Resistance moon: All the great work of the world

For a good part of the last century, Carl Sandburg was American poetry. A son of the heartland—it don’t come any more heart than Illinois—he won several Pulitzer Prizes, including one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. I’ll never be able to think of Chicago without the epithet he gave it: “hog butcher for the world” and “City of the Big Shoulders”.

Sandburg’s “I am the People, the Mob” fits in with our theme this month of resistance against the kleptocracy. It’s robust, it’s defiant, it’s prophetic. The people will prevail, regardless of what is thrown at them. I love the use of the first person singular pronoun, implying that the great mass of people is a single entity, united in purpose.

It’s the kind of thing that would-be dictators ought to be reminded of. But of course, they don’t ever believe in the people, do they?

“I am the People, the Mob”

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done

   through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s

   food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come

   from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth

   more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much

   plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of

   me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but

   Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I

   have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for

   history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use

   the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me

   last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be

   no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,"

   with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of

   derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Resistance moon: Ten thousand miles

Since last year’s presidential election one of the constants has been the theme of resistance, of something that’s protest, but much more than protest. Maybe it’s the new technology of everywhere-connectivity, Internet infrastructure and social media that enables people in their tens of thousands to convert their outrage into action. They’ve taken to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, but they’ve also broken the telephone systems of pretty much every Congressmoron in D.C.—especially the ones who are too cowardly to meet with constituents in person.

Odd, that, how the ‘Pugs were eager to hold town halls right up until they started getting voters who asked questions and wouldn’t accept deflection. And videos of those meetings were slapped up on Facebook and Twitter, showing them for the spineless bloated slugs they are. Right after that—dang, no town hall meetings…

This is protest writ large, and the lines drawn in the sand about immigration, healthcare, SCOTUS and kompromat have played a powerful part in blocking some of the power grabs of the Kleptocrat, his Gauleiters and their Congressional enablers. Viz.:

A HuffPo writer got hold of the >500-page list of people who invested in the Kakistorcrat’s inauguration; she converted it to a spreadsheet, put it on a Google drive and asked Twitter to crowd-source the names. In 24 hours last week We The Digital People drilled down and discovered substantial donations made under questionable names—one of the NASA mathematicians of Hidden Figures fame—and the ever-popular ruse of addresses that were empty fields. After these results came to light, the Klepto-committee made the equally ever-popular admission of those who’ve been caught out in chicanery: “mistakes” were made.

(The digital detectives turned up at least 340 instances. Oopsie! Moreover, in tracking down some of the non-existent names, by focusing on “business” addresses and looking at other building tenants, the diggers found that a number of them have connections to Russian interests. Um.)

And that miserable tool Jason I-Can-Look-My-Daughter-In-The-Eye-But-Not-My-Constituents Chaffetz has not only announced that he won’t seek re-election after his current stint at the trough, but evidently he’s “taking a break” from Congress, because he’s got to have suddenly immediate surgery to correct a previous surgery on his foot. “Previous” = 12 years ago. Nothing to do with evidence mounting that he’s involved in a cover-up of the connections between the Russians and the Kleptocrat and his Gauleiters. Or with the mounting pressure he’s been getting from people around the country to #DoYourJob as chairman of the House Oversight Committee that doesn’t think it’s necessary to investigate anything to do with the Kleptocrat and his Gauleiters. No. This is a “medical emergency” (his words). And evidently he must think with his foot, because he’s going to be “out” from Congress for three weeks.

Well—thinking with his foot might explain some of his actions. And maybe he plumb wore himself out with his interminable “investigations” of Hillary Clinton and Benghazi.

Okay, right—but we’re here for poetry. Poetry and protest. So…gotta be Bob Dylan.

There were protest song writers before Dylan, but he distilled the art form at a time when the nation was looking for a way to articulate rage and revolution. You want to flip the bird at the government, or at the banksters who broke the economy—and you aren’t Elizabeth Warren? Dylan. Need something to restore your flagging energy, or remind you of what’s at stake? Dylan. Just want to clear your mind before the next call to a politician’s office or taking to the streets? Yeah.

With Dylan’s protest songs, we’re dealing with an embarrassment of riches. I’m going to go with a few of my favorites.

The first cover of “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall” I heard was Pete Seeger’s. I was a kid and I had no real grasp of what it was, but the kind of awkward phrasing, jamming syllables into apocalyptic lines whether they fit or not, and the bolshie repetition really made me stop and pay attention. Also—it’s long. It’s early Dylan at his most complex and demanding.

So I’ll give you the young Dylan singing it.

Though it was written during and for the Cold War, “Hard Rain” is still appropriate for our times. Pick a line—any line—and see if it doesn’t resonate: “a dozen dead oceans”; “guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children”; “a young woman whose body was burning”. Do images from the news come to mind? And regarding the “pellets of poison…flooding the waters”, Dylan has said that it’s nothing to do with acid rain, but with the lies we’re fed by various interests. Whoa—that one’s certainly relevant.

“Blowin’ in the Wind”—well, in contrast to “Hard Rain”, that’s pure, distilled Dylan: three verses, five chords on the guitar, easy to harmonize, fills up a hall like the roar of a tsunami. Everyone on the planet knows “Blowin’ in the Wind”, everyone on the planet can sing it, and everyone on the planet understands its meaning. It would be hard to find a song with more universal resonance (outside, perhaps, of “We Shall Overcome”). By the time a performer has finished with “How many roads”, the audience has joined in.

Racism, militarism, Babbitism, general inhumanity and bloody-mindedness: three verses, five chords, easy harmonizing, tsunami roar. Will it be sung 50 years from now? If there are still humans, probably.

Every artist on the planet has covered “Blowin’ in the Wind”. It was the signature piece of Peter, Paul and Mary, closing all their concerts (including their Christmas one at Carnegie Hall). Stevie Wonder, Marianne Faithfull, Sam Cooke, Bruce Springsteen, Marlene Dietrich, Johnny Cash, the Supremes, the London Freakin’ Philharmonic. Joan Baez was one of the first to sing it, and the purity of her early recordings is amazing. Baez, as you know, was one on the frontlines of protest back in the 60s. She’s sung this one throughout her career, around the world. Here she is in Paris, in 1983.

The anthem for those times, though—the Vietnam War, the youth explosion, tie-dying, Woodstock, Watergate, drugs, communes, a president resigning rather than face impeachment—that was “The Times They Are A-changin’”. Someone ought to park a sound truck outside the Capitol and play this one full blast for a week. Every word is as true now as it was when Dylan wrote it in 1964.

The fuckwits and do-nothings inside the building would rightly begin to tremble at it, because they’re still standing in the doorways and blocking up the halls. And the battle outside raging is shaking their windows and rattling their walls.

So many versions to choose from, but I keep coming back to Tracy Chapman, at Dylan’s 30^th Anniversary Concert.

No surrender.

Resistance moon: Children, do you want your freedom?

The city of New Orleans started taking down public monuments to the Confederacy this week. In the night. With the workmen wearing flak jackets and helmets on account of death threats.

Yes—the people who have been strutting about since November, calling the majority of Americans snowflakes, do not see the irony in gloating, “We won, get over it,” while at the same time screaming about the sacrilege of moving on from The Woah. Perhaps they think the statute of limitations for losing bigly—including unconditional surrender—expired after 150 years?

Not for nothing is it called The Lost Cause.

One of the biggest cod-Confederates I’ve seen lately is a politician right here in the Old Dominion, who’s been tweeting up a storm in emulation of his obvious hero, the Kleptocrat, stamping his feet and moaning about how this is desecration of our glorious heritage, etc., etc., etc.

Here’s what you need to know about Corey Stewart: he’s running for governor of Virginia, and he’s from that bastion of the Old South, Duluth. Minnesota. They used to call his kind carpetbaggers.

So my entry for today is not strictly a poem, but it is intertwined with the legacy that Stewart and his ilk are so fixated on honoring and preserving: slavery. (And its modern-day manifestation: racism.) Using the term Jacob’s ladder to refer to the connection between heaven and earth goes back to…Jacob, in the Bible. Jacob dreamt of a ladder that went all the way to heaven, with angels and everything. In Christianity, Jacob’s ladder is a metaphor for Christ, who bridges humanity and the godhead.

The spiritual “Jacob’s Ladder” dates to at least 1825, and was sung by slaves, who for generations could only dream of an escape from bondage. It’s in the form of call and response, which is useful for participation by unlettered congregations, as well as for ad libbing new sentiments. Truly—as the spirit moves you, you bring your brothers and sisters along.

American race-based human chattel slavery began right here in the Old Dominion in 1619. When the Lost Causers these days wave the Confederate flag around and bellow “states’ rights”, keep in mind that the “right” they were concerned about 160 years ago was the one to extend slavery into the new territories and thus maintain political power in Congress. Consider all those rebel armies the 1860s version of lobbyists, if you like. Southerners were afraid that if new states were admitted to the Union as free states, they’d be outvoted in Congress, as indeed they would be. So it was all about power—keeping it, and wielding it over other humans based on skin color.

For nearly 250 years, until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865, slaves sang “Jacob’s Ladder” as an expression of faith and hope, and to draw the kind of strength it takes to persevere for that length of time. It’s served that purpose ever since, through Reconstruction, through the KKK, through the Depression, through the Civil Rights movement… And it still has value now, in the Gauleiter era.

One of my favorite versions is the one by Sweet Honey in the Rock that was used in Ken Burns’ seminal documentary The Civil War more than 25 years ago. 

So no “poet” today; perhaps not even a poem. But, as resistance goes, this is it, baby.

Resistance moon: Picking the scabs off your heart

For Anne Sexton, poetry was part of a course of therapeutic treatment for depression and other mental health issues. She suffered her first breakdown after the birth of her first daughter in 1954, and then again after her second daughter’s birth. It was so difficult for her to enroll in a writing class that she had a friend make the phone call to register, and go with her to the first session. But poetry turned out to be one of her strongest connections to life.

Even so, that connection was not strong enough. In 1974, aged 45, she drank a slug of vodka and then committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Sexton wrote about what we might think of as the “small” things—the ordinariness of everyday life. No Big Themes—unless the quiet courage to make a choice every day to continue with life can be considered Big. In fact, in “Courage”, she talks about that quality in various forms at varying stages of life.

For those of us who are finding ways large and small to resist the Kleptocrat and other authoritarian regimes, this is a good one to carry with us.

“Courage”

It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love

as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

Resistance moon: Defy us to our worst

Yikes—we’re in the last week of National Poetry Month, and there’s been nothing from Shakespeare! However did that happen?

Okay, well, here’s the thing about Shakespeare: all his plays about Big Men (Legends-in-Their-Own-Minds Bigly Men) end badly for the eponymous heroes. Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Lear, Othello, Richard III (and probably I and II, too; I haven’t looked)—these guys all disappear up their own tailpipes and do not die of old age. 

(Well, Lear. Technically he was an old man. But turned out by his daughters to wander the moors with his Fool, descending into madness, his one loyal daughter executed...he drops dead in Act V. Not what he had planned, so I think my point stands.)

One who does come out well (right up until Act V, Scene 2) is Henry V, who progressed from the Prince Hal on a permanent Gap Year in Henry IV, Part I, through the maturing heir to the throne of Henry IV, Part II, until we see the inspiring commander and king who breaks France at Agincourt.

We all know his speech to the troops on Saint Crispin’s Day, and we mostly know the one at Harfleur (“Once more into the breach, dear friends”—Act III, Scene 1). But I think that the speech he delivers to the governor of Harfleur two scenes later, after that initial assault is more in tune with our resistance month. Here, Henry feels deeply how much the burghers of Harfleur have already cost his army, and he’s disinclined to treat with them—they can surrender, or they can suffer utter destruction. It’s kind of the approach U.S. Grant took in another war.

I dunno—for some reason this just speaks to me.

Henry V, Act III, Scene 3

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

Resistance moon: Dreaming my cubs about the den

Since today I’m celebrating the more than 600 Marches for Science held around the world on Saturday, it seems like a good time to have a poem that’s not, perhaps, a protest, but an elegy for the things we’ve lost and will continue to lose because of policy makers’ science denial.

I frankly don’t much give a toss why these people fly at Mach 3 directly into the face of facts—whether it’s religion or greed that blinds them. Stupid is stupid, and the Kleptocrat and his Gauleiters are certainly leading the charge in the stupid stakes.

Okay, for a scientifically-themed poem, I’m calling on Irish poet, playwright, lyricist and teacher Paula Meehan. Meehan earned her stripes in the resistance army as a teenager, when she was expelled from Saint Michael’s Holy Faith Convent School in Finglas for organizing a protest march against the school administration. She eventually earned a degree from Trinity College Dublin, and then an MFA from Eastern Washington University.

Meehan puts herself at the vortex of the arts—writing poems that have become songs, and others for film producers, dance companies street theatre groups.

“The Solace of Artemis” is about climate change—appropriate for the weekend’s focus. We frequently refer to Artemis, twin to Apollo, by the shorthand label, “goddess of the hunt”. She was actually more than that. Homer called her “Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals”; she was the conservator of the wilderness and of wild animals. Yep—she was a hunter but she kept things in balance. (She’s also the goddess of childbirth and virginity, and the protector of young girls.)

So it makes sense that here the poet-goddess takes comfort in the connection between the Irish brown bear and her majestic descendants. The contrast between the mama bear in the cave with her honied cubs and the children of the machine caring only about getting cheap memory (as in silicon chips? or something more ephemeral, like cheap vacation memories?) is as sharp as a Celtic spear.

"The Solace of Artemis"

I read that every polar bear alive has mitochondrial DNA

from a common mother, an Irish brown bear who once

roved out across the last ice age, and I am comforted.

It has been a long hot morning with the children of the machine,

their talk of memory, of buying it, of buying it cheap, but I,

memory keeper by trade, scan time coded in the golden hive mind

of eternity. I burn my books, I burn my whole archive:

a blaze that sears, synapses flaring cell to cell where

memory sleeps in the wax hexagonals of my doomed and melting comb.

I see him loping towards me across the vast ice field

to where I wait in the cave mouth, dreaming my cubs about the den,

my honied ones, smelling of snow and sweet oblivion.

Gratitude Monday: Some of it IS rocket science

There were big doings around the Mall and around the world on Saturday. Hundreds of thousands of people—bench scientists, academics, concerned human beings—marched in support of the notion that scientific research is vital to all of us.

Seems really odd that in 2017 this is even up for debate, but it is, particularly with the Kleptocrat and Gauleiters at the head of the Executive Branch, and the Repugnants in control of both houses of Congress. We’ll have to see how SCOTUS rolls with the usurper now seated on the bench.

At any rate, I volunteered Saturday at the headquarters of one of the major constituent organizations supporting the March for Science in D.C. It was actually glorious—the buzz was amazing, and even the rain that came and went throughout the day did not materially dampen the marchers.

They’re scientists. Rain happens. And as at least one sign proclaimed, at least it’s not acid rain. For which you can thank the EPA.

So, here are a few of the photos I shot in between handing out swag and signs to carry to marchers who gathered for a pre-march rally. (As an aside: among our giveaways were magnetic bumper stickers; think refrigerator magnets writ large. One fellow was truly chuffed, because he has a magnetometer app on his iPhone. Of course he does. I had to look up "magnetometer" on my mobile.)  While the signs we handed out were good, I really loved the ones that people had hand-made. I’m grateful to have been part of this event.

This woman told me that she actually nearly did die of dysentery. Science is personal for her. (Well, it is for all of us; we're just not all personally aware of it.) 

You knew we weren't going to get through the day without Star Trek:

 In case you're wondering--scientists really do have a sense of humor:

This one's a little hard to read through the rain-protecting plastic wrap. But it invites fellow marchers to submit their posters (inside joke: many scientific conferences have poster competitions, but the posters are very intense synopses of research projects that are, in fact, peer reviewed. In this case posters = signs, but still) for peer review. I was told that the fellow who'd made this sign had printed cards that offered check boxes: accepted, minor revisions required, major revisions required, rejected. I told you--these people are just as funny as they come.

Note the "brain hat" she's wearing. I saw a few of them on Saturday.

Another brain hat.

Most of the signs were reversible, so you got messages coming and going.

A lot of family groups on Saturday.

And one final truth:

Resistance moon: Truths too deep for taint

As I’ve pointed out before, upon inauguration the Kleptocrat got the biggest box of toys ever—the US economy, the US legal system and the US military. And he’s reacted exactly as expected for a 70-year-old narcissist with compensation issues and no impulse control.

His attempts in all these areas—illegal executive orders, cabinet appointments aimed at dismantling government, policy-making aimed at filling his corporate coffers—are terrifying. But it’s his use of what he’s pleased to call “my military” that we’ll consider today. Because the pathetic git who claims that a stint at a military high school 50 years ago gave him a better grasp on geo-politics than all our flag officers put together actually approaches brinksmanship with the gusto of having just unpacked a box of shiny new toy soldiers. He can’t keep straight which country he fired 59 missiles at, but he can give you details about the piece of chocolate cake he was eating when he gave the order.

(His real expertise in military matters was his ability to get five bogus deferments to avoid active service during the Vietnam War. His access to America's armed forces enables him to be petty, bloody-minded and vindictive on a scale he could only dream of before.)

We used to call his ilk chicken hawks—the ones e.e. cummings was talking about in “next to god of course america”. They flap their manicured hands (tiny or not) about to urge other people’s babies to go in harm’s way in defense of personal gain wrapped up in national honor and patriotism, while remaining safely at home with all their children intact. They never feel the consequences of their actions because the filth and mayhem of war just never comes close enough to touch them.

The Kleptocrat's flavor of chicken hawkery is that the one lesson he's learnt from his missile attack on Syria (not Iraq), and sending "a YUGE armada" somewhere--possibly toward North Korea, possibly not--is that when he makes big bang sounds, his supporters are energized and his approval ratings rise a couple of points. He's stiill below 50%, but any improvement (in any poll, no matter how small the sample) causes the bluster tweets to rise accordingly. And ratings (and profit) are all the reality TV player cares about.

The War Poets of World War I held the chicken hawks of that era—the politicians and the profiteers—in the contempt they thoroughly deserved. We got a taste of it earlier this month with Siegfried Sassoon’s “Suicide in the Trenches”. But let’s have something from Wilfred Owen, possibly my favorite.

There’s a lot going on in “Strange Meeting”, both poetically and in the narrative. Owen messes with the rhyming scheme, using pararhyme or slanted rhymes—the “rhyming” words don’t land quite squarely. Groined/groaned; moan/mourn. We have narrative references to the Hell of Dante, the title coming from Shelley… And the enemy soldier the poet meets—who is he, really?

Is it possibly himself?

“Strange Meeting”

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,— 

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.” 

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress. 

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: 

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, 

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . .”