Poem: A Struggle

 

A Struggle

 

in the angst

of what could be,

puzzles hook my pupils:

dark sudokus of words,

a grammar of guile.

fingers frenzy fuzzy

till letters swarm from a keyboard,

insubstantial

next to a Juliet or a Hamlet

who aren't real,

but who is,

next to such skill

at showing how great and cruel

language can be?

 

click click click

go fingernails

on stupid little chits,

wasting countless

procreations.

 

what comes of it,

in the write way?

no one eulogizes

so many failures

to thrive.

==============================

Analysis of two WaPo opinion pieces on Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock

At the Oscars, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock in reaction to Rock’s mockery of Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia.  The two op-eds below provide keen complementary commentary.  However, on one important point they conflict and one columnist is quite wrong.

First, Karen Attiah (1).  She makes great points concerning the complexity of being Black in a racist society.  She focuses on Will (and Black men) first, then Jada (and Black women). 

For instance:

It’s impossible not to notice that Smith attacked a smaller Black man. In the same situation, would he have taken the risk of slapping a larger, stronger guy, or a powerful White male celebrity who had made the same joke? I doubt it. And would Smith have gotten away with it — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday it is investigating — if he hadn’t spent decades cultivating a nonthreatening, squeaky-clean image? I doubt that, too.

 

And an excerpt from the commentary on Jada, which focuses more on Black women in general:

 

What is undoubtedly true is that Hollywood loves to profit from showing the pain of Black women … how many Black women haven’t at some point wanted to slap someone for petting our hair? …

 

It is simply our social reality that Black women are the butt of endless cultural jokes, that we experience high levels of online abuse and domestic violence. Plus, a Black woman who forcefully defends herself will earn the label “aggressive” for her effort, especially in White spaces. These labelers are the same folks who will watch a Black woman being demeaned and later praise her restraint …

 

These are all crucial insights into the cultural mechanisms of oppression.  Attiah, however, goes on to criticize feminists.  This criticism appears in a terse paragraph, included below in full:

Some feminists have argued that Will “took away Jada’s power” in rushing to confront Rock. That’s not true here, either. Pinkett Smith is a successful, talented, powerful woman, but in that moment, how could she have accessed any of that?

 

Attiah’s argument here is glaringly bad.  Even if it were somehow true that Jada couldn’t have accessed her power in that moment,  Will still made the focus himself and interfered with her opportunity to frame the response as she wished.

It seems Attiah confuses two meanings of "power."  Power as general status versus power to shape the dialogue/reaction to a certain event.

Monica Hesse, in her op-ed (2), elaborates the argument about the man stealing power:  Smith denied Pinkett Smith a first reaction, whether immediate or delayed. 

Here are some excerpts:

The memorable image from Sunday’s Oscars will be Will Smith hitting Chris Rock. The memorable image should be Jada Pinkett Smith in her emerald-colored gown, keeping her fingers crossed and her hands to herself.

 This statement suggests Pinkett Smith did make an initial statement--through her body language--as a powerful woman in the moment.  But that statement was overridden by Smith’s behavior.

Hesse offers much insightful feminist analysis, such as:

Smith did not, from his seat, bellow, “Jada has alopecia, you monster!” He did not name his wife or her feelings at all. Instead, he referred to “my wife’s name.” Whether Smith meant to or not, he implied that Rock’s error was insulting a person under Smith’s purview. His decision to slap Rock centered on his own sense of honor and offense, not hers.

 As far as the slap itself:

Later using his acceptance speech to suggest that the slap was an act of spousal devotion only furthered a nasty trope of equating anger and affection. … Smith’s speech also — purposefully or not — folded the slap into a larger narrative of appropriate masculine behavior. He focused on the concept of “protection.” He said, “I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people.” In the context of what had just happened, it almost sounded as though hitting Rock was in some way a righteous reaction, in tune with a higher calling.

 

Hesse takes a feminist approach.  Attiah considers the oppression of both Black men and women (in that order).  Attiah’s criticism of feminists, though, is awkward.  Her terse argument doesn’t hold water and is refuted in full by Hesse.

Attiah writes that racists “will watch a Black woman being demeaned and later praise her restraint.”  However, didn’t Will’s action make it look like Jada, whatever message she was sending  by sitting in her emerald gown with her fingers laced together, was merely exercising restraint?

 

 

=========

 

Notes:

 

(1)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/28/oscars-slap-will-smith-chris-rock-defending-black-women/

 

(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/28/will-smith-jada-pinkett-slap-fallout/

 

 

Poem: Midas Sun

 

Midas Sun

 

it is tired of being so bright

that no one can see its face;

of turning sticks into emeralds;

wasting coins on the sea.

 

it wants

to catch the moon, for once.

to touch with invisible fingers

and have someone touch back.

 

it seeks but one rose in its image,

less crimson,

and needs a lover to decode

the colors it strews across Saturn.

 

it wants darkness

to be more more hug, less rabbit;

for eyes to expand,

instead of flee.

 

it tires of shawls of fog,

craves a rain of profligate prisms,

the kind that saturate soil

in fertile bliss.

 

The Sun

 

it understands

it is the opposite of Midas;

though like that cursed king,

it creates too perfectly.

 

it is gold that gives life with touch,

gold unable to speak,

gold that must watch its children wander off,

oblivious to the source of their stride.

=========================================

Poem: Labile

Labile  

weak rubber

massaged by tv,

toy of moods,

claylike when scheduled,

pliant,

posable,

a punching bag for time,

 

or the time clock.

 

extreme putty

stretched by leers.

 

see it at the altar

pretending to pray,

see it at the bar,

bored as wallpaper,

loosened by gin,

 

tired of hiding,

 

see it at home,

ferocious

fearful

or cracked,

sometimes lovable,

even perfect!

 

if love infiltrates

neurotic plastic.

==============================

Poem: In and Out

 

In and Out

 

walls keep out

leaf and panicle,

 

swallow slats

of plundered xylem. 

 

plankton foams

where gypsum was stolen.

 

lysol and bleach

for any incursion.

 

skull-clad cans

greet ant-ful invaders.

 

a spider’s textile

lacks lemony aerosol.

 

zoom zoom zoom

swat that fly, too zesty,

 

much life must perish

before we breathe.

=========================

Poem: Gone Writer

 

Gone Writer

 

oatmeal walls

cycle shadows

 

as a pencil trudges

over glue-white width.

 

a shell-shocked pilgrim,

no clear mecca,

 

dirt on the hands

of Lady Macbeth.

 

scrub scrub scrub,

write to cover it up.

 

a greasy lamp moon,

whimpers of reality

 

under the covers,

wanting no stare.

============================

Everything I predicted on this blog is coming to pass.

Poem: M-16

 

 

 

M-16

no smile disturbs you, except a trigger,

and that is small and sideways,

a black seed that never grew

into the spell of a crescent moon. 

 

are you displeased, being the key

to great broken cities, not honored with a podium?

 

you stand on weeping rubble and look down

between the last eyes of souls:

 

of soldiers

who thought they had mastered you.

of men half as sure,

their whiskers ashes of a rose.

of women

who won’t seek comfort in your reach.

of babies loud

against a parent’s agonized breast.

 

the only thing the same color as you

lived in Florida thirty years ago,

inside a tupelo bush.

 

obsidian scales gleaming in

the wet drugged sun, the king snake

mesmerized bird and child,

black lightning too slow, and then,

more than suddenly, riling green clouds,

lord of the killer flash, a smoke of coils--

 

and barely a glimpse of bright plumage

to see.

 

 

 

================

The M-16 is a standard rifle of the US Army.  I thought about calling this poem, "Assault Rifle"

Regarding the Poems

The poems usually suck when I first post them.  This is especially true recently.  After many edits, they get a little better, a process that can take a week or more.

Thanks for reading!

OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

===========================

Poem: Stormy Sea Rain

 

Stormy Sea Rain

 

a mossy phalanx of dinosaur backs

marched toward a shieldless rubble of shore.

commander winds lashed them,

inflicting an ephemeral coat of circular wounds 

under the judgement of a pewter sky,

a weight so grey and heavy

any perspective of horizon drowned.

 

boats became splinters in a vicious, liquid skin. 

froth boomeranged around piles

which creaked to stir an amorphous, feral cauldron.  

clouds, those monster-bellied shatterers, 

bared such cores of spasming gulls,

who suffered in obstreperous throes.

 

immaterial of kindness,

rain skydived to needle puddles.

it slapped sad windshields, and the funereal tarmac,  

endless rain,

it died courageous, unlike the fled lies of mourning doves,

no loyalty in their olive-brine-branchless feet.

 

rain,

it fell impenitent, lies from the tales of old kings.

rain 

it fell invidious, like the greed of pirates

who scratched to drown, chasing after golden winks;

or the smitten lust of blued sailors,

a mermaid's kiss fresh on their fleshless brows;

or the abysmal folly of so many naval jousts,

petty battles never to sate 

the violent lust of water. 

=========================

 

 

12/2/23 ... attempted to salvage this mess with lots of edits

But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot--Genesis 8:9

Poem: Historian

 

Historian

 

a puny broker

in the currency of human drama,

a nook-bound sage,

 

elucubrated a tome

on ignorance and avarice;

on war, the penchants of power,

and the human brain. 

 

the distilled, learned pith

was that every treatise

and prolegomenon,

every work of art

and mise en scène

rode on the back

of the political and the cruel.

 

society itself, somehow,

in a devil of a circus trick,

balanced on the tip of a missile,

nudged by factors of hate and hunger,

and a few dice rolls.

==========================================

https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-putin-revives-the-nuclear-nightmare-of-mutually-assured-destruction-134561349557

Nuclear Weapons are not a Deterrent: for Putin they are the opposite

 

What is the justification for maintaining an arsenal of nuclear weapons?  Detonation of the nuclear missiles we have today, many thousands in the United States and Russia alone, could fill the atmosphere with sun-blocking clouds, creating a ‘nuclear winter’.  In others words, elimination not only of civilization but higher life on the planet.

 

Ominously enough, the justification for maintaining a doom-bringer arsenal is referred to as MAD, that is, mutual assured destruction.  Sometimes the euphemistic and denialist “deterrence” is substituted.  But let it be said that the use of “deterrence” is absurd in itself.  Deterrence sounds innocuous, like taking a flu shot.  The truth is not inoculation.  It is annihilation.  Humanity and nature sinking in roentgens and flame into ceaseless darkness.

 

What exactly is the so-called logic behind MAD?  The premise is simple enough.  Namely, it would be self-defeating for any country to initiate a major conflict, given the threat of painful, permanent, irreversible hell.   From that grand premise, a leap occurs to the ‘logical’ conclusion:  war won’t happen.

 

I state both premise and conclusion to make absolutely clear the flawed, dangerous leap from the former to the latter.  The failure in critical thinking is absolutely stunning.

 

It is salient, not merely ironic, that the strategist who originated the term MAD in 1962 did so for the reason opposite of the current usage:  to argue that nuclear weapons should not be kept. Same premise, different conclusion.   Does it make sense, after all, to protect life by posing and priming planet-destroying weapons?

 

Advocates of nuclear proliferation assert that the inclination for war can only be stopped in its tracks by hanging the ultimate Sword of Damocles over every single human head.  And yet, wait a minute, if humans are that irrational, requiring that much threat, would a power-hungry dictator be deterred by any sort of rational argument at all? 

 

Despite the political and economic theories about ‘rational actors’, humans tend to be far more psychological.  Given the patriarchate’s lean, to react to threats of violence with more saber-rattling, a dynamic that has led time and time again to calamitous consequences--pillage, desecration, firestorm, enslavement and massacre--it is imperative to ask whether holding up an even bigger threat is going to do anything, except encourage a final macho blowout of our headstrong, bellicose species.

 

Put yourself in the shoes of a psychopathic, narcissistic tyrant.  Does such a tyrant care about the fate of the world more than their own glory?  And wouldn’t it be glorious, from their perspective, especially if they are old and about to die anyway, to take the world down with them? 

 

If this seems unconscionable, well, that’s the point.  Some people don’t have a conscience, and they tend to rise to the top.  For context, Putin is currently sixty-nine years old and not getting any younger.

 

Leaving aside human folly, there is also the justification problem.  MAD could support having no nukes.  It could support many nukes.  Maybe scariest of all, someone could use MAD as a justification to go to war.  Isn’t this what Putin is doing, believing that NATO wouldn’t dare to stop him, because the risk is unspeakable?

 

MAD itself is mad.  It won’t deter tyrants who are mad.  And the logical structures attached to it collapse into insanity. 

 

What we have now is a game of extinctive chicken, played out with stakes we have no reason to put on the table.  Humanity can survive this awful chapter in history in only one way:  pare down the nukes, till they are gone, and accept that virtue and mental health, two peas in a pod, are essential in our leaders. 

 

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