the chrysalis of unfortunate pupa.

 

 

(" My dear Mrs. Roberts:

 

I am afraid that I have never been a very

useful member of the Daughters of the

American Revolution, so I know it will

make very little difference to you whether

I resign, or whether I continue to be a

member of your organization.

 

However, I am in complete disagreement

with the attitude taken in refusing

Constitution Hall to a great artist, Marian Anderson.

You have set an example which seems to

me unfortunate, and I feel obliged to

send in to you my resignation. You

had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened

way and it seems to me that your

organization has failed.

 

I realize that many people will not agree

with me, but feeling as I do this seems

to me the only proper procedure to

follow.

           Very sincerely yours, Eleanor Roosevelt.)

 

 

The lives, the lives,

we allow with emotionally charged ju-ju

and the love of the sun-god's, the persistence of

Sisyphus and enough treasure to line the ocean bottom

with the hulls of sunken pirate ships and that

sukiyaki paste of sugar and spirit gum and I still

can't dismiss the universe.

 

Because on my street, Black boys shoot each other

because it's hot, or for provisional territory,

or because it's Tuesday and perhaps they weren't loved

enough by Aries or mudbanks,

not because Mandela is near death

or the rooms he suffered in are places you

cry for not cry in, or that diamonds are still

traded with bloody fingers in dirt strewn canvas

bags before De Beers cuts them smooth,

removes the death. And not because poverty

loots the spirit. And not because young girls

still need holding, upside down, then rightside up again

until their women. But

 

it's ok, in 2013, to have a spit curl plastered on your forehead.

In the sixties the only people who owned wigs were w***e's.

Now my mother has one she keeps wrapped in plastic,

to be buried in perhaps, or to wear when her

puzzle of the castle is completed.

Yes, the whole shabang.

Were happy.

 

Yet the bees still carve their names on atoms before

being bottled. The moths, disguised as house flies,

dip their masses in wax and tallow to give off light

so the fish flies can beat the s**t out of themselves

against the screen door.

 

But the things I've heard about

reality makes me scared as hell to come

from under the bed. And I can't sleep at all

until the poem is completed; can't rest

knowing there's an art in surrendering.

 

My neighbor walked his two gray wolves this morning.

The one who rents.

Reviews

[Corset]

I want to take more time to digest this one, I love how you start off with a letter about failed enlightenment by none less than the lady herself...and a resignation, then move on to the contrast of today's society, then I giggle at mother castle were happy, lol then the next stanza shrinks us into a mite size dot of pollen on a bee's nose, and then there is talk of rent and wolves, what does it all mean?
that there is something much larger going on than our miserable minor existences? I feel like a fishfly today except the door is glass and way more painful.

[Marie Anzalone]

I hear Langston Hughes in your words today, dana. Where are the standtakers, the guardians? Or, as Yeats put it, the end is near when the "best have lost all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." I never understood the point of having heroes you places out of reach, on a pedestal. Forgive my language, but what f*****g good is a hero you cannot touch? We lament the loss of the great ones, ask where are they today, wring our hands and say, "if only we had another like_______ to guide us." but here's the thing- we DO have others like _______. And we are making the environment impossible for them to live, sucking away the oxygen and pulling the rug out from under their feet every time they try to make a stand. Every generation has its own brand of Hero, but we have trained our eyes to see them only so far as we tear them down before their voices get honed. Then we blame them for not being our grandparents? Meanwhile, we see the coming dark like a tide, those us with our ears to the wind, we know what's coming. The picture is not pretty. It will not happen overnight.. it is creeping normalcy settling in like a thief in the night, the indulgent uncles of the world financing his childish escapades and bidding him pay no mind to the ones who disapprove; the world is done with morals.

You are not the only one who wants to hide under beds, my dear, dear friend.

[Shmoke-Sifted Heftlander]

I've been despised by most of the people i've ever risked my soul and my a*s to save..it sucks pretty bad..but back to the poem