Back to Poetry

This one was passed on to me by Steven Peele. Who knew the man recites poetry on a regular basis? It's the surprises in life that keep us going.

WHAT YOUR BODY HOLDS AGAINST YOU

could be love in the right proportions. Don't confuse
form and content where a good sense of humor becomes

the kind of curves that makes a room loosen
around her. Look for a woman that listens to music

drifting over a lake, hovering like flies, or someone who will watch
the landscape emptied of azaleas under a setting sun

with you. By forty there is a sideshow of vanities:
the dragon breath you wake to, bones tossed

against your skin like saves, or the flesh that grows
where a waitress tucks her loose change. We measure

time with our lives, counting out the coins
year by year. We all become detectives of broken

hearts in off-season hotels where love and its accoutrements
wait by the roulette wheel for once chance at the big time.

--Laurie Blauner

Quote of the Day

Yesterday it was poetry; today it's a quote by Charles Hartshorne.

"It will eventually be acknowledged that women are wiser than men. The essential proof of female wisdom is that women commit far fewer crimes and antisocial acts."

Word up.

Art Supreme: Elias & Gregg

I am currently listening to Johnathan Elias' "The Prayer Cycle," (thanks to Wade). And this...this is a poem worth reading. Enjoye.

The Precision
By Linda Gregg

There is modesty in nature. In the small
of it and in the strongest. The leaf moves
just the amount the breeze indicates
and nothing more. In the power of lust, too,
there can be a quiet and clarity, a fusion
of exact moments. There is a silence of it
inside the thundering. And when the body swoons,
it is because the heart knows its truth.
There is directness and equipoise in the fervor,
just as the greatest turmoil has precision.
Like the discretion a tornado has when it tears
down building after building, house by house.
It is enough, Kafka said, that the arrow fit
exactly into the wound that it makes. I think
about my body in love as I look down on these
lavish apple trees and the workers moving
with skill from one to the next, singing.

Happy birthday to my lovely and lively Joy Lynn!

Dave Zirin

I went to hear sports journalist & political activist Dave Zirin speak about his new book Welcome to the Terrordome at Cody's Books on 4th street last night. The event was the highlight of my summer thus far. This man is doing incredibly important, virtuous, commendable work. He writes about the "pain and politics" of sports from a social justice, left wing perspective. The man is hillarious, brilliant and one-of-a-kind in his field. He encourages sports fans, in no airy fairy way, to resist the commodification and corporate take over of athletes and play. If you don't know about him and the movement he's a part of, please check out the two things I have posted below.



Being Ali Or Being Owned: An Open Letter to LeBron
By Dave Zirin
At the tender age of 22, you have the galactic talent to make us wonder if a mad scientist had Magic and MJ genetically spliced. But talent ain't wisdom. In a recent interview, you said that your goal in sports was to become "the richest man on earth." You also told ESPN, "I'm trying to be a global icon...on the level of Muhammad Ali."
These dreams are compatible only if you choose to emulate Ali the icon and not Ali the man. Ali the icon is used to sell books, computers, snack foods, and anything not nailed down. Ali the man sacrificed his health, future, and untold millions by standing up to racism and war. No one is demanding you do the same. No one is insisting you get in front of a microphone and say, "I aint got no quarrel with them Iraqis."
But you should understand that the reason Ali remains a "global icon" is precisely because he didn't define himself by his corporate sponsors. When his handlers told him to stop throttling the golden goose of fame he said, "Damn the money! Damn the white man's money!"
Evidence is accumulating that this won't become the King James catchphrase of choice.
Your teammate Ira Newble tried to get every member of the Cavs to sign a letter calling on China to stop exacerbating the genocide in Darfur by dealing arms to the government. "There's innocent people dying, and it's just a tragedy to stand back and let them do what they're doing," Newble said.
One of Newble's inspirations take a stand has been the person he "idolized as a child": Muhammad Ali. That would be Ali the man, not the brand.
Newble stuffed fact sheets and articles in the lockers of every member on the team. He organized almost the entire squad to sign a letter that reads in part, "We, as basketball players in the N.B.A. and as potential athletes in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, cannot look on with indifference to the massive human suffering and destruction that continue in the Darfur region of Sudan." Larry Hughes signed. "Big Z," Zydrunas Ilgauskas signed. Drew Gooden signed.
Only two people refused and one was you. Nike, with whom you have a $90 million shoe deal, does business with China so you treated that letter like Dick Cheney treats a salad.
[There's no guarantee the young Ali would have signed this letter either. He may very well have said he wouldn't sign any letter telling China to get out of Darfur until the US was out of Iraq. After all this was a man who said, "The real enemy of my people is here." But one thing is for certain: "show me the money" would not have trumped "damn the money." No way.]
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader also tried to give you the chance to walk the Ali path. He sent you a public invitation to a forum about conditions in Nike factories. In the letter, Nader wrote,
"Mr. James, you are in a unique position to stand up for the people who make the products you endorse and to make the world a better place in the process. You can improve their working conditions in the contracted factories and pressure the entire sports shoe and apparel industry to change."
You replied to the press: "No, I haven't responded to it. But I think Nike's a great company and they would respond if need be."
The shoe wars continued in March in New York, when you dissed and dismissed Stephon Marbury's $14.98 sneaker line. You, whose signature Nikes go for $150, were asked whether you would ever sell a shoe that didn't cost a week's pay at McDonalds. You said, "No, I don't think so. Me being with Nike, we hold our standards high."
Marbury answered your words with the underreported smackdown of the season, saying, "I'd rather own than be owned." Damn.
Jim Brown once explained the allure of Ali in the 1960s this way: "White folks could not stand free black folks. White America could not stand to think that a sports hero that it was allowing to make big dollars would have the courage to stand up like no one else and risk, not only his life, but everything else that he had."
The choice you face is frankly quite stark: how free to do you want to be? Do you want to be "King James of Nike Manor" or the King of the World? Only by refusing to be owned, only by displaying independence from the very corporate interests that enrich you, will you ever make the journey from brand to three dimensional man.

Accreditation

Any credible academic institution
must undergo accreditation
every ten years. My school is currently preparing for
this arduous process by compiling data that either
confirms our consistency in relation to
or calls attention to our inconsistency with
the mission and goals we profess to guide our work.

Because I am a student worker in the office of the president,
I have been asked to use my 20 hours a week
to help prepare the report
before the accrediting team arrives in
September to see things for themselves.

My specific task is to hyperlink the data
(visual, charts, graphs, statistical analysis)
component of the report
to the narrative
(written explanation in paragraph form)
component of the report.

I am, in essence, making the walk match the talk, on screen.
Really: it's just a click away.
I must, of course, first convert and transfer all kinds of documents.
And you must, of course, first slip the disc into the drive,
and hope your PC or Mac likes the disc,
and hope adobe acrobat (or adobe reader--based on your budget) behave,
and, of course, you must be able to understand, interpret, and make decidicions about (without ever having actually seen the students, faculty, administration, staff, buildings, curriculum, & classes in question)
the data.

But first off: i have to learn these conversion & transfer tricks.

Lincoln left yesterday.
Funny how the professional often mimics the personal.
How do you hyperlink lovers
across freeways
or air traffic lines
over minutes, days, & months of uncertainty?
There's data and then there's narrative
but they are off screen
and intertwined--already--so
our chances of passing the accreditation process
are high because
the mission and goals we profess to guide our work
were dually chosen
and no one is coming, except ourselves in the future,
to judge the (in)consistencies.

But first off: we have to learn these conversion & transfer tricks.

Antonio Taguba

This guy was my hero a few years ago. Why didn't he take Rumsfeld's spot?



Please read about his bravery, and the corruption of his colleagues, in Seymour Hersh's June article of the New Yorker entitled "The General's Report." I can't help, after having read the piece, wondering if anything can be done to stop the current administration.

Please do this...

SafeHouse, a non-profit organization and transitional housing facility in San Francisco for women leaving prostitution, has entered the final round of a competition to secure program funds. I did my internship at SafeHouse last year and continue to run a group there on thursday nights. I know personally how badly this money is needed, and HOW EASY it is for you to help: it's just a click of the mouse.

Please hit this link and cast your vote for SafeHouse:
http://www.searchkindly.org/
You can vote every 8 hours between now and sunday.

Will you forward this opportunity on please?
Thank you, in advance, for your service to the women of SafeHouse.
Peace,
Emily Joye

Subversion

Just in case you haven't, please visit: http://sewpeace.wordpress.com/
It's the blog of my heart. I posted this particular essay at the Seminarians to End War site last month, but figure I should place it here too. It's a nice deviation from the Plath-ish (read: pathetic) poetry I've been producing as of late. Agh seasons...


Subverting the Ends and Means of Perpetual War

In their recent publication Multitude, authors Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put forth the idea that perpetual war has become the political modus operandi of the global empire. A current “state of exceptionalism” (applied in general by global networks but most specifically embodied in the political strategies and actions of the US) is part and parcel of this perpetual war paradigm. They cite this exceptionalism by locating its function in both legal and national behavior. A “state of exception” happens when, in a time of national upheaval, the constitution is “suspended temporarily and extraordinary powers given to a strong executive or even a dictator in order to protect the republic.” (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. (Penguin Books, NY: 2005) 7) This is the legal form of exception. The national form happens when any given nation state considers itself a) an exception to the rule of universal law and/or b) exceptional in its definition as superior over and above other nation states. Hardt and Negri contend the current disposition and political action of the US fits into this national “state of exception(alism).” In recent years, especially with regards to the US invasion of Iraq, we have both claimed our exceptionalism by assuming our supposed role as ambassadors of democracy and by preemptively striking Iraq without UN support.

Twentieth century neo-Marxist philosophers have often maintained that the ideology of super-structure is maintained by cooperation of ideological state apparatuses. (I am drawing here largely from the work of Louis Althusser.) These ideological state apparatuses must enforce the means of production and the conditions for reproduction that keep such an ideology afloat. Needless to say, in a state/world of perpetual war—and herein the ideology of super structure maintains that war is ontological—ideological state apparatuses must enforce means of production and conditions for reproduction that sustain the war industry. The war industry, though mostly dependent on the development of weapons, relies on various means and conditions: communication networks, political systems, rigid understandings of boundaries, the willingness of men and womyn to serve in the military, etc. This large spectrum of dependency creates an environment in which social apparatuses are largely responsible for and participants in perpetual war.

An ideological state apparatus can be two things: 1) an institution or group that is commissioned by and operative on behalf of the state, i.e. public universities, governments, police, etc and 2) an institution or group located within a particular state, though not commissioned by or operative on behalf of the state, that participates in the construction of infrastructure, public life & opinion, and social networking, i.e. non-profits, churches, private schools, etc. Again, the ideology of the super structure (in our case: “democracy,” capitalism, and “free speech”) is maintained when all ideological state apparatuses work in unison to upkeep the means of production and conditions for reproduction. The ideology of the super structure becomes vulnerable when one or two or three or four ideological state apparatuses start dancing out of sync.

Ideology is produced in a myriad of ways though we often assume word-systems are primarily responsible for the construction and deconstruction of ideology. While it is true that slogans such as “These colors don’t run” and “God is not a republican or a democrat”, documents such as The Communist Manifesto and Letter from Birmingham Jail, and speeches from the mouths of Malcolm, Stanton and Mao certainly participate in the ideological life of peoples, words are not solely responsible for ideology. Symbols systems and communal rituals also have the potential to enforce means of production and the conditions for reproduction. So now Christians, I hope your eyes and brain cells are waking up!

The Church in America is an ideological state apparatus. We do not work for the state, in fact in regards to the topic at hand we should be working against it, but because of our location in state territory we are participants in and susceptible to American ideology. Further, just because we are located in a certain nation state does not mean our allegiance must be given thereto. If our God is one whose love is not limited by borders, skin types, religious affiliations or mistakenness of human action—and really, isn’t that what grace implies?—then our attempts to be human in the image of God must mirror this limitless love. Our allegiance is not to the state, our allegiance is to love. And let us be clear about one thing: love is the opposite of war. If we believe that God came so that we may have life and have it more abundantly, then we simply cannot dance in sync with perpetual war. It is our duty, therefore, as the Church in America, as an acknowledged ideological state apparatus, to subvert the contemporary super structure. Our word systems, symbol systems and communal rituals must negate the role of violence and war in global politics.

I wonder, what does this mean for the way we have done worship? Can we continue to elevate a sign of politically-sanctioned torture as our dominant Christian symbol? Can we ever sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” or even allow this song to be reprinted in our hymnals? What about continuing the theological characteristics of God as vengeful, jealous, desiring the ‘victory’ and full of wrath? If we save these religious vestiges for the virtue of preserving tradition we are putting our stamp of approval on the super structure’s fascination with and reliance on mayhem.

Water Creature

arising out of the lake,

like a water-creature

ravenously hungry and

capable of ripping apart any flesh with breath

(especially one of domestic familiarity)

she peeps and screens the scene

dreadfully anticipating the slightest

error or offense

because

if in fact

a mistaken step

cacophonous sound

or outright slap should surface

she will punish

in all the ways they have told her

she dare not

why

because they signed her up to hate

every morsel, orifice and vulnerability

she can identify

at home

in herself

and around the town

as a result

somewhere along the way

she could no longer recognize

her kept quiet desire from their

artificially-activated, addict-producing want want want

though it grew larger and larger

like a cancer come to kill her

so

once a month

twelve times a year

or not nearly enough

based on your measuring apparatus

she does things no one understands

(though they understand it enough—apparently—to call her “crazy”)

like faking delirium

instead of putting up with everyone’s unconscious hysteria

screaming/singing/crying/fucking/dancing/fighting/laughing

instead of

curtsying/silencing/pretending/swallowing/lying/half-smiling

dying.

she

punishes the want

by letting loose the desire

and she bleeds

for all to shamelessly—

for all in the dehydrated/starving—

se(a)e