Tag Archives: her_say

pedagogy of unfeel & feel

petaled river, where are the rooms for you to breathe?
       sheathed in words ardored with swell of sword, step
       into the horror of now, where dream is companion 
       no more, wed as it is to rule & measure -

petaled river, with song as blood, swell of root & hum of
       bond, we are one - the clay of belonging is born to
       the sun of now, where dream is wed to flow of new,
       to the round of moon, its ooze & leisure -

Ant song

I met Revolution again the other day recalling how a younger me was 
          smitten by her fire & song      so now are you the peacock or the

Mountain? neither, she said, I am the dust that settled on the monkey's
          breath after your wars      will you then sear through our dreams as

Violet-green clouds of remembrance?   only the monkey's breath knows
          when your blanched sword melds with the colors of a million ants -

Counting problem

It's a counting problem -  ones turning into other ones,
                                             the count depending not on the leopard's spots but how
                                             they roll off her back teaching clouds how to fold song into
                                             rain

The transformation of a dual world into a binary world is the transformation of the world of two and of many inequalities but complete into a world of one and deficiency. If duality is one of the variants of the multiple, binarism is the world of the one, of the grid and universal referent.

– Rita Laura Segato

parable illegit

protector of secrets1, harbinger, truth-in-stain 
      as the scream that wills 
      as a parable illegit as a mountain-stone
      rolling threads of incomprehension
      So that in the depths of the darkest night
      The sun shines forever a

tell us that story again2, of the flow and its night
      as the sandgrain that wills
      as a parable illegit as a mountain-stone
      rolling waves of inconstancy
      So that in the depths of the darkest night
      The sun shines forever 

worshiping love alone3, subsisting in subsistence 
     alone, so that in the depths 
     of the darkest night, the sun shines 
     forever - harbinger, truth-in-stain
     parable illegit as a mountain-stone, I,
     sandgrain, subsist, scream -

(1)
qudrat ke puraane bhedoN may jo bhaid chhupaae chhup na sakay, is bhaid ki tu rakhwaali hai

– from ‘haraami’ by Meeraji

(a)
So that in the depths of the darkest night
The sun shines forever

– from ‘Songs That Cannot Be Silenced’ by Hien Luong from Vietnam

(2)
puraani kahaani may kya lutf aae, hamay aaj kis nay kaha tha — puraani kahaani sunaao

– from ‘aik thee aurat’ by Meeraji

(3)
jo chaahay reet ki baat kahay, hum peet hi ke matwaalay haiN

– from ‘haraami’ by Meeraji

inaction of rhyme

Buddha thought
    the action of time is wiser than the vat of knowing
    that saddened him
And that is ok

Lao Tsu thought
    the inaction of rhyme is timelier than what-not
    he was not sad
And that too is ok

I think
    the Lordessess gave us time to sort it out
    but there is little time
And that is not ok

nursery rhyme

left copped out coopted by right1
let our children play out the folly of our plight
mindful eyes shut to keep out the light
shall we just play peekaboo with night?

—

The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.

Audre Lorde, Power

1. “Right coopted Left copped out” – Coined by my friend Faraz Hussain while discussing how adept the mainstream is in appropriating all progressive talk and defanging it of radical potential.

two sides in want of a third

When rain falls with conviction
  I ask the woman,
  “would you like to buy the sky?”

“No need as dying is near impossible.”
  makes sense as death is a triangle
  two sides in want of the third –

When there is no rain or when
  when conviction fails, the
  woman is silent, sky is up

For sale & death has no neighbor knocking
  on its door asking, “is there a
  song we can borrow for the night?”

Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust…In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the bread we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators?

– Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s”.

a nongreen wage

there is nothing tragic in the
  the logic of being moss
  perhaps the mouth goes dry
  maybe your vocabulary

slips, but
  the green is no longer just a color
  your mouth is no longer dry and you spout words as if
  your dictionary is on fire –

what is tragic is the logic of
  the nongreen wage, the math of
  the unfed mouth – what goes
  dry is the unsaid word,

the less than word, the feet that
  knew no ground no wall but wail
  this unfed mouth is word now
  that soots your green with rage –

—

These historic changes – that peaked in the 19th century with the creation of the full-time housewife – redefined women’s position in society and in relation to men. The sexual division of labor that emerged from it not only fixed women to reproductive work, but increased their dependence on men, enabling the state and employers to use the male wage as a means to command women’s labor. In this way, the separation of commodity production from the reproduction of labor-power also made possible the development of a specifically capitalist use of the wage and of the markets as means for the accumulation of unpaid labor.

– Silvia Federici, “Caliban and the Witch”

Poet as genesis

It took an hour
to make song   another hour
for stone        the river
& stone are conjugate verbs
acting together
       to make the verdict of song
       ring true
—
“I have always had the sense of Armageddon and it was much stronger in those days, the sense of living on the edge of chaos. Not just personally, but on the world level. That we were dying, that we were killing our world — that sense had always been with me. That whatever I was doing, whatever we were doing that was creative and right, functioned to hold us from going over the edge. That this was the most we could do while we constructed some saner future.” – Audre Lorde recalling when she had heard of Martin Luther King’s killing.

a deliberate earthing

I.
“I am deliberate
and afraid
of nothing.”
An act of will that
    mourns wonder
    weaves magic –

– Quoted words from “New Year’s Day” by Audre Lorde

II.
“Green essence pooled again in my eyes, which paint the grass, which will later bloom in the memories of animals.”
I as earth
    I as animal
    woke as essence of green –

– Quoted words by Alejandra Pizarnik