s. lazarus
May 2011
16 posts
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wanted to write
a poem
that rhymes
but revolution doesn’t lend
itself to be-bopping
…
then my neighbor
who thinks i hate
asked — do you ever write
tree poems — i like trees
so i thought
i’ll write a beautiful green tree poem
peeked from my window
to check the image
noticed that the school yard was covered
with asphalt
no green — no trees grow
in manhattan
then, well, i thought the sky
i’ll do a big blue sky poem
but all the clouds have winged
low since no-Dick was elected
so i thought again
and it occurred to me
maybe i shouldn’t write at all
but clean my gun
and check my kerosene supply
perhaps these are not poetic
times
at all
—nikkii giovanni
“Rather than offering a vision of the world we yearn for, we study and share the machinations of government and capital that harm us. Like doctors who offer diagnoses but no cures, we are the town criers of a sick society rather than the midwives of the world to come.”
—http://bstandsforb.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/toward-visionary-organizing/
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“Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment…’dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love — which is to transform us.’ Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.”
—bell hooks (via carefreewhitegirl)
“As organizers, we need to think of access with an understanding of disability justice, moving away from an equality-based model of sameness and “we are just like you” to a model of disability that embraces difference, confronts privilege and challenges what is considered “normal” on every front. We don’t want to simply join the ranks of the privileged; we want to dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them.”
—
http://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/changing-the-framework-disability-justice/
So moved by this.
“
What is a “felt sense”?
Much of what a person knows has never been consciously thought or verbalized. Felt sense is the name Gendlin gave to the unclear, pre-verbal sense of ‘something’, as that something is experienced in the body. It is not the same as an emotion. This bodily felt ‘something’ may be an awareness of a situation or an old hurt, or of something that is ‘coming’ — perhaps an idea, or the next line of a poem, or the right line to draw next in completing a drawing. Crucial to the concept, as defined by Gendlin, is that it is unclear and vague; and it is always more than any attempt to express it verbally.
” —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felt_sense#What_is_a_.22felt_sense.22.3F