I was a freshman at George Fox the day that Matthew Shepard was murdered. I had just moved from a small town in Southern Oregon, a town where I was once jumped and beaten because some other students (wrongly) assumed that I was gay. When I heard about the murder I was outraged, and saddened, and not a bit suprised. I admitted my anger to my freshman roomate.
"But he was a fag," he said. "His lifestyle got him in trouble. If he knew god, this wouldn't have happened."
I stayed at Fox because I met students that didn't share this student's setiments, because I found gay friends (and Friends) that were comfortable enough to open up to me. Because they knew I wouldn't give them the wrath of God bullshit.
Watching the trial unfold made me so angry. Shephard's attackers used the "he hit on me" defense. It was appaling, evil, and wrong.
It has taken 11 years, but today the Matthew Shephard act was signed into law. The law expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It's the first time that legal protections have been extended to Trangendered people.
We live in a very different place than we did in 1998. When I told my wife about the passage of this law she said, "you mean this wasn't already in place?"
No, hon. It wasn't.
The world is a little different today.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
I miss my grandpa
Hey Father Death, I'm flying home
Hey poor man, you're all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going
Father Death, Don't cry any more
Mama's there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store
Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans
O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths
Pain is gone, tears take the rest
Genius Death your art is done
Lover Death your body's gone
Father Death I'm coming home
Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues
Buddha Death, I wake with you
Dharma Death, your mind is new
Sangha Death, we'll work it through
Suffering is what was born
Ignorance made me forlorn
Tearful truths I cannot scorn
Father Breath once more farewell
Birth you gave was no thing ill
My heart is still, as time will tell.
-Allen Ginsberg
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Ramen
She slapped
the steaming noodle bowl
into the center
of the dining room
table most Thursday nights.
This was the best time:
slurping noodles with news
crackling on
the black and white
and father dozing
at the head of the table.
Tomorrow he will
pick up burgers after
cashing in
his overtime check,
the paper mill scent
buried under grease
and cracked Oly cans.
But tonight,
the quiet of the noodles,
the salty peace
from an east where
women wear silk
bathrobes and quiet men
bow to their equals
before battle.
the steaming noodle bowl
into the center
of the dining room
table most Thursday nights.
This was the best time:
slurping noodles with news
crackling on
the black and white
and father dozing
at the head of the table.
Tomorrow he will
pick up burgers after
cashing in
his overtime check,
the paper mill scent
buried under grease
and cracked Oly cans.
But tonight,
the quiet of the noodles,
the salty peace
from an east where
women wear silk
bathrobes and quiet men
bow to their equals
before battle.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Run don't walk.
To this link...
http://inbflat.net/
In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.
The videos can be played simultaneously -- the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.
This is the genius of the internet. Collaboration by strangers to do something genius. I love it!
http://inbflat.net/
In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.
The videos can be played simultaneously -- the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.
This is the genius of the internet. Collaboration by strangers to do something genius. I love it!
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Donate to the cause!
This is selfish, but if you want to help pay for stamps, sample copies, etc. for the next mailing, please feel free to click on the donate button to the right.
Friday, August 7, 2009
The best way to write poetry (for me, of course)
It's been a highly prolific time, writing wise.
That's because I finally looked up and said, "damn, I'm thirty, and I haven't even begun to become the poet I wanted to be in high school."
I never really saw myself as a teacher.
I always saw myself as a poet.
So I have set a goal for myself: Get enough poems together so that by January 2010 I can do a real mailing.
And so I've begun my work. Here's how I'm doing it:
1. Find a time every day to write. Minimum time: 15 minutes. I used to feel guilty about how little time I actually spent writing, thinking that all of the published poets were at their desks for hours upon hours every day. Then I saw this movie of John Ashberry, and didn't feel as guilty:
2. When to write? Often, I write first thing in the morning. I get up earlier than my partner Heather, so I have a block where there's no one there but me. What do I do in that block?
3. Baths with books. This is important. I read a bit. For example: I'm reading this amazing anthology called Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review. Most of the poems are by folks I've never heard of, and can't even find on google (I'm sure they'd be thrilled by that). As Billy Collin's wrote:
"...the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry..."
And he's right.
Sometimes, I don't even read poetry. I read trash, like To Be The Man: The Autobiography of Ric Flair (professional wrestler). Or Bass Player Magazine. Or a novel. But the quiet morning time is important.
4. After my bath, or sometimes even during it, on most days I sit on my couch and start writing. Or...
5. I walk to Chapter's, a coffee shop/bookstore, and get illicit coffee with the credit card (because I've spent my monthly coffee allowance already) and start writing.
6. What do I write? Whatever I can, and whatever I do. Some days (often after reading poetry...) I write fully formed poems. Other days, it's just a bunch of disjointed lines. My favorite poet, William Stafford, had a method of writing daily that I follow. As Robert Bly described it in an interview with Bill Moyer, "his feeling was that you take the first thing that's happened to you during the day-weather it is someon jogging past the house or something you think of-and that's the thread you start with, then you try to follow that thread...Stafford believed that a thread well-followed, gently, will lead you to the center of the universe. In that place where there is no difference between night and day and no difference between men and women, no difference between good and evil-in that place. He called it following the thread."
7. Stafford could do this cold, without prompt. But that came from 50 years of following the thread. For some of us (me, of course), you need a prompting. That's why I do the reading in the tub. Or get out and listen to the murmur of the coffee shop. Or whatever. It provides the starting point of that thread. For example, I read a great poem yesterday called "Laying out the Dead" by Becky Gould Gibson. The poem has a great line: "death never leaves the dead." That lead to a little poem about the dead leaving on holiday. That's where the thread led.
8. Where does the thread go? Wherever it wants to. And here is the key to why this works for me: I'm not trying to make poems. I'm trying to find rough thoughts for poems. Because if I started out going "I'm going to write a poem every day, like William Stafford did", I'd freeze up. At this point, I'm doing what Jack Kerouac (who's writing I actually really hate, but whose advice about writing I really treasure) says to do: "Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy." I let go of the idea that I have to write something genius the first time around. I just write whatever comes, and am grateful for it.
9. When am I done? When I'm done. Some days, it's a line or 2. Most days, it's most of a handwritten page. Often, it's less than a half hour of writing. Then I close the notebook, and start my day.
10. Some days, I don't do this first thing in the morning. I used to feel guilty about this, but now I've gotten past it. Because I've shown up before, and the words came. But for the first few weeks, I was really, really dedicated about it being the same time every day. Now, if I do it in the afternoon or evening, I still get the words. Happy happy.
11. After writing, I leave the words alone for quite a while. Sometimes a week. Sometimes, 2 or 3. Then, on a saturday morning, I go through my journal and type out the best bits. It's usually a cipher, because my handwritting is pretty terrible. So it's almost like I'm writing a first draft again. These typed pages are then printed out, hole punched, and put into a three ring binder that I've labeled drafts. Those are the starting points of real poems.
12. How do I take those rough drafts and turn them into final drafts? I'm not there yet...but the typing up is the starting point. So we'll see where we go from here.
That's because I finally looked up and said, "damn, I'm thirty, and I haven't even begun to become the poet I wanted to be in high school."
I never really saw myself as a teacher.
I always saw myself as a poet.
So I have set a goal for myself: Get enough poems together so that by January 2010 I can do a real mailing.
And so I've begun my work. Here's how I'm doing it:
1. Find a time every day to write. Minimum time: 15 minutes. I used to feel guilty about how little time I actually spent writing, thinking that all of the published poets were at their desks for hours upon hours every day. Then I saw this movie of John Ashberry, and didn't feel as guilty:
2. When to write? Often, I write first thing in the morning. I get up earlier than my partner Heather, so I have a block where there's no one there but me. What do I do in that block?
3. Baths with books. This is important. I read a bit. For example: I'm reading this amazing anthology called Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review. Most of the poems are by folks I've never heard of, and can't even find on google (I'm sure they'd be thrilled by that). As Billy Collin's wrote:
"...the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry..."
And he's right.
Sometimes, I don't even read poetry. I read trash, like To Be The Man: The Autobiography of Ric Flair (professional wrestler). Or Bass Player Magazine. Or a novel. But the quiet morning time is important.
4. After my bath, or sometimes even during it, on most days I sit on my couch and start writing. Or...
5. I walk to Chapter's, a coffee shop/bookstore, and get illicit coffee with the credit card (because I've spent my monthly coffee allowance already) and start writing.
6. What do I write? Whatever I can, and whatever I do. Some days (often after reading poetry...) I write fully formed poems. Other days, it's just a bunch of disjointed lines. My favorite poet, William Stafford, had a method of writing daily that I follow. As Robert Bly described it in an interview with Bill Moyer, "his feeling was that you take the first thing that's happened to you during the day-weather it is someon jogging past the house or something you think of-and that's the thread you start with, then you try to follow that thread...Stafford believed that a thread well-followed, gently, will lead you to the center of the universe. In that place where there is no difference between night and day and no difference between men and women, no difference between good and evil-in that place. He called it following the thread."
7. Stafford could do this cold, without prompt. But that came from 50 years of following the thread. For some of us (me, of course), you need a prompting. That's why I do the reading in the tub. Or get out and listen to the murmur of the coffee shop. Or whatever. It provides the starting point of that thread. For example, I read a great poem yesterday called "Laying out the Dead" by Becky Gould Gibson. The poem has a great line: "death never leaves the dead." That lead to a little poem about the dead leaving on holiday. That's where the thread led.
8. Where does the thread go? Wherever it wants to. And here is the key to why this works for me: I'm not trying to make poems. I'm trying to find rough thoughts for poems. Because if I started out going "I'm going to write a poem every day, like William Stafford did", I'd freeze up. At this point, I'm doing what Jack Kerouac (who's writing I actually really hate, but whose advice about writing I really treasure) says to do: "Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy." I let go of the idea that I have to write something genius the first time around. I just write whatever comes, and am grateful for it.
9. When am I done? When I'm done. Some days, it's a line or 2. Most days, it's most of a handwritten page. Often, it's less than a half hour of writing. Then I close the notebook, and start my day.
10. Some days, I don't do this first thing in the morning. I used to feel guilty about this, but now I've gotten past it. Because I've shown up before, and the words came. But for the first few weeks, I was really, really dedicated about it being the same time every day. Now, if I do it in the afternoon or evening, I still get the words. Happy happy.
11. After writing, I leave the words alone for quite a while. Sometimes a week. Sometimes, 2 or 3. Then, on a saturday morning, I go through my journal and type out the best bits. It's usually a cipher, because my handwritting is pretty terrible. So it's almost like I'm writing a first draft again. These typed pages are then printed out, hole punched, and put into a three ring binder that I've labeled drafts. Those are the starting points of real poems.
12. How do I take those rough drafts and turn them into final drafts? I'm not there yet...but the typing up is the starting point. So we'll see where we go from here.
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