FUCK

(a poem)

FUCK
abandoned children
begetting abandoned children
who tear up (their own and their loved ones) lives like Godzilla tore up Tokyo
(overandoverand0verand0ver)
andthefuckinsilenceKILLS.

is that all there is to it?

So Crazee

On election day I told anybody who would listen that Barack would win. I said "Black president" to an over-blinged bus driver on the #87, and to Geronimo, the security guard at the BSO shipping dock. I exchanged crossed fingers with several like-minded co-workers and made plans to hang with some friends to watch the returns. I was so surprised by the Ohio returns that I hollered an expletive and made everyone jump. And then...once he was declared the winner, I couldn't quite believe it. It's the strangest thing. Right after that my girl Amanda called me and she said I just blithered through the conversation. I seem to be frozen in disbelief, with tearful forays into joy, and a wonderful bus ride to work on Thursday morning singing the freedom songs that Mystic is performing in the upcoming concerts. But I still feel stunned.

So I've been watching Oprah and reading blogs and keeping up with the president-elect's new website, change.gov, the website of the transition, trying to get it through my head that this is real. Someone immanently qualified who just happens to be Black is going to lead the country. Grace, brilliance, and humane discourse won over lies, hatred and plain old ignorance and fear. I want to get to that state of bliss or perhaps a sublime feeling. I know, now, that I'll never be apathetic about the political process again. I know that I'm really willing to fight for what I believe and I know that human rights and the beautiful concepts upon which this country was founded are what I believe, what I treasure.

Just haven't gotten my brain around it. Maybe a bit more champagne...

images OH HAPPY DAY!

A little boy who just happens to have dark skin and who was born into poverty looks up today and sees someone who looks like he does is President.

Sitting with dear friends around a tiny TV, as one of us keeps track of what's going on the web, our faces shiny with hope and joy.

Watching pedestrians yelling for joy and hearing car horns blare in triumph on the way home.

Juan Williams on MSNBC, his voice cracking with emotion, talking about how this was absolutely impossible scant years ago.

Messy Jesse, his face awash in tears. Oprah cheering, squeezed between two emotional non-celebs.

Luke Russert reporting so eloquently on the young vote from an Indiana campus.

My mother's voice, rich and melodic, talking about the first time she voted.

Watching the people in line at the polls play with a little puppy.

My scrunched up, post-sleep potato face grinning in the mirror this morning.

Oh happy day, my loves.










Democracy by Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Langston Hughes

woke up this mornin' with my mind

and it was set on Barack

As I walked across the municipal parking lot in front of my house this morning, the mists of early morning were just lifting, and the tress were kissed with golds and yellows and fiery oranges and reds. Each beat of my feet said "Black President." I can't say it doesn't matter in the historical sense, but I'd never vote for a President Alan Keyes or (shudder) Al Sharpton. As I joined the line at the polling place, a Black woman at the front of the line caught my eye and we grinned joyously at each other. It filled me up to see people in long lines waiting to vote--this is as it should be. A young woman came by with her Corgi/Labrador puppy (hmmm...imagine the conception) and he became the hit of the line, sniffing fit and illiciting giggles and being petted by almost everyone. People were sweet, and happy and the mood was patient and considerate. And I had no idea that so many Black people lived near me...there were at least 10 in line. I felt like saying, "where y'all been? I haven't seen you at Starbucks..."

Arlington voting is archaic...paper ballots with used privacy sleeves and heavy black pens, but somehow, I trust this more than the electronic voting machines. At one point a lady came out and said to us "it's really archaic in there," and then the toilet in the ladies' room we were standing next to flushed and the guy next to me said "That IS archaic voting."

The amazing singing storytellers of Sweet Honey in the Rock, who I saw on Sunday, made a great point...you get a receipt from the grocery store and the ATM...I want a receipt for my vote!

There was a lady who had her two daughters with her--about 5 and 7 years old--and I was reminded of the times I went with my mom to vote in those old style booths where you had to operate a giant lever to open and close the curtains. Mom and I talked last night about the first time we voted. She thinks her first time was 1960--the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election. I think mine was 1984, Reagan/Mondale.

Today is Mom's 72nd birthday. We were talking via icamera and she looks about 40 years old, lively, and animated. She said her best birthday present would be you-know-who in the White House. Hollaaaaaa!! (Maybe they'll change the name to "The Black House..." or "The Mulatto House..." ba HA!)

Now I eat toast and drink tea and look forward to an amazing day. I'm going this morning to get my shots for our trip to China. Tonight I'll go to Mystic rehearsal and sing Lift Every Voice and the Star Spangled Banner as imagined by Nick Page and then my friends and I will gather to watch history, an almost tangible thing.

Give your thoughts and your light to peace and love and a wish for a mutt puppy at every polling place.

The STFU awards

and the nominees are...

Tavis Smiley, who's participated in such homeboy discussions as "Is Obama Black enough?" The way you fawned all over Diahann Carroll last night made me throw up in my mouth a little.


Warren Buffett. So he's still investing in the stock market. Whoopdie doo! He's a freakin' bazillionaire. He could bail out an overextended mortgage company each month and still have enough investment interest to buy an atoll in the South Pacific. Or 30 acres of prime lunar landscape.

Condoleeeza. Trampin' all over the world trying to drum up some credibility, to get a good job review at the last minute. The only time I want to hear her deceptively melodious voice again is when she says "Goodbye." Silly bitch.

P Diddy, Jay-Z, Angelina Jolie or any other celebrity's political opinion. Just fundraise, damnit, and donate money to Jimmy Carter so he can make sure the voting machines work.

Suze Orman, Dr. Oz, and, by extension, Oprah. What do I care what the liver of a 70 year old alcoholic looks like when I don't have money for health care? Why do I give a toss what kind of retirement plan I should be investing in when most brands of bread are out of my budget?

The women of the View. Seeing Whoopi on a daily basis is nice, and Joy is pretty funny, but the rest of them, what a bunch of screech owls. Barbara Walters is so botoxed she can barely speak (though this seems to correct itself whenever she hawks her new autobiography), Sherri is dumb as a sack of hair, and Elizabeth is smug, ill-informed, and condescending (and therefore a perfect correspondent for the Fox News Channel).

Urine soaked wheelchair woman on the number 1 bus. You know who you are. Conning people into wheeling you into the liquor store when I've seen you walk many times. Stop it.

Lewis Fahrakan. Shhhhhhhhhh. Shush.

Fidel Castro. Stick a cigar in it.

My next door neighbor who has a voice like a high pitched machine tool, punctuated by cigarette induced coughing so violent I expect to see a lung in the garbage the next day.

Shut.
Your.
Piehole.

DUM-ness

A TIME magazine reader writes in response to an article on Sarah Palin asks if he can help it if she reminds him of a simpler, more gentile era?

Oh yeah, dumbass? You must be a white man (no offense to the white men who read this blog). A simpler time. Hmmmm. When bikini-clad women brandished rifles and shot moose from helicopters while their husbands attended secessionist meetings as their teenage children learn about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies the hard way (from a redneck!) and all the neighbors know that anyone any browner than Oprah is a terrorist at most and a welfare cheat at the least. Yeee Haw! That more gentile era when being dumb as a pig's butt didn't keep you from being thought qualified for public office (well we have our Bushie to thank for that), that wonderful, bucolic time when you could have your homophobic attitudes confirmed by a bellicose preacher and 100 of your closest moose-huntin' buddies at the Church of the Tiny Mind.

Oy.

Here's another one, from a Huffington Post blog: an Ohio man says that he won't vote for Obama or any Black man because once a Black man becomes president, he and his chocolate chronies will create a "Whitey Revenge" bureau to get vengence for past wrongs and the minorities will rule the White folks. Bahahahahaaaaw! So fie on you, Walgreens security guard who followed me thinking I'd shoplifted something, and you gonna get yours, mother of my would be prom date who wouldn't let her son go with me at the last minute when she found out I was a denizen of a darker hue, and wait for that cap in your ass, small town suburban cops who stopped my mom in the town where we lived because someone with an afro had been accused of shoplifting at the local mall, and watch out David Duke, cuz Al Sharpton is your personal vengence agent, and whooooaaaa nelly, Bill O'Reilly, we're gonna sic Dennis Rodman on you!

Let's not stop there...let's have a "Left Handed Vengence Administration" and a "Kinky Hair Reparations Agency".


Ever heard of Martin Luther the King? And Ghandi? And learning from the past? I realized I'm doing something similar to what you are doing, judging you by one extremely stupid statement you made, but day-um, homey, are you really that ignay?

Someone help us. Pleeeeze.

she she

we are an adventurous family.

we're going away together for two weeks to a mixed feelings place. A place of ancient and noble history and shocking uncivil rights. A place both eminently civilized and barbaric. I am thrilled and a little terrified, but it's mostly the fear of wearing an adult diaper at the great wall, or having to spit up while on public transport--the ignoble and oh so human in the face of the divine or at least breathtaking. Will there be Jo-butt sized toilets in the Emperors palace? Will I be able to get the large plastic cylinder that attaches to my inhaler through customs? And what about my foot spray? It's aerosol. I'll check it. It's essential--that funk could cause an international incident. Phew.

Remember the days when you'd throw on a backpack and stride, ultimately confident, through airports and unknown places and across foreign roads, washing your drawers in woolite when appropriate, not needing a lipstick or Extra-Strength Tylenol or zit cream or probiotics or yoga poses, or industrial strength moisturizer for alligator skin, or pills for your sugar and sugar for your blood, or orthodics, or a medic alert bracelet? And you'd willingly swim in strange new waters, talk to handsome and not so handsome strangers, listen animatedly to the woman next to you's story about how she was in the Outback and saw a dingo carry off one of her Doc Martens, explore trails knotty with brambles and lavender, stomp up to the top of the mountain ahead of the tour group to drink in the unblemished air and gaze over the landscape of castles or waterfalls or clear Azure water, to absorb the otherness through your oh so open pores and mind and spirit.

No them. Only us, as Bono says.

I'll look for the similarities, the humanity. I'll seek the connections. That's what we all do. That's why we go. To learn, to see, to see ourselves in other histories, other stories. It will be like going to the moon. It will be like going next door. And I'll wink at anyone I see who I suspect is also wearing an adult diaper.

I told the lady at the Chinese restaurant who makes me won ton broth when I'm sick. "Reeeeeeeaaaaaalllly?" She trilled. "You go? I wish I come with you."