I’m kind of in a funk about what to write on, not to mention I have some research I need to start working on for spring gardening and landscaping. So I thought I would fall back on something I have already done.
My choice was motivated by a recent piece done on okjimm’s eggroll emporium blog that addressed the value of friendship. It was truly an inspiring piece for me and I encourage those who haven’t read it yet to drop by Jim’s blog here to view it.
So my contribution today revolves around the theme of friendship in a poetic format that I seldom employ – and for good reason. Anyway, enjoy for now and hopefully the muses will drive away those funk-demons that seem to be in charge for now
I think the rock group Dawes is one of the freshest and most inspirational groups around today. Their lyrics are so down to earth and often carry the weight of the ages. Combined with their familiar but pleasant tunes they reveal intimate aspects of our humanity.
Life is an amalgam of events but they have to be viewed independently of each other to show us how we are composed. We may not always like what we see, feeling a sense of hopelessness as the young suicidal adult in this song, or the choices we made like the older and perhaps homeless man. But for others, like the woman in love planning her wedding, she sees the simple pleasure of life in the little details.
In looking at our life from some grandiose perspective we often miss the small bits that make it up and give it its true meaning. A pearl is but a grain of sand when it begins. It is the slow process of time and interaction with other matter that makes it something of value. In the final analysis it’s not the “psychics” and the “doctors” – the priests, the politicians, the gurus or even our own appointed mentors who attempt to hand us our life in a neatly wrapped package. It is the accumulation of daily events intermingled with our hopes and fears, our dreams and hesitancies and our failures and successes that put substance to what is uniquely us as individual human beings.
With his back against the San Francisco traffic,
On the bridges side that faces towards the jail,
Setting out to join a demographic,
He hoists his first leg up over the rail.
A phone call’s made,
Police cars show up quickly.
The sergeant slams his passenger door.
He says, “Hey son why don’t you talk through this with me,
Just tell me what you’re doing it for.”
“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything,
It’s the mountains,
It’s the fog,
It’s the news at six o’clock,
It’s the death of my first dog,
It’s the angels up above me,
It’s the song that they don’t sing,
It’s a little bit of everything.”
There’s an older man stands in a buffet line,
He is smiling and he’s holding out his plate,
And the further he looks back into his timeline,
That hard road always led him to today,
Making up for when his bright future had left him,
Making up for the fact that his only son is gone,
And letting everything out once, His server asks him,
Have you figured out yet, what it is you want?
I want a little bit of everything,
The biscuits and the beans,
Whatever helps me to forget about
The things that brought me to my knees,
So pile on those mashed potatoes,
And an extra chicken wing,
I’m having a little bit of everything.
Somewhere a pretty girl is writing invitations,
To a wedding she has scheduled for the fall,
Her man says, “Baby, can I make an observation?
You don’t seem to be having any fun at all.”
She said, “You just worry about your groomsmen and your shirt-size,
And rest assured that this is making me feel good,
I think that love is so much easier than you realize,
There’s a video making the cyber rounds that many more women have seen I’m sure than men. For obvious reasons. It speaks to the intrusions the state makes on a woman’s personal life that only the most religious fundamentalist would not object to but who would invoke the Almighty himself if that same state imposed restrictions on prayers in public school. It also graphically depicts there are consequences forced on the young girl who feels pressured by the state to carry an unwanted pregnancy to full term.
The video poem has received praise from around the country
MoveOn.org called [it] “the most riveting message on the war on women in under three minutes.” The poem has also been featured on Daily Kos, RH Reality Check and On the Issues Magazine. Along with stunning hate mail, she was nominated for State Poet Laureate, gave a TED talk and has since shared stages with top business leaders, state officials and rock stars. SOURCE
Words are powerful tools. They are to the poet what the hammer and chisel are to the sculpture and the brush and palette are to the painter. They create imagery more powerful than the common expressions most people use in their daily conversations with each other.
Lauren Zuniga’s poem here elicits the deep emotions and concerns of teens and young women who have been traumatized, not only by a brutal sexual encounters but the continued rape of their body by strangers who cannot share their pain as they dictate their actions from the cold marble halls of a state legislature. Laura’s words expressed in the rhythm she uses will capture your emotions and give you a sense of not only the pain these women experience during the sexual assaults on them but the pain any woman would feel if they were required to endure the vaginal probes they are forced to undergo by many state laws if they are contemplating aborting an unwanted pregnancy.
If you’re not simply overwhelmed by her sense of outrage in these verses then you then you might want to check and see if you have a pulse.
To the Oklahoma law makers who will force all women to receive an ultrasound prior to an abortion by Laura Zuniga
Why don’t you print out the ultrasound pictures in pastel framed.
Make me take them home and hang them on my wall as a souvenir of the night that is branded like red coals to flesh on my memory.
The night when his hand pressed so hard against my shoulder blade
I felt more intimacy with asphalt.
Why don’t you knit the baby a sweater. Make me take it out and smell it
on the anniversary of this day for the rest of my life
to remind me that I chose to be a “murderer”,
instead of bringing a child into a world where we kill people in the name of freedom
but imprison people in the name of life.
You could pass laws for that too, you know.
It’s bad enough that I can still see his hand prints on my thighs,
but now I can see your probing eyes
scraping across my cervix, tattooing my womb with shame.
Why don’t you send me a card every Mother’s Day
to remind me of how wretched I am
Sign it, “your friends at the state capital”
making sure you know we actually do something all day with your tax dollars.”
Look, I know it can get boring
between the porkers association breakfast and the oil and gas industry lunch
and I know you need something to do
between screwing up our election system and
passing off your racism as an immigration bill
but I need a little more from you than a piece of paper.
I mean if you really want to show me
that you believe in faith, family and freedom
then why don’t you come along for the ride.
I could have used you that night, after the football game.
Him finally showing me attention, me grasping for acceptance.
Tell me I’m special so when he hands me the next drink
I don’t look to the bottom of it for approval.
Tell me to scream louder so someone might find us.
Wrap me in a blanket when he’s done.
Take me home.
My body, a tapped keg
My heart, the grimy gym floor after the pep rally.
Give me the words to say to my parents
when I come out of the bathroom with a plus sign on the stick
and he won’t even talk to me.
The school hallway is a canyon, silence echos in my skull
and I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.
Sit with me at the clinic
The ticker plucking away at my innocence.
Give me the revelation that the blip on the screen is actually a baby.
Take me home when I change my mind.
Take me to the doctor every month.
Hold my hand in the delivery room.
I will name him after you if will help me do my homework
when he’s crying in the next room.
Give me food stamps, pay my gas bills,
put him in an after school program
where he learns he can sell my pain pills.
Have mercy on him when he goes to court.
Give me strength when they sentence him.
If you want to play God, Mr. and Mrs Lawmakers;
If you want to write your bible on my on my organs
