If a poem loses its home, can it still be happy as a poemelette?

and the party is a blur
seen from brightened corners
candles swarm
i hide out with a cousin or two
and flesh out all my secrets
smiling into egg nog cocktails
and ignoring the darkness

at 2am, we're out
i'm off the clock for today
i dream i'm on some sort of game show
but i wake up before i understand what's at stake
and it's christmas morning
my spirit is heavy with dread
i ignore flares from the outside world
trying to cocoon myself in the silk bed

we drink coffee and try to smile at each other over the island
my mom brings out unwrapped presents for us
i try to ignore my nagging guilt that i haven't brought anything with me
we eat coffee and sweet rolls and cookies
there's egg nog in my coffee
but it all sits in my swollen stomach like air

after the gifts,
it's time to load up the car
and head to the hospital
my brother and his wife are bickering in the front seat
my sister is cracking jokes
i am silent

we arrive, and i'm so tired of averting my eyes
from drains and cuts and blood and pus
i'm a spoiled who on christmas day
and i'm exhausted from the journey
so i bury myself in people magazine
and start to think that i'm really nowhere near as pretty
as i sometimes think
when i go to the bathroom, i'm grateful for the smeared pink on my lips
after a few hours penance,
we shuffle out the door
passing santa on the way
but my smile can't be mustered

on the way home
my mind flashes in different shades of blue
and i think less about a hot cock like a slip and slide
between my hands, mouth, breasts and thighs
and more about a strong arm on my shoulders
and the sweet smell of my lover's hair
and i'm sad

poet poemelette

some days, it is dangerous to be a poet
you forget the way that the cool earth feels as it squishes between your toes and
you find that even your laughter has a little cruelty in it
jaywalking at conversational intersections
you are overtly, dismissively, jovially casual
about lost loves
like broken necklaces shimmering in put-away dusty boxes
you drink too much
and find yourself entrancing someone
meandering
like curling smoke off of a cigarette
with all of these thoughts you scribbled on barroom napkins
that interrupted you masturbating
stunned you from sleep
free radical ideas
poems without homes

he doesn't know
he's just an audience
he doesn't know
that you're talking to yourself
and to those lost loves that were not even loves at all
only narcissistic reflections
you held tight like a pillow's embrace

and you are cavalier
using your flesh like a venus fly trap
hitchhiking with no gas money
at the end of the day,
you find yourself
smiling with orgasmic relief
next to a dumbfounded stranger
is that a smile?
you wonder,
dumbfounded, or dumb?
you feel the cracked white edges of your heart
calloused
and you worry about the day
you fall in the well
but you hope
that only happens
to other poets

moon poemelette

i stepped into the cool
spotlit in the dark
my blue bubble barely covering me
the moon slung back
showing a little leg
drawing lascivious stares
asking for it
winking like that

and the air took me
winding through cobblestone and
potholed streets
anxious tree branches
like the river's mucky brush
making me swerve
making me duck

and then i saw her
gaping, naked
full
exposed to us all
a fake moon
dancing over lower bourbon
not afraid to push out that apple bottom
enthusiastically showing her tits

a congregation of men
smoking cigarettes
pulling deep and gesturing
they have wrenches and cables
headsets crackle
their fingers crookedly point
at her

she is the moon turned up to eleven
with too much mascara and blue eyeshadow
she is the moon's evil twin sister
or her poor, misguided cousin
coming so close to pose for men
that she doesn't understand

poemelette #1

the first in a series of wee poems


she fingers the line
like twisting curls around her finger
licks her lips
his smile gleams bright
as he crosses the club
cutting the crowd like water

it is only a hug
for a count and a half
it's the half, you see
where his sweat touches hers
the weight of his arms
pulls her center of gravity
she wants to push in her pelvis
to put her nose
and her lips
on his neck
to let her hands draw a vee down his back
and land on his ass
to pull him in

the sparks live in the half
and flicker to fantasy
his fingers dance against her arm
a casual gesture
to an onlooker
she scorches the sensation
into her mind

for the next afternoon
stretched out like desert highway
a joint and an iced coffee
to dream of afternoon delights
she traces squiggly lines on her nipples
driven to distraction
the kid inside
always had a wild imagination

she stands behind him
and hopes he leans up against her
she wants to build enough muscle memory
to put together a picture
but she must remain
she cannot betray a sister
so she can only allow
a count and a half

8

Oh California, why?

Why?

How could you?



I shake my head in disappointment.

I read this today at Shakesville, and at least it is a nice read. This yes on 8 is like a brutal breakup -- all I can say is it sucks, I'm sorry, and only time can help. I don't want that to sound like "it's not your turn" because it should have been your turn. It should have already been your turn. I'm deeply disappointed, saddened, a little devastated. It's base and without reason, and my deepest condolences go out to my partners in humanity today. I will continue to fight for your rights.

Lynching in Texas

I have no words. Taken in its entirety from BoingBoing.

Black man dragged to death 200 miles from site of Byrd murder 10 years ago.

Posted by Xeni Jardin, October 24, 2008 7:47 PM | permalink

Brandon McClelland, 24, was dragged to death beneath a truck driven by two white men in Paris, Texas last month. McClelland was black. The site of his death is about 200 miles from the location where James Byrd was murdered in a similar manner ten years ago. (Image at left: Jacqueline McClelland, Brandon's mother; photo courtesy Jesse Muhammad.)

McClelland's murder took place on September 16, 2008. Parts of his mangled body were found strewn along the highway at great distance.

First responders treated the case as a hit and run. The county district attorney's office denied the possibility of racist motivations, and said comparisons to the Byrd lynching were "preposterous."

The incident was reported in the local newspaper, which later followed with this editorial.

Some bloggers and news sites associated with the Nation of Islam [ * ] have been discussing the killing as a hate crime for weeks, and claim local law enforcement ignored key forensic evidence at the crime scene.

Howard Witt at the Chicago Tribune, who has covered related stories about racial injustice and hate crimes in this region, wrote about the case as a possible hate crime earlier this month.

The story of McClelland's death -- and allegations the investigation by (white) local police investigators was botched -- seems to be gaining broader attention after having been picked up by AP today: Another Dragging Death In Texas (Associated Press).

Snip from a related story about racism in Paris, Texas, also from Witt at the Chicago Tribune:

The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place. There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.

One of the most widely-publicized lynchings of a black person in American history took place there 115 years ago. On February 1, 1893, former slave Henry Smith was tortured to death in front of a crowd of ten thousand (mostly or entirely white) people. Here is the New York Times article from that day, documenting the brutal details of his death in explicit detail.

The child’s father, her brother, and two uncles then gathered about the Negro as he lay fastened to the torture platform and thrust hot irons into his quivering flesh. It was horrible—the man dying by slow torture in the midst of smoke from his own burning flesh. Every groan from the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed crowd of 10,000 persons. The mass of beings 600 yards in diameter, the scaffold being the center. After burning the feet and legs, the hot irons—plenty of fresh ones being at hand—were rolled up and down Smith’s stomach, back, and arms. Then the eyes were burned out and irons were thrust down his throat.

Another snip from that century-old NYT story, which presumed Smith was guilty, and deserved the lynching:

Whisky shops were closed, unruly mobs were dispersed, schools were dismissed by a proclamation from the mayor, and everything was done in a business-like manner.

ANOTHER NEGRO BURNED; HENRY SMITH DIES AT THE STAKE. DRAWN THROUGH THE STREETS ON A CAR -- TORTURED FOR NEARLY AN HOUR WITH HOT IRONS AND THEN BURNED -- AWFUL VENGEANCE OF A PARIS (TEXAS) MOB (NYT)

Update: BB commenter JWB nails it:

This must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a "B" in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesn't go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has an interactive map of racist organizations and businesses (think: White Pride record stores, KKK branches) in this part of Texas, which you can view here. [ * ] Incidentally, SLPC also categorizes the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party as "hate groups."

Previously on Boing Boing: The Last Lynching: Ted Koppel documentary on Discovery tonight

Update from BB comments: an attempted lynching in Texas last year.


Links:
Womanist Musings

Black Masculinity: Curtis and Barack

My Thoughts:

On what Matt Birkhold says at 2:24: For the record, I am not afraid of 50 cent. I don't think he's going to come in, rob me, rape me, and shoot me. I don't. And that's not just because he's rich or a rapper. Even when he was a little man, at 14, 15, 16, I wouldn't immediately be terrified of him. Because I think there's a difference between a soldier in a war and a sociopathic murderer. Whatever 50's done (or anyone who's sold drugs, stabbed someone, shot someone, robbed someone) -- it's not that I excuse it, I clearly see that it's wrong -- but I don't think it is necessarily random and malicious. I just think people do monstrous shit, and they shouldn't do it, but I don't think they are actually monsters.

I like what Jelani Cobb is saying at 4:26, because that's how I'm feeling too. Just because is born into a life where they do monstrous things, don't make that person a monster. Per his comment about how you'd "never expect" 50 to be able to do business/advertising/corporate lifestyle. I wish he'd continued another minute and said something along the lines of "just because someone comes from nothing, doesn't mean they are nothing." I mean, that's how I feel him anyway, but I do think some people need shit spelled out. And yes, it makes me incredibly sad that people need it spelled out that you are not just what you come from.

Michaela Angela Davis - I like at 4:45 her talking about Obama's cool, because it's not the constraining cool that functions purely as a survival mechanism codifying the behavior of black men. It's the coolness that comes with someone who appears to be entirely at ease in his own skin -- the kind of coolness it is when you call a white guy "cool."

Terrance Dean wrote Hiding in Hip-Hop (still on my to-read list). To be honest, I'm still not wild about Obama not being for gay marriage (just get over it already -- we all deserve equal rights, why are we so afraid to say so?), so I feel like his contribution is a little wasted, because Obama isn't as strong on gay rights as he needs to be. But I do want to read Dean's book, because it isn't a tell-all on the "Down Low" phenomenon (fake), but his personal coming out story.

Ras Baraka - I like what he's saying around 7:24, because it's one of those things that's so simple and pure but still needs to be said out loud: For Barack Obama (or any man) to be a real man, he has to be true to himself. Again, at 8:16, black men have "every human emotion possible." It's so pathetic that anyone needs to be reminded of that.

Back to Jelani, I like what he says about Barack & 50, that they are doing what they need to do to survive and succeed in a game that is not designed for them. The way I like to describe white surpremacist culture is that it's like we snuck in the room an hour before the big game, and set up all the pieces so that we'd win. And then when someone else points it out, we get offended.

I found this video via Feministing's weekly reader, at this blog. She found it on Byron Hurt's web site. B. Hurt is a filmmaker and anti-sexist advocate, and this particular documentary is part of the Black Masculity Project, an effort to redefine the concept of manhood in the Black community.


As one more piece, I'd like to include this as a jumping off point. Taken from Backlash (intersectionality bam!):

"Maleness in America," as Margaret Mead wrote, "is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and reearned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play."

Thoughts?