Tired? Maybe we should open all our windows and scream “ I am not going to take it anymore.”
New Normal?
America will change?
And America’s change will influence other countries?
Folks who have been traditionally, over centuries and decades, remained the least privileged while being shunted to the sidelines (i.e. kicked to the curb) will never be invited to the head of the table?
Believe those stories. In the new decade, change is gonna come? Really? Believe that story.
Maybe, cultural, non-profit and corporate institutions will begin to witness the truth; not be concerned about donor money or profit bottom lines, and articulate what is needed by people who face death more than others in the face of “19’s” continued rampage. The people who still must service the whims of the privileged. Wait for the new normal? It will remain the centuries old and universally embraced current normal as to how we treat people who are different from us in race, culture and class.
Are we of little faith?
Are global elections producing politicians who place the physical, economic and emotional welfare of citizens above the interests of corporate sponsors and self-interests?
Look at history and tell me I am wrong. Real change produces generational change. Increments and baby steps are just that…inconveniences to the status quo and not challenges for a different normal.
People continue to suffer through all the good intentions and quasi-solutions that makes most of us feel good and believe societal things are changing so we think we have done good. Toss those efforts to the side as ineffective and not enough.
America will change?
Racism, institutional and otherwise, and bias, implied or outright, will disappear because we plan to be the new normal?
Will folks challenge people who look like them to change their racist, discriminatory and privileged ways? Change their beliefs and concepts of others that has been built on class and what others look like?
America will not change. And the world will continue to exist the way it has existed.
So, do want you need to do to protect and safe-guard family and friends.
America will get worse.
Why?
In the past, the seeds of chaos , hate and disregard for others who look and act different have been dormant. For the past few years, there have been intentional, strategic and planned actions to sprout, grow and nurture these dormant feelings and evil beliefs. And like any invasive and destructive species, the spread of destruction is coming.
Make me wrong.
Organize and do the work.
Change the new normal.
I challenge you.
Make the safety of all people supersede the interests of capitalists and the 1 %?
I double challenge you!
Stay committed.
Please welcome…Karen Faris…“Some Kind of Blue was the first jazz album I bought.”
 |
| Karen Faris (photo provided) |
Gravity
it
is like you are pinned to this place in the universe
and
even though you know
you
are composed of light and evanescence
you
have been assigned to be of a different mettle
this
of rock and earthen heaviness, thick ore
and
you get a whiff of something—maybe sulfur or cobalt?
who
knows what these elements are
you
did not name them
nor
do you own them and yet you are said
to
be composed of them.
it
is like you are pinned to this place in the universe
and
even though the stars have different names
from
the ones you gave them, and even though
you
know if you were just freed
you
would free the stars and the rest of the planets
to
move not just around the sun
but
where ever they wanted to travel
to
dance and dazzle
do a
two-step or maybe tap around
sideways,
slideways
depending
on the gusts and milky way
depending
on the whims of the day
depending
just
depending
but
no. you are pinned to this place in the universe.
the
rules have been set and though you know
this
darkness is but a lack of filament,
a
certain kind of (dis)order,
you are
still pinned, thousands of you
like
thousands of butterflies
no
longer held by the air, no longer in and of the wind
to
dance or swirl
on
top of roughhewn weeds, leaving silken thread.
Here!
here! here!
your
friends call. You answer but
there
is no place for you
to
live and rest and breath
unless
you rip yourself right off your pins
and
ruin your wings.
***
But
the pins only hold you down for so long
and
you decide what’s a little ruin
anyway
when you’ve got a universe
in
which to glow
and
you have been talking
planet
talking
star
reaching
milky
way gathering
harnessing
the light and sending out sparks
and
even on occasion, talking to the sun
because
the sun is a chatter box
and
talks and talks and talks
in
refractory indifference to whomever is within their reach
Blinded
by its own brightness,
the
sun glows too hot
and
consumes all within its orbit
and
it cannot last. It cannot and
you
and the others do not want
to
be cast out into darkness and alone
because
the sun will always do that,
so
used to being its own center,
blinded
by its own reflection
by
its own being
in
ways you could never be,
you
thinking what it’d be like to walk out together
dancing
planetary designs one sashay after another
waiting
for the next big bang
and the
lights of your real universe
to
pull you in and let you shine.
Karen’s second poem is from a (very) long poem she is developing tentatively called, “The Fable In Progress.” This poem is the first poem of Part 2 which is a series of prose poems in the epistolary tradition to Florine Stettheimer.
 |
| Women's Memorial, Block House Island, Brockville Ontario, Canada, "Death of Compassion," Karen Faris, photographer |
Karen’s second poem is from a (very) long poem she is developing tentatively called, “The Fable In Progress.” This poem is the first poem of Part 2 which is a series of prose poems in the epistolary tradition to Florine Stettheimer.
The
Forgotten Mail of Florine Stettheimer
My
Dearest Florine:
I’m
sure you would be quite flabbergasted
by
it being well past the next century
and
nothing has changed. The female artists
(you
see it right there don’t you)
are
still required to be female versions
of
the male versions of The Artist
and
therefore derivative from the getsome
gotsome
now onwards you sweet little thing.
Nothing
has changed.
There
is the tediousness of being adored
of
having to be adored
of
having to be willing to be adored
coveted
and coy with the brush
to
ignore the body as the source
of
all creativity and life.
It
is with this tedium in mind
that
I write to you today
to
know how you survived it,
how
you did not go mad
and
run in front of the train
which
I am currently chasing
just
like in the movies
with
all of its symbolic nature—
I
am tired of chasing trains.
I
fear I am just one more train wreck
in
the long history
of
mechanical things
with
defects.
I
have holes you see.
I
am just so damn holey
that
I can’t stand being the derivative
of
all that has gone before
an
endless supply of bodies on this
train
wreck…train wreck…train wreck
Ms.
Florine, how did you survive
the
constant clackity-clackity mess?
The latest and limited edition of fifty Faris chapbooks, numbered, dated and signed is The Death of Compassion, which is available for purchase. Make check or money order payable to aaduna, Inc. (a New York State non-profit corporation and IRS tax-exempt organization) for $16 (US $.) Outside of the United States, please consult foreign exchange rates and make your money order payable for the US $ appropriate amount. There is free shipping and handling.
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