Lauren Zuniga, To the Oklahoma Lawmakers: a poem

Damn.

I had just read a quote from Jon Anderson "The secret of poetry is cruelty", and then I saw this. Very powerful. I need to listen to more of her work.


If only those in power would listen.

Lately, I keep coming back to this poem, it's one of my favourites, and has particular significance for me right now

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE


Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence 

in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last 

September 11th.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who 

have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in 

retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...

A full day of silence for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at 

the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months 

of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died

of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the

country.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in 

South Africa, where homeland security made them aliens in their own country Nine 

months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down 

and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors 

went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Viet Nam - a 

people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning 

fuel,their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of 

silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war ... 

ssssshhhhh .... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead. 

Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the 

corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,

An hour of silence for El Salvador ... An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...  

Two days of silence for the Guetmaltecos ... None of whom ever knew a moment of 

peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal,  

Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their 

graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There 

will beno DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those 

who werestrung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the 

north, the east, and the west... 100 years of silence...

For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here, 

Whose land and lives were stolen, In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, 

Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now 

reducedto innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?

And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence

You mourn now as if the world will never be the same And the rest of us hope
to hell it won't be. Not like it always has been

Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written And if this is
a 9/11 poem, then

This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York,
1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:

The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children Before I start this poem we
could be silent forever Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us

And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence

Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost

Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the
Playboys. If you want a moment of silence,

Then take it

On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people
have gathered You want a moment of silence

Then take it
Now,

Before this poem begins.

Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand In the space between
bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence

Take it.

But take it all
Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,

Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.

- Emmanuel Ortiz 9.11.02

I must conquer my loneliness

alone.

I must be happy with myself
or I have
nothing
to offer.

two halves have
little choice
but to
join;
and, yes,
they do
make a
whole,

but two
wholes
when they coincide…

that is
beauty,

that is
love.

from Peter McWilliams' book of poetry ''Surviving the Loss of a Love''

fade

on the window ledge, the daffodils open in their mason jar of water
a dried bud keeps the smallest incomplete
its uneven yellow face turns to me, away from the sunlight.
do I love because I know one day I will leave?
in the garden
the crocus have begun to wilt,
except for the patch that hid themselves beneath the large stone.
in their solitude, they do not know the time to fade.

ecstasy

I would let go
but for the colour.
still,

I like to sneak to the edge
and dig my fingernails into stone
and ponder
the relief of falling
the ecstasy in shattering bones, the
liberation of seeping blood. but

when I crawl back
it is for the shade
of your tears.

budding

a ciphered breeze radiates
chilled fingers to
flicker over my skin and
keep sleep a dream.under the old quilt I imagine
you, I
crawl inside your likeness
and rebut today's rain,
the maple's goosebumped branches,
my pale hands.
reject robins ravening of
drunken worms, to

deny me, to
construct another.

a poet's epilogue

will it matter that I knew you?

that I notice light spinning
off maple keys

thrown from their canopy

to die under bicycle tires

pushed by gangly boys?

will I place my heart more carefully

after I watch leaves painting

small strokes of sunlight

freed from purple skies

and indolent raindrops?

did the words have meaning

when the waves wiped sand

from my feet

and left smooth stones

for my fingers?

and in the end
will I matter?

Dear Poetry

I will break again.
outside locked doors
inside the rain;

I am not enough
to stand,
to touch the shattered drop.

I cannot awake.
Morpheus bound me
in his embrace.

I do break.
shards of glass bled
colourless by rain.

I am not enough
to eat my pain,
chew brittle glass
kiss her anger.

I do not get away.

I will die again;
be reborn in blackness
of my darkest cave.

I may awake
alone, in Gaia’s womb
entombed, unknown.

I will not flay my
flesh in words;
fall through myself
to make amends

again.

unforgiven

who do I imagine I am?

breath?

thought?

in a place

where ten year old

bulldozers tear down

one hundred year old trees

in this place where

house sized wood chippers

vomit green onto

clear cut ground

bare foot in the grass

the rain will not

baptize me

my finger waits

for the drop that

could forgive me.

concupiscence

The lavender garden is sharp dry sticks. The half withered lilac bush hangs on like a stroke victim, small white flowers facing away from its dead side. In front, an entire clump of golden ground cover, eaten alive. The herbivores moving on to tasty nettle flowers and deep blue hostas.

The thistles are thriving. Feeding birds all winter, has afforded me this reward.

I sit under my willow’s weeping, and look to its stunted branches for emotions appropriate for the dead and dying. Are they waiting under heavy clay soil to emerge with cicadas? Will I recall my love in the arrival of their ravenous droning?

Perhaps.

All are dead, or will die from my neglect. If you want to be poetic, will die from my breakdown, my second bottom, my passions' burial, from life and hope too afraid to wake up.

But my today is not for poetry.

Today I stand in thistles. Last summer, I brushed past lavender for the perfumed caress it left on me. I regard the desiccated bed before my re-immersion in barren slumber.

Moment of Silence

Well it's happened - I'm published.... go figure.

starved rock

I am drifting mist shrouding sacred souls condensing cool on rounded rocks, a blanket for embracing moss hazy fingers who in grasping for the twisted trees plummet instead to churning waters merging my sorrows' songs with loons’ soft and haunting melodies I am the dying shattered tree my red heart laid open, my decay - now marrow for our mother earth the musky redolence in damp disintegrating leaves, my grave - a witness forever to the silhouettes of passing lives I am footfalls barely heard between heartbeats - felt scarcely behind you on the leaf-strewn path dancing in the mist of a waterfall who carved my stone face within each teardrop I am all of these I am the questions you dare not ask your face - that you do not see I am your dead I am forever. Dedicated to: The Illinois. Seeking revenge for a tribal murder the Potawatomi paddled down river to attack the Illinois. The Illinois sought refuge on top of a high rock. They climbed up to the summit of the rock hoping that the Potawatomi would by-pass them on their way southward. Unfortunately, the plan backfired and the Potawatomi surrounded the base. As the Illinois tried to get water by lowering buckets with rope the Potawatomi would cut the ropes or shatter the buckets with their arrows. They also climbed up on top of Devil's Nose and showered them with arrows. As the Illinois grew more desperate, some tried sneaking down, but they were murdered. The rest that were left on top, starved. Since then, the rock has been known as "Starved Rock."

universally speaking

I am nothing

more than words;

(composed in marrow)

meaningless
shapes on
dry pages

every thought
is a prayer

for heaven?
for hell?
I don't know.

engulfed in
unutterable answers

I make love
to darkness

are you more precious
because of your
dying?

- picking, eating, dead flesh
with your iced fingers -

or still precious in spite of it?

do hearts explode
with grief,
or do they hide,
again?

again. and again. and, again.

a man will bury himself
alive,
(I've watched. holding his shovel)
(again)

do you notice
mother earth's dark womb
engulfing you again?

I hate these words.

I hate my words.
again.

I hate.
I hate loving you
again.

I
3am

there is someone
in here
dying

it's 3am, and I
need to hear
sunlight

you, obviously
hours wealthier,
step off into
your life

the blackness between
your words
will not hold time

curled
within it - I
listen for breathing.

II
continuum

inside

I waited for rules
to change

-time is dripping somewhere in a cave-

(Do Not drink the
black drops)

love?
you were in love with it

(it tasted of quinine
dipped in too much sugar)

III
space

a heart holds
enough blood to
flow
evenly across
a kitchen table

before turning
black

(you never wrote this down)

in the space beside speech
you can
hold smooth
cold stones

collected, I
wear them in a sac
around my neck

they weigh the same as time.

IV
patterns of engagement

number one
embrace bleeding

learn to love
sticky sweetness

this is how snow
feels to a daffodil
french kissing
cold with hot

fuck this.

blood in snow feels
beautiful

the velvet of black
roses
is absolutely edible.

V
infinity

metaphorically speaking

my murder will
be misunderstood

it will be enough to say
it's hour
was infinite

like the taste of
chocolate
kissed from your tongue
in solitude.

From Ear to Quaternity
(a Ruthless and Toothless Production)

by Leanne Handson
(fabulous poet - and not just because she wrote this)
author of "Odd Verse Effects"


Bow down before the Amazing Callooh
Mistress of misery, goddess of gore
Lady of leg humping fantasies blue
Driving us mad with foot flat on the floor

If you’re disturbed (perhaps sick to the core)
Bow down before the Amazing Callooh
Read and prepare to be struck down with awe
(Some say it feels like a dose of the flu)

If you’ve a parrot to spare (maybe two)
Drop by the Bulldog for cheeses galore
Bow down before the Amazing Callooh
Pay your respects to the nut we adore

Nearly the end now, there’s just one verse more
Then you can go back to peanuts and brew
Make sure you’ve done what I got you here for:
Bow down before the Amazing Callooh




Never, get too friendly with a poet....

not to touch
I read Neruda with you
in a dream that was
worthy of your untamed mouth,
your heavy eyes, they
hold the deep night's velvet
your roughened hands, impossible
not to touch

I woke with you
my eyelids
draped by May’s first dew, then
opened to cold solitude
an emptiness caressed
by dawn’s orange fingers
your touch fleeing on chaste butterfly wings

my love, a transparent child,
cries soft round tears
that float up and leave my
tender kisses in the
pure whiteness of clouds.

confession

and when first I loved

you, I was my other self,

whose surface love gripped, and
clung in fear

with dreadful fingernails.

when first I tried

new love.

layers have peeled;

of love, of scorn,

and fresher passions,
flayed from

fragile skin.

nerves lay alive on

frail new membranes, alert to

desire’s precise pain.

trembling, I stand alone
becoming stronger;
virgin flesh
still unprotected.

my hidden love,
my fierce passion
for you, bound loosely
deep within myself.
I swallow back and
gag on my bile stained
remorseful confessions.

you are

my unremitting bedrock

worth capricious joy;

essential still,

for each heart beat,

and my every
single breath.