Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
It is not eloquent or easy to read. There is nothing about it that should be easy to digest, that is exactly why it should be read. In memory of both the oppressed and the oppressor... we have to believe that there is liberation and renewal for both. Christ, we ask for amazement, energy, and redemption for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Jean Stewart
El Sobrante, CA
©2008
"I wrote this poem partly in response to the Israeli policy of home demolition by bulldozer.
Palestinian families whose homes are targeted for destruction are notified by loudspeaker.
Sometimes they’re given barely half an hour to carry out their belongings and vacate their
homes. Many elderly and disabled Palestinians have been buried in the rubble of their homes
because they could not, or would not, leave.
I also wrote the poem in response to the many incidents in which pregnant Palestinian women
have attempted to make it to hospital, only to be stopped at checkpoint by Israeli soldiers who
refuse to let them pass, forcing them to either turn around and drive home or give birth at
checkpoint. In either case, these births take place under circumstances of extreme stress and
danger, without medical assistance, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
Both of these scenarios—women giving birth “in extremis” and Palestinian families made
homeless when their houses are demolished—have become commonplace in Palestine. In my
mind I’ve tended to view them as two separate—though obviously related—narratives, but
recently it occurred to me that somewhere in Gaza or Jenin or elsewhere in Palestine, the two
horrific scenarios are bound to converge, if they have not already."
THE CHOICE
“I ask you youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself, and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of your country but to its character." -- George W. Bush
***
Jean Stewart
El Sobrante, CA
©2008
"I wrote this poem partly in response to the Israeli policy of home demolition by bulldozer.
Palestinian families whose homes are targeted for destruction are notified by loudspeaker.
Sometimes they’re given barely half an hour to carry out their belongings and vacate their
homes. Many elderly and disabled Palestinians have been buried in the rubble of their homes
because they could not, or would not, leave.
I also wrote the poem in response to the many incidents in which pregnant Palestinian women
have attempted to make it to hospital, only to be stopped at checkpoint by Israeli soldiers who
refuse to let them pass, forcing them to either turn around and drive home or give birth at
checkpoint. In either case, these births take place under circumstances of extreme stress and
danger, without medical assistance, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
Both of these scenarios—women giving birth “in extremis” and Palestinian families made
homeless when their houses are demolished—have become commonplace in Palestine. In my
mind I’ve tended to view them as two separate—though obviously related—narratives, but
recently it occurred to me that somewhere in Gaza or Jenin or elsewhere in Palestine, the two
horrific scenarios are bound to converge, if they have not already."
THE CHOICE
“I ask you youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself, and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of your country but to its character." -- George W. Bush
In Palestine the about-to-be
firstborn of a twenty two year old
woman roils and churns in amniotic
unease his journey having
hit a snag when checkpoint
soldiers deny his parents passage
thwarting all thought of
hospital birth.
They turn and drive home.
Not yet a citizen of
the human world he doesn’t
see how his mother’s sweat
wets the sheets glues brown hair to cheeks
nor how his father hovers: Love I’m here
Don’t cry Doesn’t hear what
his father now hears: the tanks.
If he were a born boy he’d see his father
turn on the television
2
loud slip from the room to race
outdoors arms aloft pleading
No stop my wife—
while she
grips the mattress, arching her back.
He’d see his mother lost
in labor oblivious to
loudspeaker
gunfire tanks
She wails stops wails
Her brown eyes fix
on the American who sits
at his desk amidst marvelous order—
just a few papers in one neat stack—squinting
back at her and speaking. The camera moves
outdoors to gaze at the White House
shimmering in sun. Presidential words
vibrate glinting like tossed coins.
Courage triumphs
Look Hassan! Such green green
grass!
Serve in a cause
And flowers! Hassan let’s plant—
In those moments just as
her body loses itself in a wild red
flowering of flesh
he the unseeing
the neverborn
he of the tiny
bulldozed bud of a heart
makes his choice
and will carry it
will carry it
will carry it on.
firstborn of a twenty two year old
woman roils and churns in amniotic
unease his journey having
hit a snag when checkpoint
soldiers deny his parents passage
thwarting all thought of
hospital birth.
They turn and drive home.
Not yet a citizen of
the human world he doesn’t
see how his mother’s sweat
wets the sheets glues brown hair to cheeks
nor how his father hovers: Love I’m here
Don’t cry Doesn’t hear what
his father now hears: the tanks.
If he were a born boy he’d see his father
turn on the television
2
loud slip from the room to race
outdoors arms aloft pleading
No stop my wife—
while she
grips the mattress, arching her back.
He’d see his mother lost
in labor oblivious to
loudspeaker
gunfire tanks
She wails stops wails
Her brown eyes fix
on the American who sits
at his desk amidst marvelous order—
just a few papers in one neat stack—squinting
back at her and speaking. The camera moves
outdoors to gaze at the White House
shimmering in sun. Presidential words
vibrate glinting like tossed coins.
Courage triumphs
Look Hassan! Such green green
grass!
Serve in a cause
And flowers! Hassan let’s plant—
In those moments just as
her body loses itself in a wild red
flowering of flesh
he the unseeing
the neverborn
he of the tiny
bulldozed bud of a heart
makes his choice
and will carry it
will carry it
will carry it on.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Nebraska
What is hope? Does need and want necessitate hope? Do the hopeless have the power to hope again? And those that are aware of the hopelessness that is brought by satiation, and yet still are too numb to hope, do they have a way to hope again? It feels impossible to pray. The words are too heavy to take flight. They sit at the end of my tongue with no proper mechanism to transport them out of my mouth. Hopelessness. I find a way to calm the gentle stirring inside my heart. I can read books on the Sabbath and about the prophetic imagination. I can talk to friends or quote poetry to suite a situation. I can write inexpressible thoughts in a pocket journal to alleviate the pain. I can wish upon new friendship to dull the pain of dying senses. I can run, but I can't hide, that to me at least, is the most obvious.
I WISH I COULD HEAR MYSELF, SCREAM.
And this will all end tomorrow, when I awake to find a new day waiting at my bed. It will begin again when I let time fall victim to spatial desires. I will doubt myself only to be the most prideful person I see that day, and will learn to stare myself through the deceitfulness of the mirror...
I do not live a horrible life. I live an overcrowded life with thoughts of revolution and domestication. I prostitute my soul for my ego and then loathe myself because of my inability to override the whims of my will. I think about what it means to build an altar and dig a well. I also think about how not moving is better than moving. Not addressing the unrest in my heart is better than undressing my heart. I think of cool sentences to switch around only so that people will look at me as someone who can manipulate words into clever phrases that fail to do justice to the issue of the heart. I write so I can reread this and pat my own back. The heaviness of desire is too much to bare. If only I could change right?
...if only I could be better... Oh, I might agree that God takes us as we are, and I tell myself that after I blame HIM for the way I am, only to feel guilty for my inability to simply believe.
And you know the times that you really do feel humbled and at peace, those days where the impossibility of change only makes you hope more...those days are so few and far between that the chasm seems to lengthen. An abyss has formed inside my heart - faith, hope, and love do not remember the quiet walks in the garden they once took together. Compassion and Justice remember only better times.
...Or so it all seems in my heart. Pessimism feels so adequate when you think of how to describe this. I don't know if I like that word. Maybe I like to leave it nameless so that when it comes again I can wallow in self-pity just enough that someone notices and pays me some warped compliment that I think will set me free.
I crucified you. I yelled it in the streets of my heart. I reached back through time and turned that palm branch into a veil to hide the gruesomeness of your crucifixion. I denied you three times. I ran to Ninevah. I condemned the adulterous women. I received new life at the well. and I died in order to gain you.
The pure fact that I exist causes me to remember why I hate you and love you at the same time. Why my hate is not really hate, but simply disguised confusion.
Can you cause me to see again? I think I have lost my way, Jesus, I am just a small child that winces when he sees the light - especially when that light causes him to let go of his fear of the darkness.
I WISH I COULD HEAR MYSELF, SCREAM.
And this will all end tomorrow, when I awake to find a new day waiting at my bed. It will begin again when I let time fall victim to spatial desires. I will doubt myself only to be the most prideful person I see that day, and will learn to stare myself through the deceitfulness of the mirror...
I do not live a horrible life. I live an overcrowded life with thoughts of revolution and domestication. I prostitute my soul for my ego and then loathe myself because of my inability to override the whims of my will. I think about what it means to build an altar and dig a well. I also think about how not moving is better than moving. Not addressing the unrest in my heart is better than undressing my heart. I think of cool sentences to switch around only so that people will look at me as someone who can manipulate words into clever phrases that fail to do justice to the issue of the heart. I write so I can reread this and pat my own back. The heaviness of desire is too much to bare. If only I could change right?
...if only I could be better... Oh, I might agree that God takes us as we are, and I tell myself that after I blame HIM for the way I am, only to feel guilty for my inability to simply believe.
And you know the times that you really do feel humbled and at peace, those days where the impossibility of change only makes you hope more...those days are so few and far between that the chasm seems to lengthen. An abyss has formed inside my heart - faith, hope, and love do not remember the quiet walks in the garden they once took together. Compassion and Justice remember only better times.
...Or so it all seems in my heart. Pessimism feels so adequate when you think of how to describe this. I don't know if I like that word. Maybe I like to leave it nameless so that when it comes again I can wallow in self-pity just enough that someone notices and pays me some warped compliment that I think will set me free.
I crucified you. I yelled it in the streets of my heart. I reached back through time and turned that palm branch into a veil to hide the gruesomeness of your crucifixion. I denied you three times. I ran to Ninevah. I condemned the adulterous women. I received new life at the well. and I died in order to gain you.
The pure fact that I exist causes me to remember why I hate you and love you at the same time. Why my hate is not really hate, but simply disguised confusion.
Can you cause me to see again? I think I have lost my way, Jesus, I am just a small child that winces when he sees the light - especially when that light causes him to let go of his fear of the darkness.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Frankie Welfare Boy Age Five
my thoughts linger like impossible
so improbable that i could carry the world
Atlas, you must have something I dont.
when the autumn leaves no longer sway
making room for the winter breeze
when people make profits the only way to live
we are reduced to producing machines
the radio plays in my ear,
I'm reminded of times that I wasnt there
when life plays before my eyes
I wish I were older in years.
I wish for joy to turn to tears.
...yeah
so improbable that i could carry the world
Atlas, you must have something I dont.
when the autumn leaves no longer sway
making room for the winter breeze
when people make profits the only way to live
we are reduced to producing machines
the radio plays in my ear,
I'm reminded of times that I wasnt there
when life plays before my eyes
I wish I were older in years.
I wish for joy to turn to tears.
...yeah
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Oh the joy of procrastination! I am supposed to be writing a paper right now. Anyways, read A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry.
"Year by year man's liberties are trampled under foot at the bidding of corporations and trusts, rights are invaded and law perverted. In all ages wherever a tyrant has shown himself, he has always found some willing judge to clothe that tyranny in the robes of legality, and modern capitalism has proven no exception to the rule."
"Repression or oppression never yet succeeded in crushing the truth or redressing a wrong..."
-Samuel Gompers, "Letter on Labor in Industrial Society." Forum, September 1894
Husker Du why do I feel so blue?
Walking around with your head in the clouds
Makes no sense at all
Sell yourself short, but you're walking so tall
Makes no sense at all
Is it important? You're yelling so loud
Makes no sense at all
Walking around with your head in the clouds
Makes no sense at all
Makes no difference at all
I don't know why you want to tell me
When I'm right or when you're wrong
It's the same thing, in your mind, the only time
I'm right is when I play along
You concern yourself with evidence
It's evident to me
Well you say you've got the tiger by the tail
But I don't see these things that way
Makes no sense at all
Sell yourself short, but you're walking so tall
Makes no sense at all
Is it important? You're yelling so loud
Makes no sense at all
Walking around with your head in the clouds
Makes no sense at all
Makes no difference at all
I don't know why you want to tell me
When I'm right or when you're wrong
It's the same thing, in your mind, the only time
I'm right is when I play along
You concern yourself with evidence
It's evident to me
Well you say you've got the tiger by the tail
But I don't see these things that way
Monday, November 10, 2008
Change?
"Honor bound to protect freedom" is what read on the sign outside of Guantanamo Bay. I am relieved to hear that president-elect, Barack Obama, will close the prison camp, allowing all prisoners to go on trial before an American Civil Court. I really hope things change...
He is not our savior, but I really do hope things change.
He is not our savior, but I really do hope things change.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)