Suburbs: An Observation

A suburb is a place where a developer cuts down all the trees to build houses and then names the streets after the trees.
-Bill Vaughn

Undocumented Workers vs. Illegal Aliens

Instead of Mandela's New World, our politicians and their media flunkies busily and viciously strive to resurrect an Old World in which there will be no safety, no asylum, for anybody but themselves. These men, direct descendents of other men who came to America never asking anybody's permission to arrive or to invade or to conquer or to exterminate or to enslave or to betray or to exploit and discriminate against those who preceded them and those who, willingly or not, came after them - these men now contrive a so-called immigration crisis and they invent and then promulgate pathological idiot terms like "illegal aliens."
-June Jordan, "We Are All Refugees," 1994

In Praise of My Bed by Meredith Holmes

At last I can be with you!
The grinding hours
since I left your side!
The labor of being fully human,
working my opposable thumb,
talking, and walking upright.
Now I have unclasped
unzipped, stepped out of.
Husked, soft, a be-er only,
I do nothing, but point
my bare feet into your
clean smoothness
feel your quiet strength
the whole length of my body.
I close my eyes, hear myself
moan, so grateful to be held this way.

"kids are the future"

Politician: Kids are the FUTURE!

Kid: Even me?

Politician: No. You are poor.

Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria by Langston Hughes

Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

"All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)

ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.

Choices by Nikki Giovanni

if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

it's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do

if i can't have what i want then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more
to want

since i can't go
where i need
to go then i must go
where the signs point
though always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

when i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
along among the mammals
learns to cry

Lyrics: Better Days by Goo Goo Dolls

And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Cuz I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And desire and love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

And it's someplace simple where we could live
And something only you can give
And thats faith and trust and peace while we're alive
And the one poor child that saved this world
And there's 10 million more who probably could
If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

I wish everyone was loved tonight
And somehow stop this fight
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

Passer Mortuus Est

Death devours all lovely things:
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness,--presently
Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain
Dries the sheer libation;
And the little petulant hand
Is an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Tonight was built for sadness

Tonight was built for sadness. It is quiet in my apartment, and outside
the ominous darkness is burdened by humidity, the promise of another rainy
day. I should be lonely, a solitude so profound that there is no room for
the companionship of tears.

I have managed to outsmart the night.

Maybe it’s the pictures on my bulletin board. Or the miniature love
letters kept in a canister above my bed. Or the promise that home is only
days away. Tonight has enveloped me in its sweet embraces. Like a
perpetual hug from across the ocean and the silent reassurances from
friends and family.

There is love even in the most ominous nights.

Poem by Jenn Cable

The hollow inside
Fills with air
The shutters rattle
heart pumps steady and fast
Skin that binds the organs
Warms pressed against the other.
We can only be this close.
The interiority of these thoughts
And words will never be enough
As they slip through my fingers
Like Silver-scaled fishes
Reflected and refracted through water across stones.
We are so far from each other--
My cheekbone pressed into your rib.
Your eyes closed and
Thoughts impenetrable.
The distance between
Us is immeasurable--
[So] I close my eyes to the dark
And turn away.

i want to see you

[Please, i want you to want to know me. i want it to be warm outside and for us to lie in the grass and talk. or hold hands and not say a word. and i want things to be happening so that i know the world is changing for the better, into something fairer, into something closer to what i used to think it was... i want people to be people, to love each other due to their radiance, i want to never sleep and for my waking to be more and more like the most beautiful of my dreams. i want to look in your face and forget that its not my face. i want to see you. i want to see you. i want to see you.]

The Nearness of You

Sometimes, when you are thinking about something entirely different, like when last you ate or what sweater to wear, the continental plates of your memory will slip and you forget that she's gone. You'll think, "Maybe I should call her," and you may even pick up your phone and find her number that you've forgotten to delete in your address book. And before you push the button you'll remember. You'll remember and reprimand your mind for playing such a cruel trick, such an emotional tease. And you'll go back to trying to remember when last you ate, but this time, you won't remember anything. Just a feeling of absence. Of nothing. Forgetting is like the hiccups. Once you start, you can't stop.