The New Hieroglyphics – Les Murray

In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2SO4, for musical notes,
but mostly it’s diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped their toilet doors. I (that is, saya,
ego, watashi wa) am two eyes without pupils;
those aren’t seen when you look out through them.

You has both pupils, we has one, and one blank.
Good is thumbs up, thumb and finger zipping lips
is confidential. Evil is three-cornered snake eyes.

The effort is always to make the symbols obvious:
the bolt of electricity, winged stethoscope of course
for flying doctor. Pram under fire? Soviet film industry.

Pictographs also shouldn’t be too culture-bound:
a heart circled and crossed out surely isn’t.
For red, betel spit lost out to ace of diamonds.

Black is the ace of spades. The king of spades
reads Union boss, the two is feeble effort.
If is the shorthand Libra sign, the scales.

Spare literal pictures render most nouns and verbs
and computers can draw them faster than Pharough’s scribes.
A bordello prospectus is as explicit as the action,

but everywhere there’s sunflower talk, i.e.
metaphor, as we’ve seen. A figure riding a skyhook
bearing food in one hand is the pictograph for grace,

two animals in a book read Nature, two books
inside an animal, instinct. Rice in bowl with chopsticks
denotes food. Figure 1 lying prone equals other.

Most emotions are mini-faces, and the speech
balloon is ubiquitous. A bull inside one is dialect
for placards inside one. Sun and moon together

inside one is poetry. Sun and moon over palette,
over shoes etc. are all art forms–but above
a cracked heart and champagne glass? Riddle that

and you’re starting to think in World, whose grammar
is Chinese-terse and fluid. Who needs the square-
equals-diamond book, the dictionary, to know figures

led by strings to their genitals mean fashion?
just as a skirt beneath a circle means demure
or a similar circle shouldering two arrows is macho.

All peoples are at times cat in water with this language
but it does promote international bird on shoulder.
This foretaste now lays its knife and fork parallel.

Source

Related Links:

LesMurray.org

Interview with Les Murray

A Noun Sentence – Mahmoud Darwish

A noun sentence, no verb
to it or in it: to the sea the scent of the bed
after making love … a salty perfume
or a sour one. A noun sentence: my wounded joy
like the sunset at your strange windows.
My flower green like the phoenix. My heart exceeding
my need, hesitant between two doors:
entry a joke, and exit
a labyrinth. Where is my shadow—my guide amid
the crowdedness on the road to judgment day? And I
as an ancient stone of two dark colors in the city wall,
chestnut and black, a protruding insensitivity
toward my visitors and the interpretation of shadows. Wishing
for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me
or ahead of me, barefoot. Where
is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where
is futility? Where is the road to the road?
And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present
tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate
and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam
of speech the dots on the letters,
wishing for the present tense a foothold
on the pavement …

Source

 

Related Links:

Mahmoud Darwish’s website

Darwish on Poets.org

The Sea-Turtle and the Shark – Melvin B. Tolson

Strange but true is the story
of the sea-turtle and the shark-
the instinctive drive of the weak to survive
in the oceanic dark.
Driven,
riven
by hunger
from abyss to shoal,
sometimes the shark swallows
the sea-turtle whole.

The sly reptilian marine
withdraws,
into the shell
of his undersea craft,
his leathery head and the rapacious claws
that can rip
a rhinoceros’ hide
or strip
a crocodile to fare-thee-well;
now,
inside the shark,
the sea-turtle begins the churning seesaws
of his descent into pelagic hell;
then…then,
with ravenous jaws
that can cut sheet steel scrap,
the sea-turtle gnaws
…and gnaws…and gnaws
his way in a way that appalls-
his way to freedom,
beyond the vomiting dark
beyond the stomach walls
of the shark.

 

excerpted from Black Nature: Four Centuries of African-American Nature Poetry

Ode on Dictionaries–Barbara Hamby

A-bomb is how it begins with a big bang on page
  one, a calculator of sorts whose centrifuge
begets bedouin, bamboozle, breakdance, and berserk,
  one of my mother's favorite words, hard knock
clerk of clichés that she is, at the moment going ape
  the current rave in the fundamentalist landscape
disguised as her brain, a rococo lexicon
  of Deuteronomy, Job, gossip, spritz, and neocon
ephemera all wrapped up in a pop burrito
  of movie star shenanigans, like a stray Cheeto
found in your pocket the day after you finish the bag,
  tastier than any oyster and champagne fueled fugue 
gastronomique you have been pursuing in France
  for the past four months. This 82-year-old's rants
have taken their place with the dictionary I bought
  in the fourth grade, with so many gorgeous words I thought
I'd never plumb its depths. Right the first time, little girl,
  yet here I am still at it, trolling for pearls,
Japanese words vying with Bantu in a goulash
  I eat daily, sometimes gagging, sometimes with relish,
kleptomaniac in the candy store of language,
  slipping words in my pockets like a non-smudge
lipstick that smears with the first kiss. I'm the demented
  lady with sixteen cats. Sure, the house stinks, but those damned
mice have skedaddled, though I kind of miss them, their cute
  little faces, the whiskers, those adorable gray suits.
No, all beasts are welcome in my menagerie, ark
  of inconsolable barks and meows, sharp-toothed shark,
OED of the deep ocean, sweet compendium
  of candy bars—Butterfingers, Mounds, and M&Ms—
packed next to the tripe and gizzards, trim and tackle
  of butchers and bakers, the painter's brush and spackle,
quarks and black holes of physicists' theory. I'm building
  my own book as a mason makes a wall or a gelding
runs round the track—brick by brick, step by step, word by word,
  jonquil by gerrymander, syllabub by greensward,
swordplay by snapdragon, a never-ending parade
  with clowns and funambulists in my own mouth, homemade
treasure chest of tongue and teeth, the brain's roustabout, rough
  unfurler of tents and trapezes, off-the-cuff
unruly troublemaker in the high church museum
  of the world. O mouth—boondoggle, auditorium,
viper, gulag, gumbo pot on a steamy August
  afternoon—what have you not given me? How I must
wear on you, my Samuel Johnson in a frock coat,
  lexicographer of silly thoughts, billy goat,
X-rated pornographic smut factory, scarfer
  of snacks, prissy smirker, late-night barfly,
you are the megaphone by which I bewitch the world
  or don't as the case may be. O chittering squirrel,
ziplock sandwich bag, sound off, shut up, gather your words
  into bouquets, folios, flocks of black and flaming birds.

Related Links:

Barbara Hamby

Note: this a repost as the original post was not formatted correctly.

Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle (Excerpt)

The below quote is taken from the chapter, Framing the Panther – Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency by Joy James

 

[Assata Shakur’s] eulogy for Safiya Bukhari, given in Havana on August 29, 2003, is haunting. Bukhari collapsed hours after she buried her own mother-the grandmother who raised Safiya Bukhari’s young daughter the day her own daughter became a BLA fighter and fugitive, going underground only to surface for an eight-year prison term. Bukhari survived the maiming medical practices of prison doctors (although her uterus did not) only to succumb to the “typical” black women diseases of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and heart failure in 2002. The eulogy could be read as Assata Shakur’s – and that of all revolutionary black women who refused to circumscribe their rebellion, and paid the costs for that decision:

It is with much sadness that I say last goodbye to Safiya Bukhari. She was my sister, my comrade and my friend. We met nearly thirty-five years ago, when we were bothe members of the Black Panther Party in Harlem. Even then, I was impressed by her sincerity, her commitment, and her burning energy. She was a descendant of slaves and she inherited the legacy of neo-slavery. She believed that struggle was the only way that African people in America could rid themselves of oppression. As a black woman struggling to live in America she experienced the most vicious forms of racism, sexism, cruelty and indifference. As a political activist she was targeted, persecuted, hounded and harassed. Because of her political activities she became a political prisoner and spent many years in prison. But she continued to struggle. She gave the best that she had to give to our people. She devoted her life, her love and her best energies to fighting for the liberation of oppressed people. She struggled selflessly, she could be trusted, she was consistent, and she could always be counted on to do what needed to be done. She was a soldier, a warrior-woman who did everything she could to free her people and to free political prisoners.”

For Assata Shakur, the weight of isolation, alienation, and vilification are scars that are borne. Redemption does not occur on this plane or in this life. Betrayal by nonblacks and black, by men and wome, to part of the liberation narrative. There will be no gratitude, no appreciation, no recognition equal to the insults and assaults. So, Assata Shakur, in true revolutionary fashion, must conclude her testimonial embracing a community that radiates beyond our immediate boundaries and limitations:

“I have faith that the Ancestors will welcome her, cherish her, and treat her with more love and more kindness than she ever received here on this earth.”

Framing the Panther

Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

Related Links:

What Happens When a Book is Judged by its Cover

Assata Shakur: In her Own Words

Assata Shakur’s Autobiography (amazon)

Derek Walcott Reading and Question/Answer

I am starting to work my slow way through Omeros. I stopped to google Omeros – Derek Walcott. I found the following link. It’s him reading a very brief excerpt and then taking questions from the audience. You will have to scroll through the list of names to find Walcott. They also have episodes with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nawal El Sadaawi, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Chinua Achebe, Khaled Hosseini and Gunter Grass.

BBC – Podcasts – World Book Club.

It was my First Nursing Job – Belle Waring

For the rest of the year, I will be posting bits and pieces from books I’ve read this year…even if they didn’t make it on my end of the year roundup. Today’s “bit” is Belle Waring’s It Was My First Nursing Job excerpted from Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.

 

It was my First Nursing Job

and I was stupid in it. I thought a doctor would not be unkind.
One wouldn’t wait for a laboring woman to dilate to ten cm.

He’d brace one hand up his patient’s vagina,
clamp the other on her pregnant belly, and force the fetus

through an eight-centimeter cervix.
She tore, of course. Bled.

Stellate lacerations extend from the cervix
like an asterisk. The staff nurses stormed and hissed

but the head nurse shrugged, He doesn’t like to wait around.
No other doctor witnessed what he did. The man was an elder

in his church. He chattered and smiled broadly as he worked.
He wore the biggest gloves we could stock.

It was my first real job and I was scared in it.
One night a patient of his was admitted

bleeding. The charge nurse said, He won’t rip her.
You take this one.

So I took her.
She quickly delivered a dead baby boy.

Not long dead-you could tell by the skin, intact.
But long enough.

When I wrapped him in a blanket, the doctor flipped open the cover
to let the mother view the body, according to custom.

The baby lay beside her.
He lay stretched out and still.

What a pity, the doctor said.
He seized the baby’s penis between his own forefinger and thumb.

It was the first time I had ever seen a male not circumcised
and I was taken aback by the beauty of it.

Look, said the doctor, a little boy. Just what we wanted.
His hand, huge on the child, held the penis as if he’d found

a lovecharm hidden in his grandmother’s linen.
And then he dropped it.

The mother didn’t make a sound.
When the doctor left, she said to me in a far flat voice

I called and told him I was bleeding bad.
He told me not to worry.

I don’t remember what I said. Just that
when I escorted her husband from the lobby

the doctor had already gone home. The new father followed me
with a joyful strut. I thought Sweet Jesus Christ

-Did the doctor speak to you?
-No ma’am, the father said.

I said quick-as-I-could-so-I-wouldn’t-have-to-think-
The baby didn’t make it.

The man doubled over. I told him all wrong.
I would do it all over again.

Say-
Please, sir. Sit down. I’m so very sorry to tell you

No. It’s been sixteen years.
I would say, I am your witness.

No. I would never have told the whole truth.
Forgive me.

It was my first job
and I was lost in it.

Bones of Contention – Wanda Coleman

for Lois, deceased

he described you as a cracker battle axe
but the woman i met was thin and haint-like

i spoke to you as little as one can speak
to an in-law and get along
as did you
we never called one another by name
converse for the sake of function
biding, tolerant

whenever the three of us sat down together
he preached his gospel of civil rights
you silent, as was i
wishing he would let us be-each in her own distance

and as the social pressures of our miscegnation
ate away love
i tried to make him understand
the dangers

the whip has bitten into the back of the slave
clean through to the heart

sing dixie
wave the stars & bars

our marriage decomposed into a gangrenous animosity
no understanding-black or white

six years after divorce he called long distance
you were dying of colon cancer
your last wish
to see your grandchildren

he begged me to send the kids

i said no

and he will never understand

(excerpted from African Sleeping Sickness: Stories and Poems

 

Related Links:

What the Gin Rummy Queen Taught Me (poem)

Bedtime Story (poem)

End of the Year Reading Summation

At the beginning of last winter, I made a reading list of books I wanted to read for 2011. Looking over  the list, I see that finished two of them (Wild Seed and Half of a Yellow Sun , read partial amounts of others (Omeros and The Odyssey) and put all the others away for future reading. Now, don’t think I only read two books this year!  Below is a list of books read this year:

 

February:

(poetry) Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol – Okot p’Bitek

March:

(poetry) Nappy Edges – Ntozake Shange

(science fiction) Wild Seed – Octavia Butler

April:

(children) Mansa Musa: The Lion of Mali – Khephra Burns

(fiction) House of Sand and Fog – Andre Dubus III

July:

(historical fiction) Someone Knows my Name – Lawrence Hill

(nonfiction)Mississippi in Africa – Alan Huffman

October:

(poetry) Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York and When Winter Comes: the Ascension of York – Frank X. Walker

(fiction) Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

November:

(poetry) Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate this Ride – Frank X. Walker

(nonfiction) Lewis & Clark Through Indian Eyes – ed. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. (in progress)

 

I recommitted myself this year to read more poetry and I definitely have. There are poetry books I didn’t include in this list as I’m as still reading them. These books include Prophets by Kwame Dawes, African Sleeping Sickness by Wanda Coleman, Harlem Gallery by Melvin B. Tolson,  Neon Vernacular by Yusef Komunyakaa, Alphabet of Desire by Barbara Hamby, When Light Breaks by Melanie YeYo Carter, Dear Darkness by Kevin Young, the Collected Works of ee cummings, etc.