When the honoring is really patronizing

Real change requires risk and going against the status quo. It comes with discomfort and sometimes confrontation.

I do not attend my hometown MLK Day event because it is so shallow that I am uncomfortable. Dr. King is merely quoted and characterized. He is “peaceful” and “non-threatening” and digestible.  Furthering racial & economic justice means more than subscribing to one or two of MLK’s feel-good quotes. It is not tolerance. It is accepting that injustice is something we all participate in and must consciously do something to change.

I returned to an 

MLK day tradition and chose to literally be the minority, to listen to poetic words about the human condition of 'other' and reset my personal clock for work as a conscientious resister of systematic injustice.

Just like a one day scared straight incarnation I knew it was not forever, but it was a visceral informative touchpoint that will inform my being WITH others.

R.I.P. Rings in Another Week

My community TV channel is the soundtrack of my life.  It is a Thursday evening. I am doing weekly scheduling and other core administrative tasks. Like the blue penguin mascot that is our station's metaphor, we gather in small groups, mostly at night, in communal activities. The door buzzer frequently rings for several minutes. The cast of characters for the show Center Ring is arriving. Some are familiar with the station and others need affirmation that they are in the right place to be Fogman's guests. My smartphone pings with social media check-ins as well.

Then, the din of my busy is cracked open with the ringing of bells. The sound is too familiar, even to me. At 7:30 PM, our channel is 'LIVE' in the virtual world. In the world of Independent Wrestling, one of their own has passed. R.I.P., along with a montage of promotional pics from throughout the years, fills the television that monitors our channel. I am not a viewer of this 25-years and counting show, but I know this all too familiar sound.

It is Monday at 8:00 PM a full eleven days later. I hear the ringmaster bells. I immediately think Damn. I assume in all my busy I mistakenly ingested the Center Ring replay to the schedule in the wrong week. I quickly realize it is not my mistake. This world that I support but do not know is one continuous narrative about the exotic often short lives of bravado entertainers who tease and body slam before cheering fans across the globe. In two consecutive weeks, they salute and remember.

Dedicated to Fogman and the Commander and all who Rest In Peace.

Grow Through what you go through!

Cookie Monster and other stories of human condition came to mind as a possible title for the stories gathered, still to be written, from my advocacy work and lifestyle. A subtitle for Cookie Monster would be "a lying shame".

As I consider the still to be written part of this public musing, I get this message Grow Through what you go through! in my social media feed. It is from a local farmer that I do not frequent enough Farmer Joes Gardens LLC  and when I do it is often for the berry pie, not the kale.

I also realized I could make Wednesday morning a ritual time for visiting this space. A once a week goal might be achievable.  And if it is true that with a good editor I can indeed be a writer I have got that resource in my pocket as well.

Ode to Flowering

These lines never come from the comfort of place

Scraps of paper clutter every place of my being

Electronic notes to self among them

Scribbled bouquets

Some as fragrant as the first moment

Some wilted from lack of care

Some cuts worthy of rearrangement 

Some nearly dried to dust no longer willing to remain as gifted

Some reclaimed to brighten the hearts of others

Some merely present

Some left in memorial

These lines seed and grow as life itself

Winged creatures making all the difference

1st poem of 2020 

The SwP group prompt is to write a poem about the place you write in. My place is in life itself.

This is how

Pushing hard against my brow, trying
to feel it differently, but ...
I want to pull your hair and scream in your face. 

 hurt bubbles up.

Shaking my head with disbelief, trying
to believe it differently, but

I want to hear news about your demise 

This is how hate bubbles up.

Impulses that I swallow do not digest.