Poetry Thursday, Rilke as birthday month approaches

Pietà
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Fills now my cup, and past thought is
my fulness thereof. I harden as a stone
sets hard at its heart.
Hard that I am, I know this alone:
that thou didst grow—
— — — — — and grow,
to outgrow,
as too great pain,
my heart’s reach utterly.
Now liest thou my womb athwart,
now can I not to thee again
give birth.

Not Poetry Thursday

The Broken Man’s Permission
~Aaron Coleman

A crocodile slips its earth-toned body
back into the river, in silence, violence down
and for its nightness

I cannot see the water. With fear
I am alone. Slick rocks smile thin anonymous light, they lie

about what I am. I see and try to hold
my body in my body, trace a vein
from the base of my palm through

the crook of my elbow, armpit, home—home
makes no sense. I’ve given up on what I know.

This blindness is a mirror turning
back to sand still hollowed, where
every sound is amplified. I want to be the crocodile’s

stomach that is my father, teeth
that are my mother, vertebrae

that aggregate the spine that are loves, knuckled
angles casing nerves. It’s me wading around
inside, mouth open. A humid numbness dense, low,

beneath the undertow: hands that coax and claim
my scaled neck, soothe and pull

each knotted shoulder. I give in to a third of moon caught
in cloud, its orange-grey halo drawn away
from what can be named, known. A curse and prayer

to go unchanged within this water, my movement
foreign, a rootless gurgle, flit of river vines

caging the dwindling
river’s brutal bed, the gorge, flushed
with new food: the blue heron’s bone-flight collapsed,

tangled feathers along the mudglut bank’s
saliva, lifting like shame in the open.

Poetry Thursday

Bridge Called Water
~Diana Marie Delgado

I wrote hard
on paper

at the bottom
of a pool

near a canyon
where the stars

slid onto their bellies
like fish

I wrote:

      …

I went through
the mountain

through the leaves
of La Puente

to see the moon
but it was too late

too long ago
to walk on glass.

     …

Near those years
when the house fell on me

my father told me
draw mom

in bed with
another man—

          …

From a plum tree

the sound of branches
fall like fruit

I’m older
no longer afraid

my voice like water
pulled from the well


where the wind had been buried
where someone was always

running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?

Poetry Thursday, contemplating the quest

:: Searching for My Own Body ::
 ~Yesenia Montilla

Which is to say that like a good theoretical objectified body, my identity was created not by me but by the various desires and beliefs of those around me.
– Daniel Borzutzky

My body is a small cave door                   
it’s a slick whale  a jubilant
sea of tall grass that sways
& makes its way across countries       
& lovers             I love          love-making
I don’t remember a time when           
I wasn’t interested in touch
I have these breasts
& some          would want to come   
on hands                   & knees to worship them             
call me flower           or                    desert
Maybe I was only supposed to be
stone or a baby eel                 
long & layered                      a nun?
I don’t remember ever saying
             yes                   just     no
I am searching   for my own body 
not the one I was told is so                 
I want to be always  open             
             like a canyon
Maybe I was only supposed to be         
tree or temple           
In some circles I am
just an open gate       
a sinful  bauble 

Once someone said you are             this   
& I  never questioned it

I am searching                       my own body 
for                   God   

or someone like her—

history repeating

Ugh, somebody opened this piece from many years ago last week, and I read the title and fell into the same trap.  Or, maybe the universe brought me to it.

I wonder what kind of judgment I pass on myself.

Though, I will say this, I am battling (to no avail) against the rewritten history. It explains, in part, why it has been such a rocky few months.  If only I had a better attitude... since my father has seen fit to let me know that I have a bad attitude. Damn straight.

I am still trying to figure out how to have the appropriate boundary that allows me to hold on to the history I know and still exist with them in their rewritten history. I mean, I cannot force them to live in the history I believe any more than they can force their history on me.

Where is the fine line that I can walk where I am not hurt, even when they live out of their understanding of history?

Is that line wide enough to walk in safety, or will it always be like a tightrope?

Ok, need to go to yoga or do more meditation.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

My thoughts move to Dr. King all year, and especially this past year. I have wondered so many times how he might have taught in the time of Trump.

We think of Dr. King as a leader, often, and as a pastor, for those who are more religious. But, I think of him as an organizer and a teacher.

So, for his *real* birthday, I decided to read a sermon that he gave, something new to me.

I chose the sermon about The Man Who Was a Fool.

He describes the issue the foolish man encounters, and how we are in danger of falling into the same trap in this way:

We must always be careful in America because we live in a capitalistic economy, which stresses the profit motive and free enterprise. And there is always the danger that we will be more concerned about making a living than making a life. There is always the danger we will judge the success of our professions by the size of the wheel base on our automobiles and the index of our salaries rather than the quality of our service to humanity. There must always be a line of distinction between the "within" and the "without" of life. [here, Dr. King footnotes The Parables of Jesus, Buttrick].

Dr. King's analyzes of the use of "I" and "my" by the rich man, and ties it back to our need to be more cognizant of our connections to the rest of the world/humanity rather than our own perceived self-sufficiency:

[The Foolish Man] failed to realize the interdependent structure of reality. 

And so often we fail to see this. Something should remind us before we can finish eating breakfast in the morning we are dependent on more than half of teh world. We get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for a sponge, and that's handed to us by a Pacific Islander. Then we reach over for a bar of soap, and that's given to us at the hands of a frenchman. And then we reach up for our towel, and that's given to us by a Turk. And then we go to the kitchen for breakfast, getting ready to go to work. Maybe this morning we want to follow the good old American tradition, and we drink coffee. That's poured into our cups by a South American. Or maybe we are desirous of having tea. Then we discover that that's poured in our cup by a Chinese. Or maybe we want cocoa this morning, and then we discover that that's poured in our cup by a West African. Then we reach over for piece of toast, only to discover that that's given to us at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention teh baker. And so before we finish eating breakfast in the morning, we are dependent on more than half of the world. [a footnote lets us know that this section is paraphrased from Leslie Whitehead's 1936 publication titled Why Do Men Suffer?]

Surely Dr. King would update these observations, our world is ever more interconnected and dependent within and without our national boundaries. We do less and less for ourselves in this world, and mostly have no idea how what we have in our hands had gotten there.

But, perhaps most important in this sermon is how Dr. King connects this issue to race relations in 1961:

For what is white supremacy but the foolish notion that God made a mistake and stamped an eternal stigma of inferiority on a certain race of people? What is white supremacy but the foolishness of believing that one race is good enough to dominate another race? What is white supremacy but the foolish notion of believing that certain people are to be relegated to the status of things rather than being elevated to the status of persons? There is no greater foolishness than the foolishness that accompanies our inhumanity to man.

Lest you think Dr. King was not considering all angles of this situation, see what he said immediately after the last statement:

And the converse is also true. Black supremacy is based on a great deal of foolishness. It is the foolish notion that the black man has made all of the contributions of civilization and that he will one day rule the world. I am convinced, as I have said so often, that as Negroes we must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship, but we must never use second-class methods to gain it. We must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, thus subverting justice. Not substituting one tyranny for another, but we must seek to achieve democracy for everybody. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men, God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers and every man will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality. Whenever we fail to believe this, we indulge in tragic foolishness.**

He goes on to talk about our abundance and how we might help others around the world... but I will let you read on. It is beautiful and it very well might have made me more religious if the priests in the pulpit were preaching this kind of truth. *Might* because I have other unresolved issues with organized religion, but I digress.

You can read the whole sermon here. You can search for other things to read here. [Yes, they are published in volumes, but if you click through to the volume, you can also see the PDF to many of the documents.]

**And, yes, we would hope that Dr. King's use of "men" here would have been supplanted with "humans" or "people," but I have faith in Dr. King's sense of humanity.

hunger

I acknowledged the hunger. I wanted to say this morning, but it might have been yesterday.

It had to have been yesterday because I am five and a half hours into the work day, and the first food has passed my lips. (Full disclosure: I had TWO coffees.)

I acknowledged then, whenever that was, that the only sensation I have been able to feel lately is HUNGER.

I realized in nearly the same instant that I can barely remember eating something that felt satisfying ... or that didn't taste like cardboard.

All these realizations brought me back to the depressive state... the sense of overwhelm, the feeling of being swallowed by all the obligation. [I wrote about it a while back, but only in the journal, it didn't make it here.]

Now that I am thinking about it, I remember thinking early this week that exercising might make me less hungry. It often does, however strange that may seem.

But, the truth is that I am STARVING because I am so desperately unhappy and feel trapped and overwhelmed and and and...

Acknowledging the hunger helps to make me less hungry for food and note the need for something else.

Something else... ugh... I am going to go to yoga again tonight. Hoping that will also help.

I just talked with a friend, though, who was able to remind me that I have not even been home for 2 months yet, and had to deal with so many small and large crises. She reminded me how long it has been since I have been alone.

[I was wistfully remembering the "long layover" day I got in San Francisco -- where I splurged on a hotel and didn't call anyone instead of trying to meet up with folks. I felt guilty and yet I truly enjoyed not having to abide by anyone else's schedule, just for a day.]

I really needed that reality check.

Less than two months and I feel like I am drowning. I felt like I was drowning at less than six weeks.

I know this, I have to stop feeling guilty for taking a nap, doing my crossword instead of anything else on the to do list, and ask for help. I am really not sure who to ask for help, that is a bit of a sticking point. But the very, very least I can do is not pile on myself. That is a job that all the others in my life relish and do with gusto.

Poetry Thursday, life right now, adulting

Things Haunt
~Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

California is a desert and I am a woman inside it.
The road ahead bends sideways and I lurch within myself.
I’m full of ugly feelings, awful thoughts, bad dreams
of doom, and so much love left unspoken.

Is mercury in retrograde? someone asks.
Someone answers, No, it’s something else
like that though. Something else like that.
That should be my name.

When you ask me am I really a woman, a human being,
a coherent identity, I’ll say No, I’m something else
like that though.

A true citizen of planet earth closes their eyes
and says what they are before the mirror.
A good person gives and asks for nothing in return.
I give and I ask for only one thing—

Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me.
Hear me. Bear the weight of my voice and don’t forget—
things haunt. Things exist long after they are killed.

Poetry Thursday - oops, back dating

In the Next Yard
~Helen Hoyt

O yes, you are very cunning,
I can see that:
Out there in the snow with your red cart
And your wooly grey coat
And those ridiculous
Little grey leggings!
Like a rabbit,
A demure brownie.
O yes, you are cunning;
But do not think you will escape your father and mother
And what your brothers are!
I know the pattern.
It will surely have you—
For all these elfish times in the snow—
As commonplace as the others,
Little grey rabbit.