Bummed out

Well feeling shite, got matched with my mentor and had our first conversation on Saturday. Didn't really feel like a conversation, felt more talked at. My heart sank when she asked me if I saw myself as a political poet and then proceeded to warn me of the 'dangers' of writing political poetry. I ended up just saying mmm a lot and wondering what the fuck I am going to do!! I expected even though I thought her work on a really different wavelength from mine, that I would get support to write the poetry that I need to write. She encouraged me to find my own voice, well my voice is a times highly political!!! so that's seems to be conflicting advice....I want to write about things that are meaningful for me.
I feel a bit again as always that I'm a round peg in a square hole trying to grow some straight edges!!! I'm again in the land of too: too opinionated, too emotional, too difficult, too self indulgent, too concerned about this crazy wonderful, painful fucked up world.

One thing that helped a little was this quote from a essay by Martin Espada:
The title of my reading and talk is indeed “The Poetry of the Good Fight.” This title has a double meaning. “The Poetry of the Good Fight” refers to the poems and poets that emerge from political struggle, but it also refers to the ways in which political activism makes life poetic. There are politics in the poetry; there is also poetry in the politics.

Let’s begin with the second meaning: life as a poem. Walt Whitman said it best, in his preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass:

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all that you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…”

Whitman loved to give advice. It’s good advice, though, and the essence of his advice is this: live by the principle of compassion, be an activist, and “your very flesh shall be a great poem.” You are your own greatest creation; your very life can be poetry. This is not an aesthetic statement; it is a political statement.

Have been reading Naomi Shahib Nye, just love her work and James Fenton enjoyed him too. Will share more about them in another post when I am not feeling in such despair.


The two poems today ones that have touched me, The first called Mercy by Ed Roberts and the second Conscientious Objector my Edna St Vincent Millay


Mercy~
There is a man in Kenya
Trying to make his way home from work
He turns the wrong corner
Into a strange neighborhood he wanders
Maybe it’s the color of his skin
Maybe it’s his dialect
To the people living there
He is their enemy
Someone to hate
They come out of their houses
They beat him with machetes
Hack him to death
Piece by piece
He begs them to stop
Pleads for his life
But his words fall upon ears
That can not understand
One simple word
Mercy
A boy from Wisconsin
Out of school for the holidays
Visits his relatives in Chicago
He goes to the mall
Decides to try and find a last minute gift
To give his Aunt and Uncle
Who were kind enough
To open their home to him
He doesn’t realize his jacket
Is the wrong color
He doesn’t know on whose turf
This mall belongs
It is cold
This is the only coat he owns
They stop their cars
Three of them
He doesn’t see the gun pointed Out the back window
He just feels the burning
As the bullet pierces his chest
The roar of the pistol
Is the last thing that he hears
They kick his body
As he lays there at their feet
They remember
How many of their friends have fallen
They show each other
They can have power over another
The one thing that they have forgotten
Is Mercy
Two people A world apart
Die the same day Both at the wrong place
At the wrong time
Both innocent
Both condemned
Killed in the place of another
Victims
Simply because they were there at hand
And I sit here trying to find something I can offer To both the innocent and the guilty
For they themselves
Are not fully the ones to blame And the best that I can find
Is just one word
That so many can not seem to comprehend
Mercy




“Conscientious Objector:”

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter
on the barn floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans,
many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell
him which the way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black
boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on
his pay-roll….

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me shall you be overcome.