We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
domenica 25 maggio 2008
Courage, by Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
giovedì 22 maggio 2008
A ruga entre os versos
eu vou tentar explicar:
uma planta com folhas verdes nasceu no meu vaso de cactos,
choveu, ventou, a semente foi parar no meu vaso de cactos,
nasceu a planta, quatro folhas verdes, novas, no vaso de cactos.
eu vou tentar explicar:
fico com vergonha sempre que me sinto tímido, torto, sem jeito,
passei por muito da vida tentando parar de parecer torto, sem jeito,
foi pai, foi mãe e eu sempre tentava de tudo, torto, sem jeito.
eu não consigo explicar
eu repito as palavras,
eu escorrego nelas,
e caio no chão sem palavras.
ou entre as linhas.
linhas em branco são linhas sem nada.
mas nada passa em branco.
mercoledì 21 maggio 2008
cançons de amor i droga
50 songs of love and drugs, by pepe sales, translated from catalan by dariush (who doesn't speak catalan). Originals - www.pepesales.org. Albert Pla performing them in Spanish - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr4ZHri5Kvs.
7.
sperm
talking about love well i don't know what to say
i'm all alone here hugging my pillow
the angel passed by last night
i lie here looking at the stains on the sheets
32.
river in the wood
it's midnight
i don't know what's going on
it's midnight
i don't know what's up with me
it's midnight
and the dog says to me
it's midnight
and i understand what he's saying
it's midnight
tonight there's a party
it's midnight
you've got to come
it's midnight
everyone's here
it's midnight
a party of wolves
it's midnight
aooouuu, aooouuu
50.
alexander the great
i am the keeper of the superpiglet
that ploughs up the earth for me
that ploughs up the soil in the fields of white flowers
where each night i go to sing
under the light of the stars
i think i'm alexander the great
under the light of the stars
i think i'm alexander the great
riding by night
alexander the great
venerdì 16 maggio 2008
escapada e contraescapada 40 anos após mai 68
escapade
hoje, às 6 da tarde, eu escapei do meu DNA.
ele estava distraído criando um calo no estômago,
igual ao que tinha minha avó quando comia nozes
e eu fugi, saí correndo com as pernas do meu vizinho
muito mais ageis que as minhas
fiz planos com a ousadia da puta velha da rua
respirei fundo com o pulmão do vendedor de gás
e senti o entusiasmo dos meus amigos hedonistas
que nunca sentiram o efeito de nem sequer uma célula da
minha família
senti o coração, a alma, a cabeça e todas as roupas que
vestia
todas desabotoadas, e esvoaçando ao vento.
quis parar para repousar minha coluna da vendedora de pipoca do cinema
mas esbarrei no tornozelo torto do meu tio.
era ele, o carrasco em espiral, que me botava de volta na coleira.
contrescarpe
40 anos no deserto
maio de 1968, maio de 2008
pela praça da contrescarpe
desço a rue mouffetard
e compro um melão caro
por não conseguir me desviar
do mercador
todo imigrante, todo parisiense
como o melão – truculento
espirrando sementes na última barricada
pela praça da contrescapade
subo a rua mais tarde
minha boca fica doce
hoje, às 6 da tarde, eu escapei do meu DNA.
ele estava distraído criando um calo no estômago,
igual ao que tinha minha avó quando comia nozes
e eu fugi, saí correndo com as pernas do meu vizinho
muito mais ageis que as minhas
fiz planos com a ousadia da puta velha da rua
respirei fundo com o pulmão do vendedor de gás
e senti o entusiasmo dos meus amigos hedonistas
que nunca sentiram o efeito de nem sequer uma célula da
minha família
senti o coração, a alma, a cabeça e todas as roupas que
vestia
todas desabotoadas, e esvoaçando ao vento.
quis parar para repousar minha coluna da vendedora de pipoca do cinema
mas esbarrei no tornozelo torto do meu tio.
era ele, o carrasco em espiral, que me botava de volta na coleira.
contrescarpe
40 anos no deserto
maio de 1968, maio de 2008
pela praça da contrescarpe
desço a rue mouffetard
e compro um melão caro
por não conseguir me desviar
do mercador
todo imigrante, todo parisiense
como o melão – truculento
espirrando sementes na última barricada
pela praça da contrescapade
subo a rua mais tarde
minha boca fica doce
mercoledì 14 maggio 2008
Finalement Rumi, Paris
Le coeur est un jardin secret
où se cachent des arbres
Il manifeste cent formes,
mais il n'a qu'une seule forme.
C'est un océan immense,
sans limites et sans rives
Cent vagues s'y brisent:
les vagues de chaque âme.
où se cachent des arbres
Il manifeste cent formes,
mais il n'a qu'une seule forme.
C'est un océan immense,
sans limites et sans rives
Cent vagues s'y brisent:
les vagues de chaque âme.
lunedì 5 maggio 2008
Eielson - ser artista
Es convertir un objeto cualquier
En un objeto mágico
Es convertir la desventura
La imbecilidad y la basura
En un manto luminoso
Es padecer día y noche
De una enfermedad deslumbrante
Es saborear el futuro
Oler la inmensidad
Palpar la soledad
Es mirar mirar mirar mirar
Es escuchar el canto de Giotto
El sollozo de Van Gogh
El grito de Picasso
El silencio de Duchamp
Es desafiar a la razón
A la época
A la muerte
Es acariciar mujer e hijos
Como si fueran telas y pinceles
Es acariciar telas y pinceles
Como si fueran armas de combate
Es acariciar armas de combate
Como si fueran tubos de colores
Es acariciar tubos de colores
Como si fueran pájaros vivos
Es pintar el cielo estrellado
Como si fuera un basural
Es pintar un basural
Como si fuera el cielo estrellado
Es vivir como un príncipe
Siendo solamente un hombre cualquiera
Es vivir como un hombre cualquiera
Siendo solamente un príncipe
Es jugar jugar jugar jugar
Es cubrirse la cabeza de azul ultramar
Es cubrirse el corazón de rojo escarlata
Es jugarse la vida por una pincelada
Es despertar todos los días
Ante una tela vacía
Es no pintar nada
Um manancial de eielson: http://eielson.perucultural.org.pe/indice.htm
En un objeto mágico
Es convertir la desventura
La imbecilidad y la basura
En un manto luminoso
Es padecer día y noche
De una enfermedad deslumbrante
Es saborear el futuro
Oler la inmensidad
Palpar la soledad
Es mirar mirar mirar mirar
Es escuchar el canto de Giotto
El sollozo de Van Gogh
El grito de Picasso
El silencio de Duchamp
Es desafiar a la razón
A la época
A la muerte
Es acariciar mujer e hijos
Como si fueran telas y pinceles
Es acariciar telas y pinceles
Como si fueran armas de combate
Es acariciar armas de combate
Como si fueran tubos de colores
Es acariciar tubos de colores
Como si fueran pájaros vivos
Es pintar el cielo estrellado
Como si fuera un basural
Es pintar un basural
Como si fuera el cielo estrellado
Es vivir como un príncipe
Siendo solamente un hombre cualquiera
Es vivir como un hombre cualquiera
Siendo solamente un príncipe
Es jugar jugar jugar jugar
Es cubrirse la cabeza de azul ultramar
Es cubrirse el corazón de rojo escarlata
Es jugarse la vida por una pincelada
Es despertar todos los días
Ante una tela vacía
Es no pintar nada
Um manancial de eielson: http://eielson.perucultural.org.pe/indice.htm
Atoms and the void
This is a moment where this blog
so disrupted
and yet mirroring glimpses of
life between the stanzas
meets the different blog
prolegomena to any ontology...
haunted by the spirit of e.e.cummings,
hume, lucrecius.
Nothing Exists Per Se Except Atoms And The Void
But, now again to weave the tale begun,
All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists
Of twain of things: of bodies and of void
In which they're set, and where they're moved around.
For common instinct of our race declares
That body of itself exists: unless
This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,
Naught will there be whereunto to appeal
On things occult when seeking aught to prove
By reasonings of mind. Again, without
That place and room, which we do call the inane,
Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go
Hither or thither at all- as shown before.
Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declare
It lives disjoined from body, shut from void-
A kind of third in nature. For whatever
Exists must be a somewhat; and the same,
If tangible, however fight and slight,
Will yet increase the count of body's sum,
With its own augmentation big or small;
But, if intangible and powerless ever
To keep a thing from passing through itself
On any side, 'twill be naught else but that
Which we do call the empty, the inane.
Again, whate'er exists, as of itself,
Must either act or suffer action on it.
Or else be that wherein things move and be:
Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;
Naught but the inane can furnish room.
And thus, Beside the inane and bodies, is no third
Nature amid the number of all things-
Remainder none to fall at any time
Under our senses, nor be seized and seen
By any man through reasonings of mind.
Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt,
Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,
Or see but accidents those twain produce.
A property is that which not at all
Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
Without a fatal dissolution: such,
Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow
To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
Intangibility to the viewless void.
But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,
Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else
Which come and go whilst Nature stands the same,
We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.
Even time exists not of itself; but sense
Reads out of things what happened long ago,
What presses now, and what shall follow after:
No man, we must admit, feels time itself,
Disjoined from motion and repose of things.
Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment
Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack
Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not
To admit these acts existent by themselves,
Merely because those races of mankind
(Of whom these acts were accidents) long since
Irrevocable age has borne away:
For all past actions may be said to be
But accidents, in one way, of mankind,-
In other, of some region of the world.
Add, too, had been no matter, and no room
Wherein all things go on, the fire of love
Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal
Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast,
Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife
Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse
Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth
At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.
And thus thou canst remark that every act
At bottom exists not of itself, nor is
As body is, nor has like name with void;
But rather of sort more fitly to be called
An accident of body, and of place
Wherein all things go on.
Lucretius
and nevertheless
possibilia - dressed in the immanent knicker
that is assembled by sheer life - creeps in'
even in the void between the voids.
so disrupted
and yet mirroring glimpses of
life between the stanzas
meets the different blog
prolegomena to any ontology...
haunted by the spirit of e.e.cummings,
hume, lucrecius.
Nothing Exists Per Se Except Atoms And The Void
But, now again to weave the tale begun,
All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists
Of twain of things: of bodies and of void
In which they're set, and where they're moved around.
For common instinct of our race declares
That body of itself exists: unless
This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,
Naught will there be whereunto to appeal
On things occult when seeking aught to prove
By reasonings of mind. Again, without
That place and room, which we do call the inane,
Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go
Hither or thither at all- as shown before.
Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declare
It lives disjoined from body, shut from void-
A kind of third in nature. For whatever
Exists must be a somewhat; and the same,
If tangible, however fight and slight,
Will yet increase the count of body's sum,
With its own augmentation big or small;
But, if intangible and powerless ever
To keep a thing from passing through itself
On any side, 'twill be naught else but that
Which we do call the empty, the inane.
Again, whate'er exists, as of itself,
Must either act or suffer action on it.
Or else be that wherein things move and be:
Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;
Naught but the inane can furnish room.
And thus, Beside the inane and bodies, is no third
Nature amid the number of all things-
Remainder none to fall at any time
Under our senses, nor be seized and seen
By any man through reasonings of mind.
Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt,
Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,
Or see but accidents those twain produce.
A property is that which not at all
Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
Without a fatal dissolution: such,
Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow
To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
Intangibility to the viewless void.
But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,
Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else
Which come and go whilst Nature stands the same,
We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.
Even time exists not of itself; but sense
Reads out of things what happened long ago,
What presses now, and what shall follow after:
No man, we must admit, feels time itself,
Disjoined from motion and repose of things.
Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment
Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack
Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not
To admit these acts existent by themselves,
Merely because those races of mankind
(Of whom these acts were accidents) long since
Irrevocable age has borne away:
For all past actions may be said to be
But accidents, in one way, of mankind,-
In other, of some region of the world.
Add, too, had been no matter, and no room
Wherein all things go on, the fire of love
Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal
Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast,
Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife
Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse
Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth
At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.
And thus thou canst remark that every act
At bottom exists not of itself, nor is
As body is, nor has like name with void;
But rather of sort more fitly to be called
An accident of body, and of place
Wherein all things go on.
Lucretius
and nevertheless
possibilia - dressed in the immanent knicker
that is assembled by sheer life - creeps in'
even in the void between the voids.
Le vin perdu (paul valéry)
Le vin perdu
J'ai, quelque jour, dans l'Océan,
(Mais je ne sais plus sous quels cieux),
Jeté comme offrande au néant,
Tout un peu de vin précieux...
Qui voulut ta perte, " liqueur?
J'obéis peut-être au divin?
Peut-être au souci de mon coeur,
Songeant au sang, versant le vin?
Sa transparence accoutumée
Aprés une rose fumée
Reprit aussi pure la mer...
Perdu ce vin, ivres les ondes!...
J'ai vu bondir dans l'air amer
Les figures les plus profondes...
J'ai, quelque jour, dans l'Océan,
(Mais je ne sais plus sous quels cieux),
Jeté comme offrande au néant,
Tout un peu de vin précieux...
Qui voulut ta perte, " liqueur?
J'obéis peut-être au divin?
Peut-être au souci de mon coeur,
Songeant au sang, versant le vin?
Sa transparence accoutumée
Aprés une rose fumée
Reprit aussi pure la mer...
Perdu ce vin, ivres les ondes!...
J'ai vu bondir dans l'air amer
Les figures les plus profondes...
domenica 4 maggio 2008
How to write about New Orleans
By Lenelle Moïse – in April 23, 2008
I haven’t written because I don’t know
how to write about New Orleans.
Riding through an empty French Quarter
with a white man in a white pick-up truck,
I try to imagine the perfect, narrow streets
full of the millions of Mardi Gras bodies he describes.
Heartbroken, he mumbles that he is ready to leave
this beautiful, ravished place.
Like a lover about to walk out on you, he says,
“I imagine it’s a lot like Detroit here now,a ghost town.”
But it looks to melike even the ghosts have left, have found
happier people to haunt.I have been to Detroit. I know
what happens when white folks
abandon a cracked city. It breaks.I offer a silent prayer:
May the truck driver stay.May his money stay
here and help rebuild.I don’t know what to say about middle-aged Black
people sleeping in tents and frying eggs in hot plates
under the Interstate in downtown New Orleans.
The yoga instructor who points them out to medoes so too casually,
as if she is pointing out
her favorite restaurant, a famous mural or an expensive skyscraper.
“They used to camp out in front of City Hall
but they put up a barbed-wire fence around City Hall
so now they’re here,” she shrugs. She tells me she can't imagine
that they are native New Orleanians.She insists that they are foreign
hobos and out-of-state workers
who migrated here after the storm.She won’t let herself believe that a government
would treat it’s own people like pests but I know better.I ask around.
I find out that many of the Interstate campers are,in fact, the displaced, ignored
and forgotten people
whose houses were destroyed in the flood. People whose public housing
buildings were torn down so landowners could build condos.
I tell another somber poet what I've seen.
She says,“There is something so permanent about a tent.”
How do I describe walking into a transformed Superdome?
With purple lights shining on stadium seats and a hot pink vagina
spread loud and luscious across the wide, main stage.
Sound never stops travelingso everywhere I go I hear
Katrina's blood-curdling screams.
Especially in the bathrooms where, during the storm,
women and girls and boys and men were rapedand terrorized and raped again.
Every step I take in the dome,I remember:
There was anarchy here.
It was a kind of Armageddon.
It was epic.
It was hell.
It was a waking nightmare.
It was a president in deep sleep while people died here.
People held in their urine for days.
People let their bowels loose, choiceless.
People starved.
People waited.
People prayed. People gave up on God here.
People felt that God had given up on the
mand, brave, prayed some more.
I sit with the 1200 homecoming womenof the Gulf South (dubbed Katrina/Rita Warriors) --nanas, mothers, daughters,
church elder-women, aunts, cousins, friendsand women nobody knew.
When activist and lawyer Colette “Coco” Pichon Battle announces
that they will be offered health screenings,
massages, makeovers and childcare
FOR FREE they laugh from their feet.
They sigh with relief.
One of them pushes the air with her palms
and shouts “Hallelujah!”
Another whispers to a friend,
“Nothing like this has ever
happened to me before.”What a gift it is to be heldlike a woman, I think.
Not held uplike a refugee.There are no words for the electric feeling
of squeezing the hands of Suheir Hammad
and Rha Goddess and hi-fiving Alix Olson, my sisters in poetry.
We see each other and are reminded
that all the line breaks we use are a fancy attempt
at saying something as simple as LOVE.
I hug Jane Fonda for an entire minute.
I hug a weeping woman whose name I can't remember
for even longer. It isn't about names or occupations or
orientations or cities of origin or education levels or annual incomes.
It's about open ears, open mouths and open minds.
It's about pumping blood, pumping hearts and peace-loving, pumping fists.
Have I ever said, sung, shouted, screamed
VAGINA this many times in my life?
At the afterparty, I tell Eve Ensler I am in love with her.
I dance with activists from all around the world.
The female DJ plays Prince, “Lady Marmalade,” Queen Latifah,
“Pretty Young Thing,” Aretha, Destiny's Child and “I'm Every Woman.”
I remember Emma Goldman who said, “If I can't dance,
I don't want to be a part of your revolution.” We dance.
I learn that I feel best when I am dancing, connecting,
asking, listening, embracing, holding, grieving, reciting, spreading,
singing loud in a room or tent or arena full of loud, singing voices.
I like knowing that even though I can't hear myself, my voice
contributes to the big, booming, celebratory sound.
I learn that New Orleans is walkableand dangerous, alive and kicking, traumatized
and resilient. Like Haiti.I learn that women all over the world
of different ages, colors, creeds and credentials
want the same things:
to eradicate poverty and fundamentalism,
misogyny and sex trafficking,
U.S. occupations and genital mutilation,
illiteracy and war.
We want to create art
and grassroots coalitions, alternative masculinities
and safe housesand a global movement to end violence against women.
V-Day is my new religion. Amen.
I haven’t written because I don’t know
how to write about New Orleans.
Riding through an empty French Quarter
with a white man in a white pick-up truck,
I try to imagine the perfect, narrow streets
full of the millions of Mardi Gras bodies he describes.
Heartbroken, he mumbles that he is ready to leave
this beautiful, ravished place.
Like a lover about to walk out on you, he says,
“I imagine it’s a lot like Detroit here now,a ghost town.”
But it looks to melike even the ghosts have left, have found
happier people to haunt.I have been to Detroit. I know
what happens when white folks
abandon a cracked city. It breaks.I offer a silent prayer:
May the truck driver stay.May his money stay
here and help rebuild.I don’t know what to say about middle-aged Black
people sleeping in tents and frying eggs in hot plates
under the Interstate in downtown New Orleans.
The yoga instructor who points them out to medoes so too casually,
as if she is pointing out
her favorite restaurant, a famous mural or an expensive skyscraper.
“They used to camp out in front of City Hall
but they put up a barbed-wire fence around City Hall
so now they’re here,” she shrugs. She tells me she can't imagine
that they are native New Orleanians.She insists that they are foreign
hobos and out-of-state workers
who migrated here after the storm.She won’t let herself believe that a government
would treat it’s own people like pests but I know better.I ask around.
I find out that many of the Interstate campers are,in fact, the displaced, ignored
and forgotten people
whose houses were destroyed in the flood. People whose public housing
buildings were torn down so landowners could build condos.
I tell another somber poet what I've seen.
She says,“There is something so permanent about a tent.”
How do I describe walking into a transformed Superdome?
With purple lights shining on stadium seats and a hot pink vagina
spread loud and luscious across the wide, main stage.
Sound never stops travelingso everywhere I go I hear
Katrina's blood-curdling screams.
Especially in the bathrooms where, during the storm,
women and girls and boys and men were rapedand terrorized and raped again.
Every step I take in the dome,I remember:
There was anarchy here.
It was a kind of Armageddon.
It was epic.
It was hell.
It was a waking nightmare.
It was a president in deep sleep while people died here.
People held in their urine for days.
People let their bowels loose, choiceless.
People starved.
People waited.
People prayed. People gave up on God here.
People felt that God had given up on the
mand, brave, prayed some more.
I sit with the 1200 homecoming womenof the Gulf South (dubbed Katrina/Rita Warriors) --nanas, mothers, daughters,
church elder-women, aunts, cousins, friendsand women nobody knew.
When activist and lawyer Colette “Coco” Pichon Battle announces
that they will be offered health screenings,
massages, makeovers and childcare
FOR FREE they laugh from their feet.
They sigh with relief.
One of them pushes the air with her palms
and shouts “Hallelujah!”
Another whispers to a friend,
“Nothing like this has ever
happened to me before.”What a gift it is to be heldlike a woman, I think.
Not held uplike a refugee.There are no words for the electric feeling
of squeezing the hands of Suheir Hammad
and Rha Goddess and hi-fiving Alix Olson, my sisters in poetry.
We see each other and are reminded
that all the line breaks we use are a fancy attempt
at saying something as simple as LOVE.
I hug Jane Fonda for an entire minute.
I hug a weeping woman whose name I can't remember
for even longer. It isn't about names or occupations or
orientations or cities of origin or education levels or annual incomes.
It's about open ears, open mouths and open minds.
It's about pumping blood, pumping hearts and peace-loving, pumping fists.
Have I ever said, sung, shouted, screamed
VAGINA this many times in my life?
At the afterparty, I tell Eve Ensler I am in love with her.
I dance with activists from all around the world.
The female DJ plays Prince, “Lady Marmalade,” Queen Latifah,
“Pretty Young Thing,” Aretha, Destiny's Child and “I'm Every Woman.”
I remember Emma Goldman who said, “If I can't dance,
I don't want to be a part of your revolution.” We dance.
I learn that I feel best when I am dancing, connecting,
asking, listening, embracing, holding, grieving, reciting, spreading,
singing loud in a room or tent or arena full of loud, singing voices.
I like knowing that even though I can't hear myself, my voice
contributes to the big, booming, celebratory sound.
I learn that New Orleans is walkableand dangerous, alive and kicking, traumatized
and resilient. Like Haiti.I learn that women all over the world
of different ages, colors, creeds and credentials
want the same things:
to eradicate poverty and fundamentalism,
misogyny and sex trafficking,
U.S. occupations and genital mutilation,
illiteracy and war.
We want to create art
and grassroots coalitions, alternative masculinities
and safe housesand a global movement to end violence against women.
V-Day is my new religion. Amen.
e.e.commings from the other blog
Ó doce espontânea
terra
quantas vezes
os pontudos
dedos de
libidinosos filósofos te
beliscaram
e remexeram,
o perverso dedão
da ciência cutucou
tua
beleza .
quantasvezes as religiões te
tomaram sob joelhos esqueléticos
espremendo e
batendo tanto que tiveste que conceber
deuses(mas
vera
ao incomparável
leito do ceifeiro teu
rítmico amante
respondeste
a eles
apenas com aprimavera)”
terra
quantas vezes
os pontudos
dedos de
libidinosos filósofos te
beliscaram
e remexeram,
o perverso dedão
da ciência cutucou
tua
beleza .
quantasvezes as religiões te
tomaram sob joelhos esqueléticos
espremendo e
batendo tanto que tiveste que conceber
deuses(mas
vera
ao incomparável
leito do ceifeiro teu
rítmico amante
respondeste
a eles
apenas com aprimavera)”
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