Saturday Poem

I was built by inherited hungers. This is not a poem that names them.

i.
As a body politic we take up space in their ledgers.
Yes, my relatives are the salvage bodies of history.

We have ways they do not approve of.
How we feed ourselves for one:

I have been taught where to find the winter cache of squirrels—
and how to walk away.

As we walk, my brother quiets me:
you cannot tell stories until you visit the places where they make their homes.

Father said the garden song calls the pollinators—
and we must sing in tune.

Nimaamaa said leave some for the spirits and the little people
(and what she meant was we are small in the green frayed body of belonging).

We learn from makwa, from maa’ingan—sometimes, even from Nanaboozhoo.

By this I mean not everything tattered is ruined.

ii.
They believe I was built of equations for gain.
(This poem is not an anthem.)

We still follow picto-spirits,
animal tracks, and seed paths:

Not all of our tools have price tags.

Not all of our safeguards are weapons

You will not find wild game in our lexicon.

Ask yourself—are we the meat they covet?

Find out more about this poem, and this poet.

Friday Poem

As Girl

Annie Wenstrup

At six being a girl meant Tinkerbell
nail polish and pointed, pink Barbie shoes.
Sequined fairy wands and slippers that fell
off my feet when I ran. Outside the blue
sky a backdrop for green grass, the sweet
gum tree that was home base. Everything caught
my eye and sparkled. Rain-freshened earthworms,
armored rollie-pollies, and firefly dots.
At night the television played the news.
Its cyclopean eye returned my stare.
The goat-like pupil reflected a parade
of women and girls like ewes. Fair
and lovely. I thought they were adored.
Later, I was not a girl anymore.¹

^{1. Stardate 2373, Earthdate 12.25.2021: I watch the crew stand on deck and chart a course around
the asteroid. I want Roddenberrian optimism, but I worry that one of us misunderstands a
time-paradox. I worry one of us misunderstands humanoids.}

^{The rerun ends and another documentary begins. Onscreen
a model James Webb unfolds its mirrors}

^{like petals}

A Poem For Thursday

Ars Poetica

Kenyatta Rogers

^{After Amiri Baraka and Stefania Gomez}

Poems are bullshit unless they are broken
like a horse, like a dog kicked in the ribs,
Like your favorite toy that’s missing an arm.

Love can make you feel used.
I want the poem that limps back to me.
Poems should hurt like love,
like ice water on your teeth
like a massage to smooth out a cramped muscle.

Give me the poem that’s like leather.
Give me the poem that smells like gasoline.
I want a poem that is a warning,
a poem that makes me check to see
if I left the shotgun by the door,
a poem that’s a runny nose, a sneeze, a poem
that’s the moment the sky turns green.

I hope you check out more about this poem, and the poet.

I like Nan Mykel’s presentation of Things

POST ELECTION Poem

Not a happy camper

Yesterday morning after not sleeping all night I wiped the hard drives and reinstall Windows from an old version of Windows 10 I have. One computer, the XPS which I just added 64 GB of ram to, seemed to be going wonderful, with no hiccups or problems. Sadly the Inspiron computer just wouldn’t install windows or other programs correctly. So last night I went to bed about 9 pm. The XPS seemed ready for finial steps. That was last night when I shut them all down.

However this morning when I went to start the computers, the XPS refused to start windows. The computer started and the bios would work but windows wouldn’t start. It seems something was preventing the boot manger from working. Even trying to reinstall windows wouldn’t let the boot manager start. In fact when I install a new version of windows and I delete the partition set up by the last installation. However it was not deleting them and as soon as I tried to reinstall the partitions would reappear. Well I was not out of tricks yet. I pulled out another older version of Windows 10 and partitioned the C drive. I could have done it with the same USB Windows install stick I had been using but I worried if there was a problem with that USB stick software. Then installed the even older version of Windows. Then I took the newer version and repeated that. Then spent an hour setting up settings. However after spending the morning doing updates and even installing some licensed programs which I do at the last as some of them have a limit to how many times they can be installed. The full stop hard wall happened that screwed everything I had done on both computers.

Well shit and damn. I have a keyboard and mouse that works on three different devices so I have my keyboard set to each computer and my phone. My mouse I set the third device to what ever third device I am working on. But during all this I couldn’t get the flow system from the company to work. That moves the mouse from monitor / computer by going to the edge of the monitor so that I had to manually change the computer via a button on the bottom of the mouse. That meant I had to pick up the mouse and use the button every time I switched computers. That is not something I can keep doing. I race between computers hundreds of times an hour. So I sat here and thought. Each computer I dumped and reloaded and did the updates for hours over the last several days. I figured out a workaround. Since I had already done clean installs, I went into settings, to recovery and set both computers to “recover Windows from the cloud”, that would reset settings that were preventing my programs from working.

Yes, yes, yes! Well it worked. It is 3 pm and I am sitting here typing on the blogging computer and watching Sam Seder on the other. Once the recovery was done I installed the Logitech program for the mouse / keyboard which worked fine. Then I installed the Norton antivirus malware, then installed my VPN, Nordvpn with its anti-malware, advance browser protection, and ad and tracker prevention. So far everything is working grand.

I am on day three with 6 hours sleep. I stopped eating yesterday morning. Yes I am tired, yes I got sick to my stomach this morning. Yes my blood sugar got too low and I had to take glucose tablets. But when I am focused on a problem food and sleep wait until I get it all fixed. So all I have to do today is install all my licensed programs and clean the computers up.

One last thing. Several days ago an elderly lady I gave a printer to because she is poor and did not have one. It is a nice brother printer that in its day was expensive but I had bought a new one and it was in my hoarder closet of electrical parts / equipment gathering dust. The printer’s computer was in error mode with an unable to clean error. Sadly that is part of the built-in obsolescence of our for-profit businesses. The error is caused due to the sponge that the print head uses to clean itself after use so ink doesn’t run all over the desk and the floor. Since they don’t bother to put a sensor in the sponge it is much easier (cheaper) for manufactures to simply put in a number of pages that will shut the machine down. Once you get to that number the “brain” in the printer assumes the sponge is full. If you know the magical steps and the correct numbers to input, you can clear the number of pages back to zero and your printer works again. And tech people can charge you big money for doing this. Sadly I did not like that game years ago and even as poor as Ron and I are, I only took donations for my skills as a technician.

So either to your joy or bad disappointment after 3 days and 6 hours of sleep and only two meals even as Ron threatened to force feed me, I am back online with my computers fully running. Oh during the time I worked on the two main computers I had the big 55 inch TV in my office on the wonderful swing arm Ron mounted running off my Xbox One and a small barely able to function laptop that I used to write most of this. Hugs and loves to all. Scottie

Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: ‘Make democracy great again’

By: Sherman Smith – November 18, 2024 1:45 pm

Eric Meyer delivers remarks during the Kansas Press Association Hall of Fame ceremony on Nov. 15, 2024, in Topeka.

Eric Meyer delivers advice to journalists in a speech at the Kansas Press Association Hall of Fame ceremony on Nov. 15, 2024, in Topeka. (Evert Nelson for Kansas Press Association)

Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: ‘Make democracy great again’

TOPEKA — The editor of the Kansas newspaper raided by police last year has a message for journalists struggling with their sense of purpose.

Go on the offensive.

Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record, delivered remarks Friday as he was inducted alongside his mother, Joan, into the Kansas Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame.

“I think this is a time when we have to establish for the people of this country the fact that we are important, that we have things that we can tell them that they will want to know, that they will want to change their positions about,” Meyer said.

He added, in a nod to the results of the presidential election: “Let’s not make America great again. Let’s make democracy great again.”

Police raided the Marion County Record newsroom and the home where Meyer lived with his mother in August 2023 under the false pretense that journalists had committed a crime by looking up a public record. Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old co-owner whose profane clash with police officers was captured on camera, died a day after the raid from stress-induced cardiac arrest. The raid spawned five civil lawsuits and a criminal charge against the police chief who led the attack on a free press.

Meyer said he is “an odd duck” because he retired to run a newspaper, rather than retire from it. He returned to Kansas during the COVID-19 pandemic to take over the publication his parents had operated for decades. After teaching journalism for 20 years at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Meyer wanted to practice what he had been preaching — that journalism is still vital. (snip-MORE)

Midweek Poetry

Personal Poem Esther Belin

When I walk around downtown Durango
I sometimes find myself searching for the location
Of shops and restaurants no longer there

With quiet intention, I will walk past familiar places:
Carver’s, Brown’s Shoe, Maria’s Bookshop

When in deep thought, I walk into the Animas
Chocolate Company – and like the numerous times
Before, the rows of truffles within the case

Deeply absorb me – the chocolatier’s artistry of
Small batch truffles, neatly arranged

Multi-colored, diversely shaped, shiny speckled &
smooth surfaced, gold dusted, nut-layered
globes rotate into my thoughts, a lasso spiraling

my focus like a funnel, like a warm caress leading me
by the hand, a lover’s scent lingering in the air

I do not buy a tray of truffles, nor an Americano coffee,
or any discounted chocolate tucked in the bin
by the east wall – rather I deeply absorb into

The something missing from this morning – the lingered
Yearning, the inability to coax last night’s thoughts:

Come forth & sing! Strands of hair beneath my pillow
Lost (or loose among) – inventoried in last month’s
Balance sheet – Did I?

O Asphyxiation – how You applaud My lapses
The lapping of consummating downtown walks

This evening there is a ruckus on Main St.
I lift my head, and see Nancy who just came from
The Pride event at the 11th St. Station

She’s covered with rainbow hearts &
We split one down the middle and pose

Click
Click
Click again

The goofiness, the anointing of laughter, the
Hug in broad daylight on Main St. in this

Mountain desert, tourist-tangled, tousled about
Like miners searching for a Mother-lode-of-
Gold town, the place I call home

More about this poem and this poet.

Tuesday Poem

Amber McCrary

Stories

You are a Diné woman
A cosmic energy of earth and sky
Nihimá Nahasdzáán
Azhé’é Diyiní

Winter is over
So, we put our stories in the drawer
Then we take them out for the next winter

It is said stories are only told in the winter
So, the bears and snakes do not hear them

My father is not a traditional man
But he grew up as a traditional ashkii yázhí
He speaks the tongue of the sky and earth

of our people
He knows the ways of our land
But denies it all

One day I tell him
about watching coyote and lizard
stories as a young girl in boarding school
in my Navajo culture class

I tell him excitedly how the videos are now on youtube
but I still don’t understand them
because the videos are only in Navajo

I show him the cute coyote and lizard video
in hopes he will translate for me
He stops me the first ten seconds in
And tells me I shouldn’t watch it

Not because he doesn’t believe in cultural preservation
We are only supposed to watch and tell those stories during the winter, he says
Ohhhhhh, I say as I close the app

All the years my dad talks down on our traditions
I find it interesting, he still abides by the way of the seasons
because he knows snake and bear might hear

Or maybe he said it for other reasons

More about this poem and this poet here.

FBI: Text Messages Target LGBTQs For “Re-Education”

FBI: Text Messages Target LGBTQs For “Re-Education”

November 16, 2024 LGBT News, Trump cultists

Via press release from the FBI:

The FBI is aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to African American and Black communities around the country and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter.

The reports are not identical and vary in their specific language, but many say the recipient has been selected to pick cotton on a plantation.

The text message recipients have now expanded to high school students, as well as both the Hispanic and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Some recipients reported being told they were selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp. The messages have also been reported as being received via email communication.

Although we have not received reports of violent acts stemming from these offensive messages, we are evaluating all reported incidents and engaging with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

We are also sharing information with our law enforcement partners and community, academia, and faith leaders.

Read the full press release. Re-education = ex-gay torture.

FBI Statement Regarding Offensive Text Messageshttps://t.co/osB87UnCOx
— FBI (@FBI) November 15, 2024

A week after cellphone users across the U.S. reported racist text messages, members of the Hispanic and LGBTQ communities are now receiving text messages saying they have been selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp, the FBI said. https://t.co/m94niQbu3H
— ABC News (@ABC) November 16, 2024

Monday’s Poem

(Someone must have wished for Summer before it’s even Winter?)

Sufficient

Ina Coolbrith

Citron, pomegranate,
Apricot, and peach,
Flutter of apple-blows
Whiter than the snow,
Filling the silence
With their leafy speech,
Budding and blooming
Down row after row.

Breaths of blown spices,
Which the meadows yield,
Blossoms broad-petaled,
Starry buds and small;
Gold of the hill-sides,
Purple of the field,
Waft to my nostrils
Their fragrance, one and all.

Birds in the tree-tops,
Birds that fill the air,
Trilling, piping, singing,
In their merry moods, —
Gold wing and brown wing,
Flitting here and here,
To the coo and chirrup
Of their downy broods.

What grace has summer
Better that can suit?
What gift can autumn
Bring us more to please?
Red of blown roses,
Mellow tints of fruit,
Never can be fairer,
Sweeter than are these.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 17, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

More about this poem, and this poet on the page.