Whale bones on the ocean floor
covered by the dust of a million billion plankton,
a scene of desolation so vast, but only seen up close.
Near it’s clear, dark, calm.
In that clear, dark, calm, a fin covered eye
looking down and beyond any feeling of safety
spies a life in ruins,
a tiny speck amid the cosmic dust.
A voice calls out from the bladder of a starfish,
muffled by the hardened skin that keeps it in:
It’s good enough to be alive alone
Or dead upon the throne in life’s own realm.
What is and isn’t comes and goes in swells
The manic lover wearing naught but bells.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Put Down, Beat Down, & Shit Upon, Part 2
We’re put down, beat down, and shit upon
And then we leave our childhood home
A sad sad planet to roam
Where we find folks to make us feel again at home:
Put down, beat down, and shit upon.
If we get real good we learn to live alone
Where we put down, beat down, and shit upon ourselves.
I rise up, lift up, my heart, my soul, my inner core and my coil spring mattress too.
In this moment I:
Eye myself into seeing my beauty
Ear myself into hearing the good about me
Sniff the aroma of my humanity
Taste the cheese grits and eggs of a life out the bounds of other folk’s strictures
Feel you touch me with your own humanity as we create our own scripture
The gospel according to my own freedom, salvation from gin and life everlasting
At least ‘til I cum.
R. Scardino 3/2/07 after I was called in to work on my day off.
And then we leave our childhood home
A sad sad planet to roam
Where we find folks to make us feel again at home:
Put down, beat down, and shit upon.
If we get real good we learn to live alone
Where we put down, beat down, and shit upon ourselves.
I rise up, lift up, my heart, my soul, my inner core and my coil spring mattress too.
In this moment I:
Eye myself into seeing my beauty
Ear myself into hearing the good about me
Sniff the aroma of my humanity
Taste the cheese grits and eggs of a life out the bounds of other folk’s strictures
Feel you touch me with your own humanity as we create our own scripture
The gospel according to my own freedom, salvation from gin and life everlasting
At least ‘til I cum.
R. Scardino 3/2/07 after I was called in to work on my day off.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Mind Kampf
They already built the camps in your mind
Lines of buildings saying “you’re no good.”
The kind of huts that let you know:
Only those who follow what they say are allowed
to stay in the realm of those allowed to speak.
The camps went up in the new year
Surrounded by the barbed wire of not belonging
To the right sect of believing the right way
Of voting the right way
Of sacrificing your sons and daughters without murmur
In the right war at the right time.
The time is now to free yourself from the illusion
That building democracy in a sandstorm
Will make you safe as you watch Wolf Blitzer
And your children make Kool-Aid
And your dog digs a hole under the electronic
Zone that surrounds the mind control box
Called the TV set.
Sunday morning is the best time to drop
The Zyklon B into the hole that leads straight
To the heart of the matter:
Being queer
Not using deodorant
Being black
Not able to get a pardon
Being disposable
Not having enough money
Or the right connections
Or the education
Or the right election
To get into college
To move to the suburbs
To get a job
To pull the strings.
So there’s the pipe
And you know it’s not the answer.
So you go back to the camp
And you go to your hut
And you hope that the fleas and the stink
Keep the guards out
While you think your way through,
Think how to get out.
R. Scardino
12/21/06
Lines of buildings saying “you’re no good.”
The kind of huts that let you know:
Only those who follow what they say are allowed
to stay in the realm of those allowed to speak.
The camps went up in the new year
Surrounded by the barbed wire of not belonging
To the right sect of believing the right way
Of voting the right way
Of sacrificing your sons and daughters without murmur
In the right war at the right time.
The time is now to free yourself from the illusion
That building democracy in a sandstorm
Will make you safe as you watch Wolf Blitzer
And your children make Kool-Aid
And your dog digs a hole under the electronic
Zone that surrounds the mind control box
Called the TV set.
Sunday morning is the best time to drop
The Zyklon B into the hole that leads straight
To the heart of the matter:
Being queer
Not using deodorant
Being black
Not able to get a pardon
Being disposable
Not having enough money
Or the right connections
Or the education
Or the right election
To get into college
To move to the suburbs
To get a job
To pull the strings.
So there’s the pipe
And you know it’s not the answer.
So you go back to the camp
And you go to your hut
And you hope that the fleas and the stink
Keep the guards out
While you think your way through,
Think how to get out.
R. Scardino
12/21/06
Prinsengracht
Shall I say dear kitty when I walk through the house
Of someone who went into hiding when she was just a girl
And died when she was not yet a woman?
Shall I say dear kitty when a 5 year old is killed
Playing with her dolls in the front yard and
Police are looking for a light-skinned man with dreads?
Shall I say dear kitty when the pan-African Diaspora
Is drowned with the son of God in the Florida strait?
Where is my mother who died before her time
Consumed in bitterness and bewildered by her fate?
Where is the sweet innocent in the
Chicken-head who is trying to get the next rock?
Why do we waste the lives and talent of women
Who can’t afford to live behind a gate
And crush the spark from those closed behind the veil
Of ignorance and hate?
On her last birthday the old woman said
From her nursing home bed
Dear kitty.
R. Scardino 7/3/06
Of someone who went into hiding when she was just a girl
And died when she was not yet a woman?
Shall I say dear kitty when a 5 year old is killed
Playing with her dolls in the front yard and
Police are looking for a light-skinned man with dreads?
Shall I say dear kitty when the pan-African Diaspora
Is drowned with the son of God in the Florida strait?
Where is my mother who died before her time
Consumed in bitterness and bewildered by her fate?
Where is the sweet innocent in the
Chicken-head who is trying to get the next rock?
Why do we waste the lives and talent of women
Who can’t afford to live behind a gate
And crush the spark from those closed behind the veil
Of ignorance and hate?
On her last birthday the old woman said
From her nursing home bed
Dear kitty.
R. Scardino 7/3/06
Let It Ring Twice
“Let it ring twice,” my mother always said
While waiting news of someone newly dead.
I wonder if she learned this from her mom
A ploy when she was beautiful and young,
A scam so boys would think she didn’t care
So they’d feel snubbed and then their love declare?
Were phone lines so bad when she was 14
She the eager one waiting for a ring
And didn’t want to lose that call again?
She met my future father at a dance
He called her on the phone at every chance
A score and six years later did they part
He left her dangling on the wire of his heart
Rejoined in death, a single grave apart.
R. Scardino 4/1/07
While waiting news of someone newly dead.
I wonder if she learned this from her mom
A ploy when she was beautiful and young,
A scam so boys would think she didn’t care
So they’d feel snubbed and then their love declare?
Were phone lines so bad when she was 14
She the eager one waiting for a ring
And didn’t want to lose that call again?
She met my future father at a dance
He called her on the phone at every chance
A score and six years later did they part
He left her dangling on the wire of his heart
Rejoined in death, a single grave apart.
R. Scardino 4/1/07
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