[fiction, instead of lies]

I got an email the other day from someone who wanted to know why I hadn’t linked to them on LinkedIn. This is the kind of thing that happens to me; the person is an engineer – awesome job, btw – but has no book affiliation. I am a reader and writer and so the people with whom I connect, are, for the most part, readers and writers, whether they’re the head of their Friends of the Library group, or they’re small press editors or copywriters for insurance companies. Readers. Writers. LinkedIn is for business purposes, I always thought. But, I was wrong.

“Why didn’t you friend me on LinkedIn?” he wanted to know.

“I’m your actual friend,” I argued. “How can you be mad about what happens on a computer?”

social media

to those who now “friend:”
where were you lot when I was
sidelined in high school?

fan mail

“I just think you’re cool.”
A writer can never have
Enough words like that

my many-colored ways

roses are red and
wallflowers are rainbow bright
but no one sees them

People don’t always recognize racism. My friend “Molly” and I, in high school, always joked about her relatives – I had to joke, because I was so horrified at the, “your people” comments that laughing seemed to be the best way through it – we always joked that her aunt was a benevolent racist. As in, “Gosh, look how nice I am, to put up with your shortcomings as a spokesmodel for your race!” Here I come to find out that there’s a sociological descriptive for it – benign. Scientific American explains it for benign sexism. And I am backwards applying it to my high school self for benign racism.

Okay, honestly, there’s no such thing. Racism is corrosive internally or externally, there is no benign. And, when I hear things like, “You’ll have such cute babies,” I can understand how people think they’re saying something nice. Still, though… Dear, People, let me be clear: YOU ARE NOT saying something nice.

Number One, my metaphorical babies are MY business. Please see to your own, and stop talking about my reproductive organs/issues/choices as if they are yours. What if I’m not having babies?? Number Two, the assumption that my babies will be spectacularly beautiful JUST because they’re biracial is …wow, so troubling. Is it the civilizing Caucasian influence alleviating the savage animalism of African Americanism? Is it the perky jive and Soul Train divaism alleviating the oppressive white-breadedness of being Caucasian? Are you possibly building a race, and trying out the idea of hybrid vigor?

Oh, don’t answer. Just… think before you speak.

Not So Adorable

If I had wanted
My baby’s looks to suit you,
I would have had YOURS

call me ishmael

“I like a little
chocolate,” he said, and I
thought of homicide

she meant no insult

“Perfectly toasted.
Means not burnt, and not too raw.”
Man lives not by bread.

the test

as long as brown girls
still pick out the whitest doll
we still have issues

Viva la unexpected. It rained hardly a drop until the end of March, and then it poured through the first full week of April. Yesterday was all moody pewter skies, and then last night a wind kicked up and the Great Blow has been ongoing. I am watching the rose bushes whip around, and irritated hummingbirds being flung about. So this is what March was supposed to have brought us – lion roaring rain and winds, fading to lamb-like calm. I’m intrigued by the chaos, and what else April will bring.

For me, it will bring the “bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy” sort of chaos. I’m going to spend Wednesday with the Tiggers – my nephews, whose tops are made out of rubber, and whose bottoms are made out of springs. I generally call them the Wee Men, but sadly, they are not blue. They’re short, beguiling, amusing, and adorable. They are also loud, and speedy, sly and quarrelsome. With the exception of the fact that they cannot be bribed with whiskey or carry off an entire sheep, they’re a lot like the Nac Mac Feegles. (I shall refer to them from henceforth as Wee Mad Arthur and Daft Wullie.)

They’re a curious, lively handful. Their older sister, twenty years their senior – made up a mock adoption ad about them for one of her graduate projects – we told her it was a delayed sibling rivalry reaction. We truly adore them, but often stand around and wonder, “Were we this busy, this bouncy, at four and five?” We all agree – no. Not us. Never.

to ma wee dafties

will ye nae sit doon?
yer constant squabblin’ willna
return your DS

the book auntie, thwarted

I dreamed of an aunt
Who loved books. Today’s requests
are, “Nintendo, please!”

sweet dreams

noodle-limp you nap
draped where you dropped. Darling boys Guiltily,
auntie is relieved.

The least welcome thing about when it stops raining is seeing what a mess it’s made – and keeps making – of the windows. I should give up and just clean them in July, but with my luck, it’d rain then, too. I always think about the peculiarly filthy residue left on a car – and boots – after snow. Hard to remember such crystalline beauties form around a speck of … dirt.

:sigh:

Back to scrubbing.

life has no Swiffer®
world begrimed with ancient dust
seen through a dark glass.

Because, I can pay my bills, with a surfeit. Because I can choose not to spend. Because I have choices, when others are denied them. Because it is a good thing to give thanks.

in praise of adequacy

enough is as good as
“I shall not want,” in pastures of hip-high green,
a feast, enough is as
“Sufficient unto the day,” replete just now -
good as a feast. enough
Tears bring a morning perspective. Life, brimming,
is as good as a feast.
Enough.

I have a friend who has an almost Victorian fascination with hands – Victorian, in that they’re just out there to look at, like our ankles are now, and you wouldn’t think they’d be such a thing, but for that friend, they are. Who knows what turns our dials and prods our buttons. Who knows what makes the human machine whirr, and beep, and blink.

So, hands have been a lot on my mind today, especially in thinking of a friend today who only allowed me to photograph a portrait of his hand – like me, he isn’t particularly photogenic, and his charm is hard to capture. A hand portrait leaves charm largely to the viewer’s imagination. When you have only the slightest glimpse of someone you love, your imagination carries you.

I hate pictures of my hands – they look like fat little starfish. Tech Boy, predictably, disagrees. (I suppose he’d better.) To me, the hands of newborns look like the paws of small rodents – moles and the like – and the hands of the elderly are like road maps… wrinkled topographies telling where they’ve come from, and where we are all going.

So, that’s what’s on my mind today, hands, and love. And I have no idea what kind of haiku is going to come out of this blender…

missing

one heart snagged by chance
catch. Please return intact – may
shatter if opened

But, maybe my heart hasn’t gone wandering. Maybe it was stolen.

indomitable

smash-and-grab looter
five-fingered his discount, but
somehow, it still beats.

A month or so ago, a national leader passed away after a long struggle with cancer. His death caused comment up and down the political spectrum because of his relationship to the former presidential administration, etc. etc. — it was politics. However, his death wasn’t covered in my friend L’s small-town paper. Instead, there were the usual stories on football and street cleaning. They went on, in a small-town way, not letting the larger world interfere in their small-town mindset.

Contrast that to the paper this morning, in my small town, where the headline reads “North Korean amps up the rhetoric!” Phrases like “saber rattling” are being tossed around to explain a direct “threat to Hawaii, and the whole West Coast!” Whether or not we believe in this threat isn’t the issue; someone believes for us, and is trying to sell us on fear. A different small-town mindset, pandering to a different set of beliefs.

The word “rhetoric” in that headline resonated, reminding me of the Sting song that came out in junior high – Russians, with that lovely, haunting theme from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé’s suite, “Romance.” Not only was I impressed with Sting’s awesome classical music chops, it was the first time I realized that British people pronounced “hysteria” in quite a different way than I did (☺!)… The song reminds us that, once upon a time, Russia was indeed the great Cold War boogeyman, and the lyrics reflects all of the intense crazy of that time:

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy
There is no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children, too.

The artist was quoted as saying that he’d written the song after watching an episode of Sesame Street in Russian from a pirated satellite TV link, and realizing how much went into children’s programming, even in a place characterized by the political media as scary and bad. The comprehension leap from there was simple – even as we love our own, they love their own. Better not to forget this. Best to keep the faces of innocence firmly in mind

flagrant*

plainly flammable
tinder words piled on platforms
and all parties lose

The Latin word for blazing is flagrante, as in, in flagrante delicto; in blazing offense.

dry docked

synchronized skimmers,
bright mermaid fins flip. Damp in
the shallow end, I
waved my arms, and thought I swam.
tankini queens squeal
at cannonball splashes; preen
sidle, prattle and
pose for pairings while solo,
on the side, I clutch
my dry snorkel set, waiting
for a lane to clear.

I was thinking recently that some of my favorite poetry is about the Other in society, fiction and literature. Jane Yolen’s Once Upon is a firm favorite, as it reminds us of the ways in which the Other sometimes threatens us – and the lengths to which we go in order to overcome the Other and “win” the safety of similitude.

Michele Norris is a journalist, a familiar voice for years on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and now a guest host and special correspondent. Norris recently took a sabbatical from NPR to work on a book and research her family roots, and during that research, trying to find herself, Michele found the American Other, the oldest elephant in an increasingly crowded living room is – the country’s discourse on race, and ownership on how we racially identify. Norris has tapped into this minefield with her Race Card Project, the six word glimpses of people’s thoughts on race.

A lot of Others in this project – and a lot of “othering.” A lot of fodder for poetry, too, in the voices of the hidden majority, uncomfortably angry, fragile, hopeful.

Sometimes, I think we’re all just trying to understand the rules, while others try to make them for us.

Here’s to keeping faith with who we are, and who we allow others to be, and swimming solo if we have to.

Poetry can be a political rallying cry. The American Academy of Poets curates their online collection for topical poems, and many are available. Until she realized she had no words for some of the stupidity going on in the government, my friend Elaine wrote political poetry. (Poetry on bailouts – not something you find everyday.) Langston Hughes used political speech in a lot of his poems which don’t get read in school. They’re flat out pissed-off and furious, not giving off that cool cat Harlem Renaissance vibe we’ve been led to believe was all Hughes stood for. These are wistfully violent.

While I am keenly aware of people in most ways, I am not very political – that is not to say that I’m not opinionated, but that I don’t deal with people in the political arena. Ironic, since the word is from the Greek politikos “of, for, or relating to citizens.” More often than not, I can’t relate to the jostling, influencing, and conniving for power, gain, and position, and when the talking starts, I’d rather been in another room. Media outlets swirl with talk of gun legislation, North Korea, the papacy, congressional hearings, economy crashes, rights to marriage, and late night television host wars, and I find I mainly want them to shut up.

Carson

Work, or befriend silence:
While “gifted hands” are idle,
Mouth embarrasses.

Or,

if you can’t say something nice

It’s golden, silence,
and duct tape’s fix, illegal.
No comment? Perfect.

Also,

an institution is a sociological construct

you don’t really care
if I marry. if I love;
fear is contagious.

And, on that cranky note…

Yesterday I thought it was April 1, which was kind of hilarious for a moment, as I tried to figure out how Easter and April Fools had collided. I certainly blamed the downpour we had on the date – figuring April Fools Day was the reason they had to call off Easter Egg hunts. I was relieved to note that it was only me thinking that – as usual. It was still pouring this morning when I got the normal spate of silly emails this morning (my favorite from my very hippie Dharma Trading Company promising it was going all-digital with no humans working at the company any longer) and so the world righted itself. We have puddles, and we have poetry.

Every year I think I don’t have time to do this — but every year, the act of writing a poem a day for a month, in primarily the haiku genre, because honestly, I should be doing paid work at least SOMETIMES – reminds me that stretching ourselves in various ways always improves things. I ended up writing some stuff last year that I actually liked, but hadn’t thought to look back at until now. I like doing this. It gives me a … sort of a …journal for my life at that time, in tiny little haiku snapshots. And so, we’re celebrating together: a month of poetry. Welcome to it.

steam swirls from back steps
sun-kissed, redwood deck exhales
warmer, brighter days.

Happy April.