May 2017
Fighting
Fleeing
Finding hope
Reason To
Try to stand
Standing
Up
On A rock
that is spinning
Fast
And faster still
In infinite space
A speck of dust
Tag: Poetry
Tracing Past III
May 2017
Group as entity
Of individual identities,
Developing
Defining
US v. Them
You v. Me
Wipe blades clean,
Rinse
Cycle
Repeat,
Virtuous,
And virtueless,
Remaking
Master’s tools
Under the table
Tracing Past II
May 2017
Finding roots
of ancestors
uprooting,
dredging,
supplanting,
shooting,
maiming,
reading,
covering
revising,
stealing
pounding,
Plowing,
shaping
hunting
eradicating
crosspollenating,
banning,
ruling,
Regulating,
Challenging,
shackling,
hoping
teaching
lifting
falling,
covering
crawling,
Subjectively, empirically
rationalizing
Cause, effect
Affect,
Questioning, answering
Learning
Morals,
Morale.
Tracing Past I*
May 2017
Novice genealogist
tracing back decades,
Centuries traveling
Through ancestry
search and check
see map names shifting,
like platonic masses,
nations forming
Imploding, exploding,
political heat melting
meta
physical,
social,
spiritual,
living structures
living documents
living beings.
*Note: I have become the self-taught genealogist trying to trace my family’s roots in the US, and prior to immigration to the United States of America (some hundreds of years ago, some more recent). This 4 part poem is based on the things I have come to learn about my family paths here, and the political and social historical events that led them all to the US. It’s an experience that I think more people should try to do (though I realize it’s not something everyone has the information to do so with), it makes it easier to understand why things have come to pass in more recent years, as well as to feel more human, in the reality of what we take for granted, and how different things once were, for the ancestors we learn about. I aim not to place value judgement on the individuals who were my ancestors, because they were still human, good, bad, or otherwise, they had their qualities that genealogy does not allow us to necessarily see. But, I am able to appreciate better the world events that shaped their lives, and as a result my own; as well as be more empathetic to others on their own life paths, now.
Identity
February 17, 2005
Lost to me
Are a thousand yesterdays,
Lost to me are the words
Foreign to the tongue
While familiar to the ear,
Lost to me are my peoples
The ones that stare back
In pictures of the past,
Lost to me
Is the life,
The nature,
The heart of a land,
I am too far from to call my own,
Lost to me are dreams of unity,
Dreams of peace,
Prosperity,
Liberty,
Acceptance,
Lost to me are the names,
The voices,
Faces,
Lost to me is a lineage
I can claim,
Lost to me is another world
Another way,
Label me,
But can you take way
The never knowing
Where you have come from?
Living as if the past had never been,
Lost to me is my identity,
As the child of a line
that is lost to me.
30 Going on 15
On the edge of
15.
Pick a job
Any job
What would you like to be?
Career?
Your life.
Choose it.
Pick, pick, pick
Pick pick
Tick, tick, tick
Choose wisely.
Sign,
Here.
And here.
You like to do that thing that you mentioned,
that I wasn’t listening to,
and doesn’t matter because you can’t
make money, money,
money, doing
That
Here?
Thing
Here, here
Here, just take this and that,
and all those, and fill, and sign, here
And here,
And you had a question?
I couldn’t-
Here
Here
Here
And Here
Here you’ll find that anything you do has a paper trail
Change?
No, None here
Here the ink is permanent
That would waste too much
Time to work, work.
Now what was your occupational activity?
Oh yes, that one.
It doesn’t make much money, money
But somehow you’ll have to
Pay at the front,
We accept cash, credit, stocks, bonds, blood
Money to live
To learn,
Money for true happiness
For a good education,
Picket fence,
Marital bliss,
A dog, a house, a car,
2.5 kids.
What? You chose
See page 2000,
Its standard contractual arrangement,
See,
And you’ve already completed parts 4, 5, and 6
A change in the contract brings us back here
We’ve put you together,
Now we must tear you apart.
Now the parts you didn’t read,
You should have before!
No! No tears! There’s no time,
Hurry, you’re a mother,
An adult,
You’re about to be 30!
Now all you have are debts,
Your accomplishments
P(no school, past jobs, and your children don’t count),
Your finances,
Your failures,
Your reason for these claims,
Let’s spread them out.
Trauma? Relive every moment,
and then we’ll “figure something out”.
Childcare? No.
That’s something you must arrange
Should have been better prepared,
For this
For life. You don’t live and learn,
You best just know,
Count the cards just don’t get caught,
This is life,
the luck of the draw,
with notarized agreements.
Ok, you’re complete. Welcome to 30.
Please gather your child, your memories, triumphs, and trials,
and move back half your life,
to 15.
Next.
She of Letters 