Some oldies but goodies...

Daughter

Daughter

Be Strong.

You are all of my dreaming

Filled with the breath

Of a girl-child.

Be strong

Against my neediness.

Be your own self.

My daughter,

I cried bringing you into

This world, a baby

Small and weak.

A girl-baby,

Who’ll protect her?

Now I applaud

Your fierce spirit.

I say with pride,

“She’s stubborn.”

I stand up and applaud

Your independence

I kiss the tears away

When you tire and fall.

I lose when I try

To outsmart you.

And my heart aches

As I watch you

Sprawled asleep.

Milagros, my daughter,

Cry all your tears

And laugh all your laughter.

Scream all your pain.

These things are free

Like rain and

No one can take them

Away.

13th November 1992

Song of the Sea

8.5.99

I wish to tell you

the tale and the true, you sang

me a song and that song is you.

Come

and I’ll sing you the song

of the sea. You’ll know by its silence that

that song is me.

You’ll drink in its pauses and drown

in its notes that thrums

on your lips and tickles your throat.

This is the sea

and the strange and the soul

of the quest,

that everyone knows but nobody gets.

This is the song

(the song of the sea)

of the real and the true and the why

that’s in me.

This is the song that is me. 

Some Girls

Some girls

stay home at night

keep their knees together

tight. Wear appropriate clothing

for every occasion.  Own pale pink

sweater sets with add-a-pearl

necklaces. Save themselves

for the marriage bed. Never

a rebellious thought in their head.

Always content when they turn out the light.

Some girls do everything right.

Some girls

stay up late,

give it up on the very first date.

Curse at their parents and

run from cops. Some girls

don’t know when to stop.

Tease their hair and wear

tight pants and tube tops. Hang

with the boys, drink beer in the woods.

Some girls are up to no good. 

1st September 1997

3 lovers

I need 3 lovers.
One to woo me
One to excite me
One to love me

More than one, I need three
One to lay me down
One to love me,
One to flip me over and fuck me

Three men
Not boys
Confident
Not cocky, not false, not out to play me

Three who want me in different ways
One a soul mate. We’ve been through so much
One an old lover, a familiar touch
One who is me, my kindred spirit, my soul

Sometimes another man to flirt with is a buffer, a distraction, from his intensity, this feeling that threatens to drown me.

One who knows my moods before I see them coming, how I like being held, where to kiss me

One who’ll explore me and make a few suggestions of his own. We’ll try new things and new touches

One who is like coming home

Who can find one let alone three, this greedy girl, uncompromisingly uncomplicated, who just wants love and worship and comforting arms holding me when I’m down

That’s all I want



7th October 2019

Flashcards

Flashcards


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Flashcards

I challenge my memory

with tricks and games

to remind me of what I ought to know

the fleeting knowledge

leaving my brain

untested

I need to remember these words

　

電機でsか　　　     How are you？

脱俗          　            an escape from your everyday routine

恋人                          lover

Guessing/knowing the answers

on the cards, to remind

me of what I already know

intuitively

but can’t put to words

and speak out loud

はい、ありがとうございます        Yes Sir, thank you

生きがい　                                      a reason for getting up in the morning

跪く　　                                          kneel

v. be in or assume a position in which the body is supported by a knee or the knees, as     when praying or showing submission

I made flashcards

hoping to remember

the everything of you

going over them

in between

the times of you

testing myself

わたちがやります                            I will do it

提出する                                          To submit

v. accept or yield to a superior force or to the authority or will of another person.

“To learn from example is to submit to authority.”

I’d like to take each

flashcard

and crumple them

In my hand

making a pile of memories

thoughts of you

私わ私の元恋人お欠如                                I miss my ex-lover

愛人                                                             the woman you used to fuck

I’m going to

make a pile of your memories

and take a match to them

dropping it on the pile

and watching it burn

I challenge my memory

to disremember

your voice

your touch

your place in my life

the flashcards gone

not needed anymore

the memory of you

is seared in my mind

一護一会             　　

11th November 2019

I can't believe it's not real news

I don't think it will come as a surprise that I'm really, REALLY liberal progressive*

I was raised that way. My dad was a union leader. I grew up learning protest songs. By 10 or 11 I could sing Joe Hill and We Shall Overcome and I'd Rather Be an Engineer, among others. I went to union meetings, union picnics, union softball games, and, every two years, the big NALC convention in some big city. This was really exciting because it meant we got to travel (dad was a delegate and so I think a lot of the expenses were paid for, or else we would have been at the Jersey Shore for vacation). It also meant I got to run around some HUGE fancy hotel for a week with the other union brats. It was the 70's, so as long as you didn't do any damage or get the police involved, yes, your mother would let you explore the farthest reaches of the Chicago Hilton. It is quite grand and I was dually impressed when my father told me about the riots that took place out front the year I was born.

So this is my filter, it's my experience. When I say I believe that protest is vital to democracy, or that corporate money disproportionately influence American politics, I am arguing through that filter. I may be biased, but I am NOT lying.

Mom told us it tasted just like butter. THAT was a lie.

This past weekend, if you've been living under a rock, a woman was killed and dozens injured when a car plowed into a group of people walking away from a protest. Heather Heyer was in Charlottesville, VA to counter-protest the white supremacist rally in her town. I'm not going into all the details, you can find plenty of that online. But lets take two disparate responses to Heather Heyer's death: 

From the far left

From the Alt-Right (original site has been removed)

I'm not sure that Heather Heyer thought of herself as a comrade, although maybe she did. I am 100% certain she didn't think of herself as “A 32-year-old woman without children... a burden on society and has no value.”

Those are both biased views of a woman unknown to the writers. The basic facts of the story are true; Heather Heyer was a 32 year old woman, she died at a protest, she was childless. Calling her either "comrade" or "fat slut" (yes they did) is putting a biased slant on it to evoke an emotional reaction. That is propaganda. 

     Propaganda: 

1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
2. the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.
3. the particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.

There is another bias that appears in news articles that's not propaganda but it does, intentionally or not, set a tone that can impact the reader's perception of what's happening. A well-known story bias came out of the reporting on Hurricane Katrina: 

Looting or Finding?

The picture is from this Salon article that explains the whole thing, in summary, in the days after Hurricane Katrina, people responded to different pictures capturing survivors: the pictures of black people taking things from stores were captioned as "looting" and the pictures of white people taking things were captioned as "finding." More recently, people have pointed out a tendency of journalists to use the word "terrorist" when the perpetrator is a Muslim, but not when they're non-muslim.  This is bias and there are whole web pages devoted to avoiding it when writing.

     Bias: verb (used with object), biased, biasing or (especially British) biassed, biassing.

1.  to cause to hold or exhibit a particular bias; to influence, especiallyunfairly: a tearful plea designed to bias the jury;

e.g. a survey biased toward highly educated people.

This brings us to FAKE NEWS:

"consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.^[1] Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, often with sensationalist, exaggerated, or patently false headlines that grab attention." (Wikipedia.org). You should read the whole thing, it's pretty good. 

Fake news is completely made up. Pizzagate is fake.   Oliver Stone faking the moon landing for NASA is fake. 

A twitter post about Outback Steakhouses locations forming a pentagram is fake news. Huffpo's reporting of the tweet is dubious news. 

BUT the problem with fake news, as opposed to entertainment or satire sites, is that they are being set up to promote fake stories about political leaders and then bots are being used to promote the stories and give them widespread coverage. Sometimes for money or power, for hits and advertising, or just for shits and giggles. These entrepreneurial teens from Macedonia were raking in hundreds and thousands of dollars by posting sensational stories during the Trump campaign. 

Common sense media has a guide to figuring out if a story is fake and what can be done about it. In nursing school I learned to be wary of media sources, especially on the internet. You should ask yourself: 

• Is this coming from a known and trusted news source. Even if they have a left/right wing bias, did they get the FACTS straight. If you have the facts, you can probably figure out the bias
• Does it sound too sensational to be true. We have this amazing new invention called The Google. Take 5 minutes to search and get confirmation on the story. 
• Who is profiting from this?

Here is a link to 10 fact-checking websites. 

*I like progressive, because I'm FOR PROGRESS as opposed to being LIBERAL, like a grandma who gives away too many cookies. FYI.