poem from a few months ago, now that it's not quite that raw
Damn You, Neruda
There are times when poetry
holds its tongue.
So I look inside,
to the place it usually squeaks out of,
and poke around in there.
Today, three things poke back:Gaza, Fergusson, and cancer.
Last things first:
A week ago today a small cancer
was removed from my breast.
I am, shall we say, sitting with this.
My friends tender me almost unbearable kindness.
Some, in fear for my survival, spill out
an avalanche of advice,
which breaks down, more or less, to the following: Be a good girl, do what the doctor says.
Get radiation. Don't ask very much. Don't stir the pot.
Alternatively,
Fuck that noise.
Go to Mexico. Eat apricot pits.
Spend any savings you've had or hope to have.
Don't buy the poison. Big Pharm is out to get ya.
Hell, yes, it's evidence-based but I may or may not
show you my graphs.
Are you a good girl?
Breathe.
(I'm working it out.
An in-process life.
To be continued.
If you have advice
to give,
make it sweet,
if it can't be short...)
Next up, and I apologize deeply
for any perception of false equivalence,
because, no,
but yeah, Ferguson.
FERGUSON.
Very little to add, actually, besides:
"America, why so racist?"
I look to the ongoing wreckage
of mainline policing
and remember Zimbardo's prison:
sweet young college boys,
without mental illness
or criminal pasts, put in "prisoner"
and "guard" roles for a 2-week experiment.
They had to shut it down early.
The guards saw the prisoners, their classmates,
as "dangerous" and "tough", requiring ever increasing
torment and control.
The prisoners despaired, rebelled, despaired again.
until Zimbardo's girlfriend threatened to leave him.
"This is changing you," she said.
He was the warden.
We all need
a girlfriend like that,
for the collective awakening
out of poisonous roles,
clouding us to the personhood of the other,
blinding our hearts out of fear and pain.
The more entrenched these roles are,
the most obvious and justified,
and the harder to unwind the stories we develop
about the enemy.
Of Gaza, then,
what hope?
I ofter nothing but a question.
The heartbreak is too particular.
This, then, a stone I place
into the soup of our communion.
A koan for your gut, to work its way.
I would apologize,
but you're here. You came here,
as I did. You came into this poem,
and now you are here, with me,
in this pain. I bless your presence.
I welcome it, even as I remind you,
as Neruda spoke it, of the poet's obligation.
First, we must envision
that there is a place beyond the prison walls.
It proceeded them.
It will outlast them, God willing, and hamdulillah.
We cannot see it.
This peace that must occur.
This breaking of the chains.
The story, the stories, are too deep,
too steeped in suffering and loss.
We do not know its fragrance, or its shape.
Nevertheless,
what other choicedo we have?
Do not be the prisoner
and do not be the guard.
Do not be the cancer,
and do not be the denial of cancer.
Nothing that came before
Can define what must come now.
I have swallowed this stone.
I have pledged myself to know
what I cannot yet know,
and yet what we must all know:
That there is a way beyond the prison walls.
That yes, there is cancer, there is racism, there is injustice,
and also, there is humanity, there is justice, there is well-being, there is peace .
And let us all say
amen. Selah.
Bismillahi a'rachman,a'rachim