Poem : House-lew

A crow eating a shark.

"Safe as houses" is my favorite phrase.

It is Victorian English. It basically means that your investment or business venture or the thing you are about to do is a solid bet. Because what could be more sound than buying property?

Houses are supposed to be "safe". Many of us across the world are social distancing these days due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For many, houses -- home -- that place, is not "safe". And even if it is. Houses feel less and less secure.

COVID is an acronym: COrona VIrus DIsease. Corona in Latin means garland, wreath, laurel. It is for the shape of the virus -- a circle covered in gem-like crown-like embellishments. It is a thing to be placed on your head. An honor. So safe sounding.

In ancient Greece laurels were presented to athletes, gods, or the dead.

COVID is sideways to corvid. Which are ravens, crows, jays, magpies. The most intelligent of birds. Mystic creatures who represent war, death, divination, news tellers. The Haida of western Canada and Southern Alaska believe the raven created the earth, this home.

The Haida wear masks showing animals transforming into other things. Meaning becoming another meaning.

So if this house has ceased being safe. We must evolve to find a new one.

The poem below is about death. It's on my mind.

---

House-lew

In the burntout crumbles of bunker — sounds of fluting — veil cathedral hand to eyes —

If you peek — you will see in glory in fire amen — the thing we all hide
from — locked doors and all that — a ghost in the pantry of the stomach —

It rumbles about with unrolled gem wings — finds north but turns west because
it wants to be the setting sun — we — safe as houses — we — are fine — yes —

In the moment when the heart collapses
perception becomes a slip
falling to the ground
in a bedroom somewhere in Kansas

The ribs release their long-caught bird
cold hungry everything safe then unsafe

It’s a rattle — curling of the body as wood sheets over flame —

In the aftermath — sound a lily makes when opening in the morning — the tube
a missile leaves behind — when going off — to finish what was started —

Poem-A-Day #259 : Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe

This is an erasure of the first chapter of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'm not entirely sure it works. But here it is.


Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe

Once
something happened
during
the war

There were children
sent away
because
of the country

The odd
afraid
night
trying to talk like mother

We've fallen and no mistake
this
anything
won't hear us

Doors empty
beginning to feel
an owl
falling so thick

Quite empty the
dead blue window
always expecting
woodwork

Cold queer
open
other light
coming

Poem-A-Day #173 : On This Day

On This Day

.
          Alfred Russel Wallace published his theory of evolution today
                    alongside Darwin's first findings -

Who remembers Wallace -
               getting to be forgotten is perhaps unfair -

History is quick -
a fog rolling in that conceals
                                        then masks
                                                  then disintegrates -

.
In Edmond Oklahoma a man stormed a post office
and killed 14 of his co-workers
this is the birth of the phrase 'going postal'

A response to tragedy
humor within the darkness
and his name is probably not on the tip of your tongue

And that is probably alright

Getting to be forgotten is perhaps justice -

.
Khalid ibn al-Walid defeated Byzantium

          The most decisive victory in military history

Getting to be forgotten is perhaps terrible perhaps alright
          it is perhaps chance that this victory opened the world to Islam
                    through conquest

Is history ever not through conquest

.
                    There is a part of us that finds that information
               perhaps
                                        too obvious
                                        too hind-sight

          History is a weather pattern out across the ocean
          that never reaches a shore without consequences

Khalid ibn al-Walid Mosque
Homs, Syria

Poem-A-Day #124 : Guernica

Day 2 of my Remember project stumbles to the starting point of my obsession with Pablo Picasso's Guernica. It began with a really odd piece of theater. A high school did an original dance/movement piece that slowly revealed the full tableau of the painting across the stage. Each of the figures in the painting was given a solo dance. It was crazy and wonderful.

The original:

Guernica (12/6/98)

Came from above the rain
The purple is broken open
Tossing summersaults in the air it falls
Something inside me makes me want to run
Something inside me makes me want to put my arms up like I were crucified
Someone inside me runs away and is gone
Came down to earth
The red is spread out
Twisting summersaults in the air it falls
Guernica is confronted
Guernica is gone


The edit:

Guernica

From above the purple
          above the rain
the sky is open

The pouring face tosses itself in the air
          it falls

          You want to run

          You want to be crucified

          You are both

Red spreads like paint
          summersaulting over the earth

It ignites
          and within moments
it is gone

Guernica (1937) - Pablo Picasso

Poem-A-Day #113 : Poem for Tuesday

Poem for Tuesday

Today Constantinople fell

Mars himself caught fire on the field of battle - his cloak went rust then black
frozen on the spot the reaching vines of darkness covered the globe

Hang a rope over one reaching arm - the scales of justice knotted on the ends - the day will be for sacrifice

How much does all the blood of Byzantium weigh

Tiwaz Rune - An invocation of the Norse god of war and law Týr
Tuesday derives from "Tīw's Day", the day of Týr

Poem-A-Day #70 : Cryptarchy

Cryptarchy

And the government knows these things
all the things and the knowing is a thing
that is known and unknown

Here the aliens break open and reveal their inner cat pilots
in their little helmets and suits they are feline Power Rangers
in a rainbow of colors

I want to be bigger on the inside
to twist in the wind like an airfield sock
all phallic and flappy in the tall grass

There could be a sort of fight between the cats and myself
we would be like children playing war
the men in black watching us smiling plotting

Or the government is mute on all things - a broken edifice
limping in its tower - either way I catnip and I plant mines

Poem-A-Day #26 : Sous le Feu de la Guerre

Sous le Feu de la Guerre

The sun was in my eyes - that is the first thing

The song on the radio was about war - but not this current one

I was thinking about an essay on sudden horrific intrusion and about how easy it would be to just drive the car into oncoming traffic - that moment when you're standing on a balcony and want to jump

Sunsets do that weird lens flare thing like sci fi movies - I've never seen a green flash but I know it's out there

What about driving a car into the Grand Canyon

There's mountains within mountains somewhere - they might even be ancient - you would be forgiven if you begin to suspect that one climbs Everest to try to die

There's a second thing you should know -

Poem-A-Day #18 : Boom

Boom

Here          there be
          aliens

Probing

What is the path of the asteroid
elliptical          ovoid
          the shape of a goat's eye

It lands in the field

          burning          leaving scars
in the forests

It leaves a ball of ice

full of limbs          blood
          melting weapons

full of ammunition

All Is Gravity

A body floating in an expansive void.

One being. Alone.

Every element of the environment out to kill them.

No way to contact anyone.

No way to get home.

Nothing but wits. And luck. To save them.

This is the basic plot of two high-profile movies in theaters right now. Gravity and All Is Lost.

Each begins with an almost immediate calamity that leaves our 'hero' alone and adrift. A breath from certain doom. In Gravity, Sandra Bullock is at first given the safety of George Clooney. But that is soon taken away. Robert Redford has no one from the start. Neither movie has much dialogue.

Both include sweeping views of the isolation of the characters. Disorienting rolling camerawork that conveys the instability of the moment.

Both films present road block upon road block in front of the stranded figures. Bullock must deal with fires, explosions, crashes, suicidal thoughts, broken everything. Redford must deal with fires, crashes, suicidal thoughts, massive storms that might as well be explosions.

Leaving the theater after All Is Lost this weekend I was overcome with a sense of 'why?' about these two movies.

Why now?

Why stories about such absolute isolation. About death. About silence.

About survival.

Because both of these movies end with impossible survival in the face of all of this. In fact the endings of these movies are almost metaphoric in their need for the characters to come through the fire and still not die. To, at the last moment, be saved, reborn.

J and I were talking and I feel like this is some post-Iraq War psychology. Though real American in its focus.

Hear me out.

You can pretty safely argue that post-9/11 the US was in a serious state of PTSD. Lashing out and going through the many stages of grief. The fact that other countries took the brunt of that is deplorable. But it is.

Are these movies a sort of selfish 'we came through that' played out on the screen? I'm sure there is some of that at play here. At least from a cultural stand point. We as a country certainly didn't actually deal with anything post-9/11. Most Americans certainly felt little of the impact from the decade of war we are emerging from.

That the movies are about death but against all odds the protagonists survive. I see them as attempts at explaining human will. Ingenuity. That we can face great darkness and come out into light.

The final scenes of both movies involves the character literally reaching for light. Bullock crawls out of the space craft and then onto a beach. She stands in the rays of the rising sun. It shines over her as she stumbles, like a new born, into the future. Redford is drowning. Is actually in the process of giving up, when a hand reaches into the darkness. He reaches up. Rays shining into the water from above.

Fade to black.

Culturally we are in a dark place. The economy has improved, but not for all. Politics has become overly fractured. There are little wars igniting and smoldering all over. We send drones to fight our ever elongating wars. Zeno's dichotomy playing out in real time, these wars are in a perpetual state of 'ending'.

Quetzalcoatl. Dies in fire to be reborn.

That these movies seem to predict a light at the end of the tunnel. That both seem to use their respective isolated environments as a sort of parable for the death/rebirth cycle and the improvement of self speaks to a rebirth through fire. Bullock in the shower of space vehicles entering the atmosphere and Redford literally starting a ring of fire that he is submerged beneath.

Psyche as phoenix.

J pointed out that the end of Zero Dark Thirty could be interpreted in a similar way. The final shot of Jessica Chastain sobbing uncontrollably, alone, in a plane can certainly be interpreted as the culture realization of what we have spent the last 10 years doing.

If Chastain represents America going through the post-9/11 stages that America did. Then do Bullock and Redford represent our hopes for what comes next?

Manhattan on Fire

© 2002-2013 The Lincoln Institute

July 11, 1863 was the day that numbers were first called in the military draft for the Civil War. Even though there were rumbles of protest, the calling of numbers went peacefully.

On the 13th the numbers were again called. An angry mob of around 500 people showed up at the Ninth District Provost Offices at Third Avenue and 47th Street in Manhattan. The draft was halted as the building was set on fire. Rioters stopped the fire fighters from putting the blaze out. Horses were killed and street cars were toppled. The city cut telegraph lines to keep the news from spreading that a large group of mostly white Irish New Yorkers were rioting against Emancipation.

The fear was that there would be no jobs for the white men.

Because of the war, there was no militia to be sent into the city. The mob turned against the black people of New York. The mob beat, tortured and/or killed numerous black people, including one man who was attacked by a crowd of 400 with clubs and paving stones, lynched and set on fire.

Particularly terrible was the destruction of the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th and Fifth Ave. 233 children lived in the building when it was attacked by several thousand rioters. The place was stripped of food and supplies before being set on fire and burned to the ground. Amazingly each of the orphans escaped.

At least 100 black Americans were killed on the first day of rioting. Many black-owned businesses were burned.

The homes of politicians who supported the Emancipation were attacked.

By July 16th at least 120 people were killed. 11 black men were lynched. At least 2000 were injured. Property damage was $15 – $75 million (adjusted for inflation). 50 buildings burned to the ground and many more had to be demolished from the damage. Whole sections of the city were altered overnight.

As a result of the violence many blacks moved to Brooklyn,which was still a separate city, and New Jersey. Whites and blacks would be divided by boroughs for decades. This division can still be seen in parts of the city to this day.

The riots are considered the largest civil insurrection in American history. Ever.

What amazes me the most about this event, aside from it happening at all, is that I never knew about it. That something so important to the history of this country occurred and no one pointed it out in my many years of school.

That while a war that deeply divided our country was going on, our largest city was also deeply divided - to the point of killing 120 people - and we don't discuss it...

I can only look at is and say that this is part of our problem. Part of New York City's larger racial and political and class-based problems. Deeply hidden beneath daily lives, all over the country, are these hidden pasts.

I don't know if we can unearth and put to rest enough of them to actually heal. I don't know that the wounds heal themselves. But it's interesting that we don't acknowledge that the wounds are there.

You can read more about the riots at Mr. Lincoln & New York. A larger version of the map at the start of the post is here.

A Problem

I had a long talk with JG today about the resurgence of the black servant in media. Movies like The Help, Django Unchained, and the upcoming The Butler. Our discussion was focused on the inability of America to face our past discretions.

We are a country of teenagers. We crash our car while drunk. Our parents are indignant and ground us for a month or two only to give us a much nicer new car after the punishment.

That simplifies the problem but we have an inability to discuss these things. We look at films like Django and wring our hands, but is the message being absorbed? We acknowledge the problem but do nothing to fix it.

I wondered aloud if we even notice the problem. Isn't there a possibility that some see a film like Django or The Help and think that these problems were in the past? That we already did that civil rights thing?

I have the same issue with Zero Dark Thirty. A film that talks about important issues. America has spent 12 years fighting unwinnable, money draining wars. And what have we gotten in return? Bin Laden is dead, but do we feel better? Do those 3000 people come back?

The final shot of ZDT is of Jessica Chastain, alone on a military plane. Her face takes up the whole of the frame. She has just 'won'. She got Bin Laden. She saw his body. Her face twists and she bursts into tears. The battle that she waged for 12 years has left her hollow and destroyed. She has lost her friends. She has spent all her time and energy 'getting' this man. And for what?

At one point in the film Chastain tells a marine that he is there to get Bin Laden for her. To kill him for her. She says she was left alive to get Bin Laden. Clearly, the character becomes a stand in for all of America at this point. We are the lone woman, spoken of as being 'young' and 'fragile'. We are the one left standing, we are there to dole out vengeance.

Kathryn Bigelow has come under considerable criticism for the portrayal of torture in the film. I can't help but feel like the critics are just incapable of stomaching the truth of what America spent 12 years doing.

I conflate these two types of not dealing. Race and War. The arguments for and against each are more nuanced than what I have glanced at here. I can't help but feel that we suffer, as a nation, from PTSD around both of these issues.

We avert our gaze from what causes us nightmares.

Sometimes we acknowledge the events. But only in certain terms.

Disney won't release Song of the South on DVD in the US. It is widely available in the rest of the world. We spend more time discussing whether Tarantino can make a movie about slavery than what is int he movie. Bigelow is called out for historical inaccuracies and the ambiguity of her 'statement'.

We are doomed to spin our wheels. To repeat.

Octavia Spencer won an Oscar for playing a sassy maid in The Help. The first Oscar won by a black actor was in 1939, when Hattie McDaniel won for playing a sassy maid in Gone With the Wind. I think Spencer is a great actress, but is this the best we can do?

Dust Jacket : The Thirty Years War, Pt. 2

The Thirty Years War(2009)

Designed by: Jill Breitbarth
Painting by: Feodor Dietz

Read part one HERE.

I went over the history of the war and the players in part one. There I touched on the image. How it plays with the central figure in black. Now I want to focus on the image and how it draws me in.

In Breitbarth's crop of the Dietz painting, the man in black takes center sage. The sky is shortened and what we see is a man about to hit a horse. Behind him are faces, watching intently. Are they an audience? Is the man in black the good guy or are they? The ambiguity alludes to the strange politics of the war itself, but the image is one that fascinates.

A lone warrior against unbeatable odds. No matter who is the 'good' and 'bad' one man against what appears to be an army are not favorable odds.

And this scenario crops up in dozens of films. Each time in almost identical ways:

The idea of the lone avenger. The ultimate underdog situation is hard to resist. Oldboy and Kill Bill are examples that are numerous. Look at most action films and this situation will come up at least once. Of course war would look more like this:

Without Orcs.

The David versus Goliath ideal is a natural draw. We want a savior, a sentry, someone who against all odds will come through. It doesn't matter who is good or bad really, we want the thrill of what will happen. The suspense. The idea that someday that lone warrior may be us.

That man in black will attack the man on the horse. The crowd of faces will stand for a moment in disbelief. Depending on the outcome of that initial face-off, that man in black may face that crowd. And it will be epic.

For A Change

This is based on Iftar.


For A Change 5/17

let's talk about the war
not as symbolic of our rotten core
as a broken tower of lost hope

Let's talk about it as another
in a long line

Of the march of history

Maybe I'm diminishing
the universe the concepts the lives

I am a bore maybe it is time
to talk about these things seriously
for a change

Sellers : Drift

Drift
Author: Rachel Maddow
Publisher: Crown
Date: 3/27/12
288 pages

Maddow's book is a look at the drift of war powers from the US Congress to the President over the last few decades. It is a fast read and will expand a much needed discussion.

What concerns me is that when you look at the non-fiction best-seller lists over the last decade is that it is full to the brim with books by television personalities.

We seem to have traded historians and philosophers for talking heads and polemic.

I'm not asking for stuffy academic books with impenetrable footnotes. I just want a higher level of discourse.

Why, for instance, is Bill O'Reilly writing a book about the assassination of Lincoln? Granted, O'Reilly does have a degree in history and did teach High School for several years in the 1970s, but still. Why is he doing this? Why is his book the one that sits on the best-seller list for 31 weeks?

The current top ten has 5 books by journalists, 2 TV hosts, 1 former politician, 1 golf coach and 1 blogger. Five of these books are memoirs. Two are pop-science examinations of human actions. This leaves O'Reilly's Lincoln book, a book about President's by Time's Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, and Maddow's book on US military policy.

Having only read Maddow's I would say that Drift and The President's Club are the only books that seem to want to spark discussion. The rest are mostly meant to strengthen legacies.

Is this a problem? The list has always been lousy with journalists. I suppose my main issue is that we have given over serious discussion to these folks that are really, for all intents and purposes, entertainers.

That word is scary. Serious. I, of course mean deep, real, more than cursory. Why does everything have to be entertainment? Easy? Sound bite filled?

There is a concept called Gamification. Essentially it is the idea that you can apply simple game rules to every day life to make it easier to slip in advertising, to control behavior, etc. More applicable is the idea that you can turn everything into a game. There are apps for everything. Banking is a game, you can watch your life go up and down every moment of every day. So-called services like Klout only add to this. They literally turn your online presence into a game. You get points for being talked about on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and on and on. Each friend is a point, each click a point. The higher your Klout the higher your worth as a person.

The idea that we abandon serious discussion in favor of flashy personalities and pop-everything is just another part of this. We are gaming discourse. Somehow because they are in our living rooms nightly, Maddow and O'Reilly are 'experts' on things. We read about other peoples lives in an effort to know how to gage the one we aren't living.

Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

Red-flag

Red-flag (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany 1990) 9/12

the track is sloped curved these cars go damn fast the black curls

they are blur lines color blending in time ink in water on paper

immersion

you cannot separate motion speed time from the space air breath

this spot            here the place all bodies will come to rest die end

applause

sound of speed curve breaking open the walnut the rip of fabric

here are four bodies blur of red relapsing into black and yellow

there must be release

letting go not forgetting but healing there are wounds in the soil

rock screams and falls and here is a spot divided checkerboard

the lights go red red red yellow yellow green

there squeal rubber smell fire smoke burn and peel out and track 

sloped to center pull churn twist spit back out into daylight

Rowdy-dow

Rowdy-dow 8/15

Late at night the rain
against the leaves
soft foam sound

Amongst them the drum beats
far off and then the light of fire

When eyes are closed
and the cool air swirls
about your naked chest

There is the sense that this
eternal war will cease in our lifetimes

That the endless glow
of sword on breastbone
will ember and ash

That whatever horse we crawled out of could take us back in

Nationalize

Nationalize 6/11

The news cycles
and those towers
stop falling

An oil spill bubbles
War pops and
fizzes in the east

We are angry at
everything and
culpable for nothing

Choco

Choco 4/24

Hold them back
and wait

Those reserves

Keep them off to the side

In case
everyone else dies

Chelicerate

Chelicerate 4/13

These armored spiders
crawling broken-backed
across the sand are some
sort of metaphor!

At night there is a glow
in the waves – the jellies
are huddling from a storm
out at sea

We cannot mesh the sun
and the death the rolling
foam of salt and coral
with the sound of guns

I scrape my toe on edges
of reef – on door hinges
and I think about glass
breaking in shop windows

All along the world there
are people hoping some
for peace and some for
takeover

Chevron

Three places to submit in April!

Octopus Books has opened their doors to manuscripts for one month only

Jewelery maker Jeanine Payer is having a Poetry Month postcard contest

APR's annual Stanley Kunitz Prize gives you $1000 for ONE POEM

Because poetry is like war!


Chevron 4/7

White paint on green doors

In Iraq in 1992 – the Hummers
all had chevrons

Hanging quotation marks

They screamed – I’m here
don’t shoot me!