending some time with my daughter while she has off from school, seeing Star Wars without mass shooters, the true holiday.  I did sage-pose in yoga and bowled with co-workers while drinking Old Fashioned’s.
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• Paris, bullet-splatter, into climate matters.  Economic transfers, engineering carbon exchanges, investment green technology funds, private-public, carbon-landfills, das-auto’s, coal, gas.  Shift higher percentages towards more vegetarian-based diet; methane cow farts, carbon-created per pound of nutritional intake per human, mathematics, taste-buds, telling an American no or limit marketed consumption, anti-capitalist-Christian 1950’s merger into Reaganomics, Chinese population uprising risk, conference on the extinction of the species, don’t-want-to-hear-it, make our own Ted Cruz-science, Liberal conspiracy, Inviting apocalypse is egging Jesus’ return; red-goad climate crisis; can’t eat smog or breathe cow feces.  Humans…