Mudita is not “sympathetic joy”
3 days ago
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(Spoken Work Poetry)
What are we doing?...What have we become?
We're just gang banging,
Lampin' - Hanging out under a street light on gangsta turf
waitin' for a Ghetto Star - our drug dealer to drop some elbow -
a pound of drugs.
We got a biscuit - a gat - a puppy - a pound - a nine -
That's a gun to a gangsta - and that's all fine.
We are on point - ready to fight -
targeting someone - or killing a rival.
We ain't scared a-no hotel or jail
hell doin' a nickle or five years in prison? - Ain't no big thang.
That kid on the corner or walkin' down the middle of the street?-
He done jumped in, he's already taken his initiation beating.
He ain't no wangsta - a wannabe gangsta,
He's a Picasso, he's good with a knife
and he won't hesitate to do some serious slashing -
leaving another brother lying in the street
with a buck fifty - that's a hundred and fifty stitches.
What are we doing?...What have we become?
Long ago we declared war on drugs,
It is a war we are losing.
Illegal drugs are flooding into America
like never before.
It's nothing personal - It's just business.
We are finally giving in and legalizing some drugs
for "Medical Reasons" they want you to believe.
If you can't beat 'em - join 'em -
and tax them for it too.
We are overtaxed - underpaid - many of us living in poverty
or at the very least, barely getting by.
And all the while, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
We are sick and tired of seeing people
standing on street corners with signs
begging for money.
We are sick and tired of not being able to afford health coverage.
We are sick and tired of the federal government
meddling in what little coverage we do have.
We are sick and tired of hearing politicians running for office
promising to go to Washington and fight big government
because they think that's what we want to hear.
We are sick and tired of our government fighting among itself.
We are sick and tired of having politicians lying to us.
We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Add to that the suppression of women's health rights.
If a group of women speaks out against it,
they are harassed, bullied and stalked for daring to do so,
insults and even death threats occur.
We want to dictate who someone should be allowed to love and to marry.
We use our religion to base our judgement
of the L.G.B.T. American citizen.
We thump our Bible, while using it to justify our ignorance.
What are we doing? ..... What have we become?
We holler about our "god-given right" to bear arms,
while in the local shopping centers, armed citizens mill about.
We dine in restaurants with rifles on our back.
We hand out leaflets to motorists.
We get into arguments defending those rights.
We feel we have to arm ourselves.
We have to have campus police.
We have to arm our teachers in order to thwart anyone -
and not just terrorists - but the ordinary American citizen -
who finally snaps from all the craziness
and would massacre our schoolchildren.
What are we doing? ... What have we become?
We are rioting in the streets.
We are at war with one another.
Today - we are looting and destroying businesses
that yesterday we supported,
all in the name of justice.
We are angry and we have been pushed to our limit.
There are weapons of war on U.S. city streets.
There is something gut-wrenching about the photos we see
of police officers with powerful military-style guns
from the roof of armored military-style vehicles.
We see those officers pointing these weapons
at unarmed civilians.
Why do police need roof-mounted machine guns
on armored vehicles? - weapons built to fight a faraway war.
Why are they now turned homeward?
The Department of Homeland Security
encouraged the militarization of police
through federal funds for "terrorism prevention"
they want us to believe.
The armored vehicles, assault weapons and body armor
borne by the police in our streets
are the fruit of turning police into soldiers.
It's not that individual police officers are bad people,
it's that shift in the American culture of policing
that encourages officers to think of the people they serve
as enemies.
This is not some nameless middle-eastern country
torn apart by strife, this is the United States of America
and we have to ask ourselves...
What are we doing? .... What have we become?
~ Jim Jordan
More than 20 unpublished poems by the late Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, most of them taking up romantic themes, have been discovered in boxes of his papers in Chile and will be published in Latin America and Spain in 2014 and 2015, according to reports from Spain.
Officials at the Pablo Neruda Foundation in Chile made the initial find, which was announced Wednesday by the Barcelona-based publisher Seix Barral. The poems are said to date from the 1950s and '60s, when Neruda wrote many of his most beloved works, including "The Captain's Verses," and "100 Love Sonnets."
The only other unpublished works of Neruda to appear after his death were a 1980 collection of poems written during his youth and a 1996 collection of adolescent poems titled "Cuadernos de Temuco" (Temuco Notebooks).
Legendary Poet / Author Maya Angelou Dies
(CNN) -- Maya Angelou, a renowned poet, novelist and actress whose work defied description under a simple label, has died, her publicist, Helen Brann, said Thursday.
She died at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C., Brann said.
A professor, singer and dancer, among other things, Angelou's work spans different professions. She spent her early years studying dance and drama in San Francisco, California.
After dropping out at age 14, she become the city's first African-American female cable car conductor.
Angelou later returned to high school to finish her diploma and gave birth to her son a few weeks after graduation. While the 17-year-old single mother waited tables to support her son, she acquired a passion for music and dance. She toured Europe in the mid-1950s with "Porgy and Bess," an opera production. In 1957, she recorded her first album, "Calypso Lady."
In 1958, Angelou become a part of the Harlem Writers Guild in New York and also played a queen in "The Blacks," an off-Broadway production by French dramatist Jean Genet.
Affectionately referred to as Dr. Angelou, the professor never went to college. She has more than 30 honorary degrees and taught American studies for years at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"I created myself," she has said. "I have taught myself so much."
Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up between St. Louis and the then-racially-segregated Stamps, Arkansas.
The famous poet got into writing after a childhood tragedy that stunned her into silence for almost a decade. When she was 7, her mother's boyfriend raped her. He was later beaten to death by a mob after she testified against him.
"My 7-and-a-half-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost six years," she said.
From the silence, a louder voice was born.
Her list of friends is as impressive as her illustrious career. Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey referred to her as "sister friend." She counted Martin Luther King Jr., with whom she worked during the Civil Rights movement, among her friends. King was assassinated on her birthday.
Angelou spoke at least six languages, and worked as a newspaper editor in Egypt and Ghana. During that time, she wrote "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," launching the first in a series of autobiographical books.
"I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading," she said.
Angelou was also one of the first black women film directors. Her work on Broadway has been nominated for Tony Awards.
Before making it big, the 6-foot-tall wordsmith also worked as a cook and sang with a traveling road show. "Look where we've all come from ... coming out of darkness, moving toward the light," she has said. "It is a long journey, but a sweet one, bittersweet."
She died at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C., Brann said.A professor, singer and dancer, among other things, Angelou's work spans different professions. She spent her early years studying dance and drama in San Francisco, California.
After dropping out at age 14, she become the city's first African-American female cable car conductor.
Angelou later returned to high school to finish her diploma and gave birth to her son a few weeks after graduation. While the 17-year-old single mother waited tables to support her son, she acquired a passion for music and dance. She toured Europe in the mid-1950s with "Porgy and Bess," an opera production. In 1957, she recorded her first album, "Calypso Lady."
In 1958, Angelou become a part of the Harlem Writers Guild in New York and also played a queen in "The Blacks," an off-Broadway production by French dramatist Jean Genet.
Affectionately referred to as Dr. Angelou, the professor never went to college. She has more than 30 honorary degrees and taught American studies for years at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"I created myself," she has said. "I have taught myself so much."
Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up between St. Louis and the then-racially-segregated Stamps, Arkansas.
The famous poet got into writing after a childhood tragedy that stunned her into silence for almost a decade. When she was 7, her mother's boyfriend raped her. He was later beaten to death by a mob after she testified against him.
"My 7-and-a-half-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost six years," she said.
From the silence, a louder voice was born.
Her list of friends is as impressive as her illustrious career. Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey referred to her as "sister friend." She counted Martin Luther King Jr., with whom she worked during the Civil Rights movement, among her friends. King was assassinated on her birthday.
Angelou spoke at least six languages, and worked as a newspaper editor in Egypt and Ghana. During that time, she wrote "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," launching the first in a series of autobiographical books.
"I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading," she said.
Angelou was also one of the first black women film directors. Her work on Broadway has been nominated for Tony Awards.
Before making it big, the 6-foot-tall wordsmith also worked as a cook and sang with a traveling road show. "Look where we've all come from ... coming out of darkness, moving toward the light," she has said. "It is a long journey, but a sweet one, bittersweet."
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