two feet in.

Metaphor to Action: Amazing Sky #22

"Who will speak these days, / if not I, / if not you?"

For Christmas, some sky and a poem...

Whether it is a speaker, taut on a platform,
who battles a crowd with the hammers of his words,
whether it is the crash of lips on lips
after absence and wanting : we must close
the circuits of ideas, now generate,
that leap in the body's action or the mind's repose.

Over us is a striking on the walls of the sky,
here are the dynamos, steel-black, harboring flame,
here is the man night-walking who derives
tomorrow's manifestoes from this midnight's meeting ;
here we require the proof in solidarity,
iron on iron, body on body, and the large single beating.

And behind us in time are the men who second us
as we continue.  And near us is our love :
no forced contempt, no refusal in dogma, the close
of the circuit in a fierce dazzle of purity.
And over us is night a field of pansies unfolding,
charging with heat its softness in a symbol
to weld and prepare for action our minds' intensity.

The sky comes from Dubai, a gift from a reader who finally took me up on my endless requests for international sky.  I actually have a few more celestial photographic (and even video!) submissions tucked away, so there will be more to come.

The poems from my favorite poet, Muriel Rukeyser.  Her words:  "As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace.  Peace that is not the lack of war, but is fierce and positive." 

Fierce and Positive Peace on Earth.

Friday Morning at Dreamland

The man arrives
city worker to remove human feces
left by homeless
on Dreamland playground --
smeared on the wooden climbing structure,
under the tire swing,
in the corner of the tot-lot.

"Just off the boat from Africa
and they don't know how to use a toilet."
That is my greeting from this worker with the thick Spanish accent
dragging shovel and trash barrel
to remove each pile
of intermixed excrement and toilet paper.

And I stare back at him.
And I say nothing.

The brown man maligns
the black man
as he cleans the shit
so that my white child can play
unsoiled in Dreamland.
And I do nothing.

My privilege to ignore
all of our shit
is also my failure
to become
fully human.

An Oakland Backyard Sky: Amazing Sky #15

Today's sky and accompanying words come to Two Feet In by way of esteemed comrade Evan. 

days, stumbling into new years
wet windows
holy clouds
we blink our blinks through heavy lids
gums dancing with sugar
and watch kodachrome sun rays
slash again asphalt shingle
days, shower droplets over shoulders
like salt
like storms behind curtain number two
but no one is shouting "Come on down!"
except our bloodstream
to our brain
days, listing house-projects like groceries,
season by season,
half peeled paint by sticking front door
by crappy stove
,
learning, finally,
that more than two projects
equals zero

--evan nichols, oakland, ca

Amazing sky doesn't just live in Oakland, and I'm always on the lookout for more.  So, please send me yours.  Poetry, reflections, stories, dreams, or stream of consciousness musings not necessary -- but always appreciated.

A Delight to the Seer

Nedhal Abbas is an Iraqi poet. She published her first book of poetry, Dreams of Invisible Pleasures, in Arabic, in 1999.  The new online journal, State of Nature, has several of her poems translated into English.

Sura-Mn-Ra’a*

On Friday morning
In Sura-Mn-Ra’a
A young man lays in pieces
Torn apart by sniper’s fire

A woman
In Black A’baya
Passes by
Holding her toddler by the hand.

The child
Stares at the remains,
At a hand opened to the sky.
He reaches for a touch,
Wondering
Could it be his father’s?

* Sura-Mn-Ra’a: “A delight to the seer”, the old name of the modern city of Samarra (سامراء), which stands on the east bank of the Tigris, 125 Km north of Baghdad and is famous for its Great Mosque with its unique spiral minaret built in 847. In October 2004, The US occupation forces led an assault on Samarra. Hundreds of people were killed. Bodies were left in the streets and could not be collected for fear of American snipers.

Read more poems by Nedhal Abbas here.

Amazing Sky #14

My days continue to be bounteous, generative, and teeming with fullness, but not at all busy.  So, today I'm posting another offering from my endless collection of sky, as well as a correction/update from previous sky.  I'll get back to the rest of the world as soon as I can.

Several days ago I tried to link to a poem by Zia Hyder from Bangladesh.  The link didn't work, so here's an excerpt from her poem Under This Sky, which you can read in an anthology of poems put together by Naomi Shihab Nye:

There's an enormous comfort knowing
we all live under this same sky,
whether in New York or Dhaka,
we see the same sun and same moon

When it is night in New York,
the sun shines in Dhaka,
but that doesn't matter
Flowers that blossom here in spring
are unknown in the meadows of distant Bengal --
that too doesn't matter
There's no rainy season here --
the peasant in Bengal welcomes the new crop
with homemade sweets
while here, winter brings mountains of snow

No one here knows Grandmother's hand-sewn quilts
even that doesn't matter
There's an enormous comfort knowing
we all live under this same sky...

Yes, there is enormous comfort knowing we all live under this same sky, but also enormous responsibility.  Act on it wisely.

 

a prayer band

A poem by Suheir Hammad

every thing

you ever paid for
you ever worked on
you ever received

every thing

you ever gave away
you ever held on to
you ever forgot about

every single thing is one
of every single thing and all
things are gone

every thing i can think to do
to say i feel
is buoyant

every thing is below water
every thing is eroding
every thing is hungry

there is no thing to eat
there is water every where
and there is no thing clean to drink

the children aren’t talking

the nurses have stopped believing
anyone is coming for us

the parish fire chief will never again tell anyone that help is coming

now is the time of rags
now is the indigo of loss
now is the need for cavalry

new orleans
i fell in love with your fine ass poor boys sweating frying catfish blackened life thick women glossy seasoning bourbon indians beads grit history of races
and losers who still won

new orleans
i dreamt of living   lush   within your shuttered eyes
a closet of yellow dresses   a breeze on my neck
writing poems for do right men and a daughter of refugees

i have known of displacement
and the tides pulling every thing
that could not be carried within
and some of that too

a jamaican man sings
those who can afford to run will run
what about those who can’t
they will have to stay

end of the month tropical depression turned storm

someone whose beloved has drowned
knows what water can do
what water will do to once animated things

a new orleans man pleads
we have to steal from each other to eat
another   gun in hand   says we will protect what we have
what belongs to us

i have known of fleeing desperate
with children on hips in arms on backs
of house keys strung on necks
of water weighed shoes
disintegrated official papers
leases   certificates   births   deaths   taxes

i have known of high ways which lead nowhere
of aches in teeth   in heads   in hands tied

i have known of women raped by strangers   by neighbors
of a hunger in human

i have known of promises to return
to where you come from
but first any bus   going any where

tonight the tigris and the mississippi moan
for each other as sisters
full of unnatural things
flooded with predators and prayers

all language bankrupt

how long before hope begins to eat itself?
how many flags must be waved?
when does a man let go of his wife’s hand in order to hold his child?

who says this is not the america they know?

what america do they know?

were the poor people so poor they could not be seen?

were the black people so many they could not be counted?

this is not a charge
this is a conviction

if death levels us all
then life plays favorites

and life it seems   is constructed
of budgets  contracts   deployments   of wards
and automobiles   of superstition  and tourism
and gasoline   but mostly insurance

and insurance   it seems   is only bought
and only with what cannot be carried within
and some of that too

a city of slave bricked streets
a city of chapel rooms
a city of haints

a crescent city

where will the jazz funeral be held?

when will the children talk?

tonight it is the dead
and dying who are left
and those who would rather not
promise themselves they will return

they will be there
after everything is gone
and when the saints come
marching like spring
to save us all

amazing tree #2

It is Friday and I am feeling both time-challenged and kind of sad.  So, it seems like as good an opportunity as any to lift spirits with another amazing tree and a poem. 

This particular tree gives shelter to the afore-written-about mortars.

Optimism
by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree:  finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.  A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs -- all this resinous, unretractable earth.

(From Given Sugar, Given Salt)

children are not "underperforming"

Let's look more at the language that is used to describe teachers and children:  teachers are "trained" and (poor) children are "underperforming." 

Please note, this is not just neo-conservative-Bush-standardized-test-loving-NCLB language, but rather has become the accepted, taken-for-granted, unmarked mode of discourse that characterizes nearly all discussion about education and reform.   

My question: 
Where are the living, breathing, dreaming, working, striving, learning, fallible, and honest-to-goodness humans in all of this?

I suppose that is too much to ask.

Luckily, not for everyone... 

Labeled
By Lise Spangenthal

Underperforming.
The label sticks like duct tape;
easy to apply, near impossible to remove.
Humanity and empathy are not measurable standards
or my students would exceed expectations
     on the AIMS.

Underperforming.
The word scrapes like wire brush
attempting to remove graffiti from the girls
     bathroom wall.
My students arrive daily from unimaginable
     circumstances.
Witness to drive-bys, drugs, incarceration and death.
Sometimes appearing on Monday
hungry,
their last meal Friday’s free lunch.

Underperforming.
The word stings like an angry bee
hidden in the peach tree outside my classroom
window.
My students hold bake sales for goats for
     the Heifer Project
Trick or Treat for UNICEF, returning
Those bright familiar orange boxes heavy
     with change
for the “poor kids.”

Underperforming.
The word harsh and ugly.
Admidst the beauty of our South Mountain view.
My students give up Saturdays
Special Olympic coaches, pushing wheelchairs,
Racing with their buddies to the finish line.
My students give up Saturday to fold a thousand
cranes for peace.
Sadako’s story lingers in their hears.
Instructing grownups on the evils of war, the
innocent victims vaporized
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Underperforming.
The word burns like a brand, the scarlet U.
My students are empowered.
They write letters for unheard voices.
Free Reza Baluchi, Iranian cyclist for peace.
To our principal for picnic tables,
to our learning community to be stewards
     of our garden.

Underperforming.
The word shatters like window.
What the hell does that word mean?
Seals perform.
Clowns perform.
Children learn.

Lise Spangenthal currently teaches 7th/8th grade in Phoenix, Arizona.  Her poem was published in the  latest issue of Rethinking Schools.

 

amazing sky #1

When I was younger, things like sunsets and rainbows and spectacular clouds were explained to me as light refracting off of water particles in the sky, or as pollution, or some other scientifically rational explanation.

I know that it is much more than that. 

Here's some amazing sky, and a poem, for your Sunday.

Oda a la Luz Encantada
Pablo Neruda

La luz bajo los árboles,
la luz del alto cielo
La luz
verde
enramada
que fulgura
en la hoja
y cae como fresca
arena blanca.

Una cigarra eleva
su son de aserradero
sobre la transparencia.

Es una copa llena
de agua
el mundo.

Ode to the Enchanted Light

The light beneath trees,
the light of the tall sky,
the branched
green
light
is burning
in the leaf,
falling like fresh
white sand.

A cicada hums like a saw
soaring over
the transparent shine.

The world is a cup
brimming
with water.