poem: free trade 071609

Sex service users create the demand that moves pimps to provide supply women and young girls.  Without demand, there would be no pimp, no sex slave.  We need to go after the users, most of whom are men, many of whom are white and/or economically privileged.    ’nuff said…here’s the trick…

Poem: rethinking the bouquet 122603

An over-reaction to a rejection that happened years ago.  It was a messy process where the rejection was no more than implied (on her part) and inferred (finally, on my part) without much any clear communication in between.   Not a confidence booster (yes, some rejections are!).   It’s hard to not feel like a creep sometimes, and situations like this don’t help things.  Although I did learn from the process that I am no good at inferring implied messages…

This poem marks the beginning of a period of decidedly romantic (in the historic sense of the word) melodramatic dabblings.  In my defense:

1. Romanticism, as much as I hate to admit, agrees with the second law of thermodynamics,
2. I was a hormonal teenager, and furthermore,
3. I am happy to announce my full recovery.

Poem: day after 102508

For a while I’ve had some concept sketches I was never satisfied with, until I completely scrapped them and started over from scratch, keeping only the general topic/subject matter intact.   This is an example of that process.  The rewrite is first, inspired by feelings I had after a very nice meeting and long conversation on the previous day (hence, the name…); the older poem is second.  They ended up being completely different stylistically, and I think they speak to two different audiences, from two different versions of me.  Enjoy.

Poem: Backlash 101308

This is one of my more recent poems.  It is directly inspired from a conversation with someone who lives across the continent from me in Canada.  One of her reactions was, “Do people really say, “y’all”?”  Yup.   I live outside of any city limits and I grew up surrounded by farms: horses, cows, crops.  I collected eggs from the chickens as part of the morning chores before school.  I have a rural “y’all,” but there are also plenty of folks with an urban “y’all.”

The conversation was about success, failure, lessons learned and processing recent advice given to me by an academic advisor, activist and mentor:  “First, do no harm.”  Simple, but perhaps something that we all struggle with.  But ’nuff said.  To the poem…

“just thinkin’ out loud…”

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to talk about my trip through Kuwait, Jordan, the West Bank (Palestine) and Israel [for the record, I'm still not done typing everything up and publishing it].  Lately, though, the blog has taken a deep dive into the tepid cesspool of crass political commentary.  Funny how priorities change like that…I’m still planning on finishing my writeup of the trip.  Not in the least because, hey, you gotta come up from the depths of the tepid cesspool for a breath of air every now and then (real life notwithstanding).  I also owe FoEME (Jordan) my notes from our conversations and brainstorming at the ‘Amman office.

However, the title of the blog itself hints at a different purpose.  When I started this blog, I also promised myself that I would use it as an outlet for my poetry.  That’s been a difficult promise to fulfill. 

your daily dose of Palin

Pining for Palin’s next poetic performance?   Anxiously awaiting her next open-ended mic experience?  Wondering when she’ll mash those wonderful words in another exclusive interview?