The Simple Truth - Philip Levine

Mikaela reposts from The Simple Truth:

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
....
The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."

Some things

you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

Jeffrey McDaniel Rides Again!

Mikaela says:
So excited!

One of my absolute, hands-down, god's own, favorite poets, Jeffrey McDaniel, is coming out with a new book of poems in April. I can't tell you how fantastic that is.

His poetry is so accessible as to be transparent -- in the form of corrective lenses. He's a master of metaphor and one of the only poets that I can use to get teenagers to understand the power of an image, how one simile stands in for all the "pain, shattered glass, hurt, heart, soul" you can throw in a teen-angst poem. To really hit home my point, I use this little gem, from The Jerk:

"I'm standing behind you on the subway,
hard as calculus."

Oooooo, do they get that!

Here's the rest, just cause it's too good to pass up:

Jeffrey McDaniel
"The Jerk"

Hey you, dragging the halo--
how about a holiday in the islands of grief?

Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.
Your eyes are so blue they leak.

Your legs are longer than a prisoner's
last night on death row.

I'm filthier than the coal miner's bathtub
and nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.

You're a dirty little windshield.

I'm standing behind you on the subway,
hard as calculus. My breath
be sticking to your neck like graffiti.

I'm sitting opposite you in the bar,
waiting for you to uncross your boundaries.

I want to rip off your logic
and make passionate sense to you.

I want to ride in the swing of your hips.

My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks,
blazing your limbs into parts of speech.

But with me for a lover, you won't need
catastrophes. What attracted me in the first place
will ultimately make me resent you.

I'll start telling you lies,
and my lies will sparkle,
become the bad stars you chart your life by.

I'll stare at other women so blatantly
you'll hear my eyes peeling,

because sex with you is like Great Britain:
cold, groggy, and a little uptight.

Your bed is a big, soft calculator
where my problems multiply.

Your brain is a garage
I park my bullshit in, for free.

You're not really my new girlfriend,
just another flop sequel of the first one,
who was based on the true story of my mother.

You're so ugly I forgot how to spell!

I'll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test,
break your heart just for the sound it makes.

You're the this
we need to put an end to.

The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.

So how about it?

And because it's still New Year's... an encore.

"Friends And High Places"

It's like escaping a hot, bright room
for the serenity of a city at night, covered in snow.

People eliminated. A carpet of silence
for taxis to whisper across. The world becoming

a pleasant dream of itself. The itch
of want smoldering to life on skin. Memory sends

a chill vanishing between vertebrae.
It's New Year's Eve. Hail the Calendar! As if

clocks will pause for a moment
before reloading their long rifles. Years are tiny

freckles on the face of a century.
Where is the constellation we gazed at each night

through a bill rolled so tight
the first President lost his breath, as our eyeballs

literally unraveled? I am alone
in the rectangular borough in the observatory,

where even fire trucks can't rescue
the arsonist stretching his calves in my brain.

More than anything, I'm excited because I think Jeffrey McDaniel is the poet who speaks most directly to me. It was his work that allowed me to dream that I could call myself a poet -- that the work I was already doing might be relevant to someone other than me.

I'm contemplating ... big confession time ... putting together a manuscript of my own work. I'm terrified to do this and have been dragging my feet for years about it. The very idea breaks me out in hives. But it's Jeffrey McDaniel's work that nags me to do it.

Here's the poem that changed the course of my writing life:

1977

from Alibi School

The family around the table and a silence
so compact no words can break it.

Not even a pigeon swirling through the window
can nudge mother's poorly taped grin.

Her face has the euphoric glow of a mathematician
whispering a formula into the whorl of a rose.

Her eyes are tiny stones testing the black
silk bags she lugs them in.

Since father banned television the sons stare
at the marriage dangling from the ceiling.

Each month it sinks another couple inches
until it's in their food.

No wonder they don't eat.

How amazing is that??? It's like Wes Anderson in a minute, isn't it? In fact, that would be a BRILLIANT collaboration.

But anyway, for now I'm happy just to look forward to a whole new book of poems that I know will speak right to my humorous, dysfunctional core.

All is not lost... Naomi Shihab Nye

Mikaela says:
Apologies, but I'm reposting from a YogaNow newsletter. Too good not to! This poet has several amazing books, including one of my favorite kids books these days, a collection of poems from around the world, "This Same Sky."

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal by Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her problem?

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu-biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew however poorly used - she stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you'll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English.

I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts out of her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo; we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers and the two little girls for our flight, one African-American, one Mexican-American ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend by now we were holding hands had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves.

Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in.

The shared world. Not a single person in this gate once the crying of confusion stopped has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen, anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Kindness -- Naomi Shihab-Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
Feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
What you counted and carefully saved,
All this must go so you know
How desolate the landscape can be
Between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
Thinking the bus will never stop,
The passengers eating maize and chicken
Will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
Lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
How he too was someone
Who journeyed through the night with plans
And the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
Catches the thread of all sorrows
And you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
And sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
And then goes with you everywhere
Like a shadow or a friend.

American Teen

She’s looking for someone to bother, she says,
belly swelling beneath pink baby-doll tee.

She points down.
This is what she’s been up to.

“School? I don’t go; I got bored.”
But now? “He works,” she says.

“I sit at home and watch tv
and call him and tell him how bored I am.

It’s
fun.”

This girl, still running from her nightmares –
still dreaming them up –

too smart for school,
not smart enough to amuse herself,

contorts history
to come full feminist circle,

balloon-sculpture
pre-feminist dream,

only this girl can’t talk at dinner parties
or cook for dinner parties

or do much
of anything at all.

Scared of what she could be
and all that she never could,

she’s chosen this store-bought life
of unhappiness pre-packaged,

the tragedy bold-printed
on the family-proof label:

Take two. Wait twenty years.
Take two more.

What is failure to her
when it all means nothing,

and the disappointment
stretching my cheeks red

just enflames the word
judgment?

I want to understand
what she wants,

but am afraid even this
will prove too much for her.

Why must she
want anything at all?

What can she be feeding her baby
when she barely asks anything of the air?

Her attitude
is bigger than she is.

She looks half an ambition away from scared,
half a lifetime away from bitter.

This girl
is America’s fertile nightmare.

When she laughs,
you can hear empty streets rattle.

Good thing
she does not care.

He works, she says,
and moves off to find someone else to bother.

Somewhere,
he readies himself for her growing anger,

the baby to take its own air,
tiny fingers pushing off against her to gain speed.

I am left empty-handed,
mid-wife to her stillborn dreams.

Slam Semi-Finals

Mikaela espouses:
If you're only going to come to one Slam event to end the season, don't come tonight. Save yourself for the high-stakes final showdown on Saturday, April 7, 7:30 pm at the National Hispanic Cultural Center's Journal Theatre. We've got 600+ seats, and we want them FILLED.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a real, live reality show drama, attend the semi-finals leading excruciatingly to the elimination of all but the final contestants to build this year's ABQ Slam Team that will compete in Austin to re-claim the National Championship title that slipped through our fingers last year.

It's gonna be a great show. Tonight at Winning Coffee you can see everyone's favorite straight-man, Don McIver, among others. This man is one of the Q's best community organizers. He's so good you probably never heard of him, but if you go to a slam poetry event, chances are his fingerprints are all over it!

If you miss tonight, you have two more semi-finals to see.

MAS Poetry 6:30 PM Call Time Winning’s Coffee Company 112 Harvard SE March 21st, 2007	Blue Dragon II 7:30 PM Call Time Blue Dragon Coffeehouse 1517 Girard NE March 23rd, 2007	Poetry & Beer 7:30 PM Call Time The District Bar & Grill 115 4th St. NW April 5th, 2007
Jessica Lopez	John Paskiewicz	Tony Santiago
Don McIver	Jasmine Cuffee	Zach Kluckman
Ben Boreman	Liza Wolff	Brooke Von Blomberg
Luke Mitchell	Manuel Gonzales	Joe Romero
Sina Aurelia-Sao	Jamen	Stephen
Sean	Angel Ramirez	Jerry Mondragon
Sal Treppiedi	Lenell Storey	James Altimirano

Then the only thing left to see (for this season, anyway) is the Grand SLAM:

And for those who love poetry and want to share, bring your favorite poem & sign up to read it at the open mic. Add a little poetry to your poetry! We all could use the education.

m stands for "moving"

Mikaela says:
I personally love it when life is moving too fast to get caught up in the immobility of rage at current events. There's plenty I'm fuming about (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, Libby trial, executive orders, creeping fascism of the Bush administration that seems to go all-but unnoticed by the general public... whew, better stop there!), but for a little while, I've got too much on my plate here in the Q to worry myself into inaction about the rest of the world.

It's all about doing what you can where you can, right?

So this evening (starting around 7 pm), I'm taking part in an event for women: Firestorm, at the Winning Coffee Co. on Harvard & Central (m-pyre readers know all about how much we love Winning!), hosted by Maresa Thompson, organizer of the fabulous National Poetry Slam in 2005. I'm even going to read a poem during the open mic! Then, with my bestest m-friends, we'll cheer and support our fellow creative women, strong women w/ strong voices telling us all what we need to hear, even when we sometimes don't want to listen. Tonight's all about listening!

Thursday, if I didn't have a conflict, I'd be going to see "When the Levees Broke," Spike Lee's documentary on the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, being shown by the Albuquerque chapter of Planners Network, made up of UNM Community & Regional Planning students & community members, at Out Ch-Yonda in Barelas (4th & Santa Fe). 6 pm.

On Saturday, I'll be going to hear local poets read at the Main Library downtown. How cool is it that our urban library is opening its doors to a largely urban movement of spoken-word poetry. Totally cool. That's from 3-5 pm. Afterward, I'll join Lisa Gill @ 7 pm for a reading celebrating her 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in UNM's Student Union Building (SUB) Acoma Room. Who else wins an award and throws a party for her community? Lisa rocks.

Friday, March 2, the NHCC, Harwood, ABQ Slams, & IPI are putting on Women Centerstage as part of the NHCC's Women & Creativity festival. We've gathered some of the coolest women poets around -- Lisa Gill, Esther Griego, Valerie Martinez, Demetria Martinez -- and paired them with Rah Goddess, who some of you may have heard and been electrified by on NPR's Bioneers show this summer. She's a hip-hop feminist poet and performance artist who coined the term "floetry" and spawned a whole generation of empowered and empowering women performers. Show starts at 7. Afterward, an all-women slam will choose the winner to represent Albuquerque at the World of Women (WoW) national poetry slam in Chicago this October. A hot night to be sure. Not to be missed.



Tuesday, March 6, 6 pm, the NHCC is hosting Women in Action, a panel discussion of local women activists, artists, and entrepreneurs, also as part of Women & Creativity. This one's near and dear to my little political heart. The panel includes:

• Dory Wegryzn, who was instrumental in forming the Sawmill Community Land Trust,
• Sandra Montes, who's fought tirelessly for the rights of Pajarito Mesa residents in Albuquerque's South Valley,
  
• Joann Bejar, who's done everything from being a filmaker, labor organizer, to mom,
  
• Naomi Natale, who created the Cradle Project -- an art project that calls attention to and raises funds for children orphaned by disease and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa,
• Myra Murphy-Jacob of Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance, which trains and sends leaders to other countries, where they help train others as leaders in sustainable, eco- and community-friendly business practices, and
  
• Margo Ganster of Green It!, a local company that helps other companies to incorporate ways to be "green," adding to the sustainability of our economy & our environment

In between all that, I'll be finishing an anthology of Voces students work for UNM Press and putting together an anthology of ABQ Slam poets w/ fellow IPI members Danny Solis, Susan McAllister, and Don McIver.

Oh, and planning a wedding.

Busy? Me? No.....

Lord help me the day I slow down long enough to really soak in the news from around the world. It's not looking good, but I'm trying to do what I can to support good things in my community. In the seconds between whirling from event to event, I wish peace for us all.

Connect the Dots

[I just had to post this in response to Marjorie’s excellent post about MLK, Jr.]

Mikaela says in 2003:

Connect the dots

Injustice

to

Injustice

Cultivate the will

the fortitude

the stomach

to call shit as you see it

name it

change it

arrange it

Complicit in the world-as-it-is

is our silence

We trade “solace” for “privacy”

“community” for “solitude”

hide our gifts

not to feel powerless

close our eyes

not to feel blind

believe stories

not to feel lied to

Our ears wither

with disuse

Our fears grow

with exercise

Our hands

severed with knives of our own creation

search by themselves

for the necks of our oppressors

And we

all of us children

learn what it is

we don’t want to know.

What You Should Be Doing Saturday: ABQ Slam City Championship

Mikaela raves:
That's right. It's that time of year again.

Saturday, 7:30 pm @ Outpost Performance Space, slam poets will battle it out for a spot on the ABQ Team to head to the National Poetry Slam in Austin (August 2007).

The best of the best will become the City Champion.

This is one not to miss. Wheat's already separated from the chaff, etc.

If

• you want to check out what poetry slam is,
  
• or just hear good poetry,
• or go do something fun on a Saturday...
  

this is for you.

It sells out every year, so call and buy your tickets now, and get there early!
For Tickets: 268-0044

Doors open at 7 pm.

See you there.

Atomic Reality

Mikaela says:
They've got me thinking about all things nuclear.

Democracy Now reports that an insider has come forward with information that Cheney's office is asking intelligence agencies to cook the books about Iran's nuclear capabilities much like they did in order to justify invading Iraq for WMDs in the complete absence of evidence for WMDs.

That and the controversy over the inequitable treatment of Israel's nuclear capability vs. other Middle Eastern countries.

And our focus on nuclear energy as a viable option, coupled w/ news that researchers have found a way to speed the half-life of certain radioactive metals, so that instead of taking 10,000 years to become "safe," it takes 5,000. Not really a "solution" but clearly will be used to increase the optimism of human control over radiation. [Heard on Living on Earth, October 27]

The reality on the ground for those working with these materials is often overlooked. This poem, written by Jeffrey Hillard, from Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age, sums up for me the working man's perspective on the risk we ask him to take.

The Message

I want the sign to read, never come back again.

Instead, it reads, Safety Is A Man’s Best Friend.

I know each one: Alert! above the utility room.

Know Your Goggles near the loading docks.

I have partners who can’t spell half the words,

each orange letter a directive that keeps our

sleeves buttoned and hard-hats within reach.

A mishmash of phrases that exalt our lungs

above any skill; words bold as hot metal,

composed in some super’s office, under a cool fan.

They’ll never convince me that I’d burn myself

or remove my gloves near a blasting furnace

or breathe the fumes from a lead vat

rimmed with sulfuric acid.

I don’t need signs to echo my flaws.

A Careless Employee Is A Disaster In Uniform.

I already load sludge and leave my body

to the eyes of a detector scanner.

Since I drive a forklift, I look ahead,

not above. Today, something is different.

I imagine the tar-black walls swelling,

tiers of sludge frothing over the catwalks,

my lead shield coming apart, dust floating past.

I salvage my thoughts, especially after lunch.

I know it’s dangerous, but I’ll steer the lift

near a pit and join a crew for a cigarette.

We take three puffs, crush them on our hard-hats

and drop them in a shirt pocket. Safe, not sorry.

I’m not yet relieved. I imagine another sign

saying, All bodily cells replaced here,

but the wisdom I receive is Shower Thoroughly.

I find a blessing in each thump of the time-clock,

in the exit gate, in the sign whose broken letters

remind us to dump uniforms in the black barrel.

I say to no on in particular I do, I do.

I think, what else can I give? What else

do they want from a man whose name is duty

and paycheck, a man who sheds these clothes

like they’re footprints to be mopped and forgotten.

Mayor Marty on Democracy Now -- Really!

Mikaela says:
Listening now... More to come, but here's the link if you want to listen yourself:

Click here for the article.

Click here for the audio file.

I'm just at the beginning, but so far he sounds really reasonable, and Albuquerque comes off as this haven for Green Building and sustainability vision. Ahem.

And then there's this little gem about the March 17, 2003 war protest:

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you, on the issue of dissent in this time of war, I know mayors around the country are dealing with protests, since the invasion, around that time. In Albuquerque, there was a protest right at the time of the invasion.

MAYOR MARTIN CHAVEZ: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: And the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Albuquerque Police Department for treatment of the Albuquerque protesters. Among the issues they were concerned about were protesters being beaten, protesters been arrested. And in the lawsuit, the ACLU deposed a detective, a detective named Gregory Gene Cunningham, and they asked him about the APD, the Albuquerque Police Department's surveillance of antiwar groups. And he went on to talk about being undercover, going to a restaurant where an antiwar protest preparation meeting was taking place, identifying himself, I think it was, as Gilbert Martinez, and sitting in among the group, saying he was an antiwar protester, as well, or interested in the protest. What kind of activity is the police department involved in in surveillance of protesters?

MAYOR MARTIN CHAVEZ: Well, understand, Amy, I come from the Vietnam generation, and I participated in antiwar protests on the exact same streets that were involved with these demonstrations. And we had a handful, a very small handful, unfortunately, of folks come in from out of state that were bent on mischief, pure and simple. And so, I think our police acted entirely appropriately, particularly the first night, and then I got -- because we had these folks in wearing masks, and we had incendiary devices thrown at the police lines, which was entirely inconsistent with what 99% of the folks out there were there for, and that was simply to express their opinions on the war.

And so, what we’ve done -- and I’ve had the ACLU into the office -- we totally revamped all of our ordinances and established a new protocol when there is a planned demonstration. Obviously, sometimes you have demonstrations that are not planned, and these issues can be so emotional and the passions can rise so high. So I think we're doing very well in that regard, respecting the tradition -- and it’s a great American tradition -- of civil disobedience, but also ensuring public safety.

AMY GOODMAN: Are police going undercover and infiltrating peace groups?

MAYOR MARTIN CHAVEZ: If -- no peace groups, but if we have people coming to Albuquerque from elsewhere that are bent on violence, our police will be there, absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: And is the Joint Terrorism Task Force also involved with this at the federal level?

MAYOR MARTIN CHAVEZ: You know, I have very little interaction with those folks. I was one of the first mayors in the country, when Homeland Security wanted us to do random stops at our airport without reasonable grounds, probable cause, to say “No, we’re not going to do that.” And as a result, they revamped that policy. And so, it’s unfortunate, Amy, you have a real dichotomy between federal policy and what most mayors and governors know is the right thing to do. And so, we walk a very -- it’s a very delicate balance we have to strike daily.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, are federal authorities working with the APD, the Albuquerque Police Department, in monitoring and surveiling peace activists?

MAYOR MARTIN CHAVEZ: Oh, I wouldn’t be aware of anything like that, but I am sure and I would hope that there’s good communication between the federal authorities, local public safety authorities. That’s important for keeping our neighborhoods safe.

Right, Marty. Keep it positive! Revisionist history and unbelievable claims of ignorance from our lovable Mayor.

Here was my memory of the March 17, 2003 protest when peaceful protestors were arrested and tear-gassed, including a woman doing nothing wrong, featured here:

Albuquerque, March 17, 2003

By midnight
the streets were clear and quiet
rain softly drumming on tear-gas canisters
tapping on placards now wilting in the bushes
dissolving horseshit piled up in the streets.

The echo of flashing lights
remained glowing in the puddles
but the sirens now warn of the coming new order
in other corners of the city
to other crooks for other crimes.

One barrette lay open and glistening
in the intersection
between opposite lanes of traffic
at the base of a light
now free to turn green.

She will ask for it at police custody
her release the only thing they can hand her
in the absence of peace
apologies not yet forced from the mayor
by the headlines

her arrest still signaling
just their job
just another protest
just one more voice
shoved face-down to asphalt and rain.

This is my America

Mikaela writes in:

Yesterday morning's Bioneer radio program featured Raw Goddess, a hip-hop feminist, who talked about "This is my America." That became our first writing prompt of the day, and here was what came out of me:

This is my America –

ashamed of its opinions

wrong even when righting,

writing its way to obsolete,

righteousness overtaking thoughtfulness

in the fullness of our obese declarations of fights.

This is my America,

adamant waste,

unbashful elbows

wrapping their way across the globe.

Stay out of our way, says America,

even if your way is the right way,

and our way is weighted with the heavy hand

of injustice tipping the scales in our favor,

currency flowing to our modernity

that we declare new in every century.

It's a bloated fight, America,

your pudgy hands gorging

on Africa, spitting out her disease,

cleaning your teeth with Indonesia,

belching Belgium, rubbing your belly

with Rhodesia, tuning in for a little Jamaica

after your feast, our famine buffet.

You've deserted us

to make mints, America,

and we line up now in silence

all over the world.

It can't help to take back

what is already yours,

but we'll treat you in kind, America.

This one's on us.

And when your serving machine stalls,

the oven overheating, the burners

caked with grease from oil corruption,

we'll squeeze you thin, America.

Bold, then.

Bigger than you

even

in our silence.

Science is in the word -- and the water

Mikaela writes:

Science is beginning to confirm the power of the word. Mystics have known for as long as man has been speaking that words have the power to literally change the air we breathe, the water we drink, the experiences we can have. Now, a scientist in Japan has shown that words – written or spoken – shape water molecules. Words with good connotations create symmetrical patterns in the water molecules. Words like hate spawn asymmetry. This only works with unpolluted water.

I.
What cannot be purified
cannot be transformed

what can be transformed
is pure

thus is born a morality
of molecules

holy water
of a weighted hand

our words
at the center

or maybe the crystalline edge
of the great unknown

where what we can control
and what we cannot fathom

dance together to the beat
of vibrating cosmic strings

Moses parting the water
not with holy staff

but with a plea
a command?

human voice
urging rearrangement

water obeys
responds?

interprets the energy of his voice
into action

miracle
made science

law
suggestion

II.
One Jewish sect asserts the Torah itself is just the name of God. One word that calls forth – embodies – inhabits creation.

Defaming that book
means calling forth darkness

chaos
nothingness

known only to so-called
producers of terror

who now sit praying
in American-run jails

we torture terror
and believe in freedom

we protect our interests
without blaming our banks

we call in darkness
create terror

our words forming asymmetrical structures
in pools of pure blood

what will tranform this evil?
what purification is possible for twisting lies?

most cleanliness
is removal of debris:

first
we jail the jailors

sop up the blood
tend to the wounds

speak kindly to the hurt
free the innocent

burn the prison
and pray

that our words will fall silent
that our prayers for peace will rise

part the waters
connect what has been too-long divided

let fall what may
the heavy fruit of justice

hanging
in the tree of knowledge

we must all bite
and swallow.