Worth fighting for

Two things form the bedrock of any open society—freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.
~Salman Rushdie

Happy Poetry Friday! Black poets with poems for our times today. We have community support from Bianca Lynne Spriggs, encouragement from Amanda Gorman, resilience/defiance from Lucille Clifton, the value of education from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and a reality check from Gwendolyn Brooks.

Sisters, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Some days I just can't look away from the news. It's like someone I love is ill and I am keeping a bedside vigil. But it's rough, and I definitely need to find a healthy balance.* Today I've had a deep dive into poetry and that has been refreshing, no matter the topic.

It doesn't take very much attention to notice that a man who says "let's celebrate pediatric cancer survivors" while cancelling funding for pediatric cancer research is not a truthteller. His supporters believe him anyway. Here's Gwendolyn Brooks with "truth":

truth
by Gwendolyn Brooks

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

****************************

Earthrise
by Amanda Gorman

For it is our hope that implores us, at our uncompromising core,
To keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for.

read the rest here

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won’t you celebrate with me
by Lucille Clifton

my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

read the rest here

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Learning to Read
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin’ their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge did’nt agree with slavery—
’Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal
A little from the book.

read the rest here

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To the woman I saw today who wept in her car
by Bianca Lynne Spriggs

Woman,
I know you.
I know how that thing
when left unattended
will show up as a typhoon
at your front door
demanding to be let in
or it will take
the whole damn house with it.

I know this place too.
I get it.

read the rest here

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My son Dash is arriving today to join us for my birthday celebrations. Looking forward to putting down my concerns for a bit!

* If you like Key and Peele, these make me laugh. (I know LaShawn is a lot, but I was the sort of person to have themed days when my kids were growing up, haha!)

Reflections on the Teche has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Margaret!

Saorsa

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.
~Sydney J. Harris

I started knitting last November, not long after the election. I am not expecting to be "good" at it-- I just like to do it because it calms me down. The other day, as I was picking up my "therapy scarf," a video popped up about AOC knitting. [Some people thought she shouldn't be knitting (???) and another person was coming to her defense.]

The name of this post means "Freedom" in Gaidhlig (Scottish Gaelic). Freedom to relax how you want, freedom to think outside the lines.

For Art Thursday, nontraditional knitting:

Social Knitwork
Friedenauer Brücke, Berlin-Schöneberg, Deutschland

Home-knitted protective cover for old tractor
by Beiarn Handicraft Society, Beiarn, Nordland, Norway.
photo by Frankemann

Ik en mijn Brei Art bike Boelenslaan
Baykedevries

Knitted egg cozies in blue and yellow demonstrate for peace in Ukraine
Haeferl

The Swabian Alb as seen across the Wurmlingen Chappel and the Rammert
Heidrun Liegmann (Knitter)
Rainer Halama

Knitted graffiti in Kiryat Hamelacha
by Liza Mamali
photo by Nizzan Cohen

Ain't gonna play

It is not our diversity which divides us; it is not our ethnicity, or religion or culture that divides us. Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not.
~Nelson Mandela

Apartheid has been coming up more lately because of the influence in our government of a white man from South Africa who grew up under the apartheid system. How was he influenced by apartheid? I don't know, did it give him the urge to remove all mentions of Black people from everything?

Here's a catchy song from the '80s with a truly impressive bunch of folks in it. Pat Benatar! Darlene Love! Miles Davis! See who you spot. (There's a list below.)




"In 1985, Steven Van Zandt, along with Arthur Baker, Hart Perry, and Danny Schechter, formed Artists United Against Apartheid and Van Zandt would write “Sun City,” an anthemic Rock/Hip Hop/R&B song protesting the Apartheid system symbolized by the South African resort, Sun City. Over 50 artists including Gil Scott-Heron, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Grandmaster Melle Mel, George Clinton, Run DMC, Jimmy Cliff, Ruben Blades, Pat Benatar, Herbie Hancock, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone, Peter Gabriel, Bob Geldof, Clarence Clemons, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Darlene Love, Bobby Womack, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, The Fat Boys, Jackson Browne, Peter Wolf, Bonnie Raitt, Hall & Oates, Big Youth, Michael Monroe, Stiv Bators, Peter Garrett, Ron Carter, Ray Barretto, Nona Hendryx, and Miles Davis."

The green fuse

The landscape looks different from every blade of grass.
~Marty Rubin

Happy Poetry Friday! Today I have a poem I read on Grateful Living.

photo by Nicholas A. Tonelli

Belonging
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And if it’s true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field.
Sometimes I feel it,
the green fuse that ignites us,
the wild thrum that unites us,
an inner hum that reminds us
of our shared humanity.
Just as thirty-five trillion
red blood cells join in one body
to become one blood.
Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand
notes make up one symphony.
Alone as we are, our small voices
weave into the one big conversation.
Our actions are essential
to the one infinite story of what it is
to be alive. When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand communion
of those who sometimes feel alone—
we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world.

*****************

I'm guessing everyone has heard about the economic boycott tomorrow (Friday)? I'm looking forward to not spending any money.

Dare to Care has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Denise!

P.S. How appalling is it to be allied with Russia? Utterly.

Chess knights

The game is so full of events, there is such a variety of turns in it, the fortune of it is so subject to sudden vicissitudes, and one so frequently, after long contemplation, discovers the means of extricating one's self from a supposed insurmountable difficulty, that one is encouraged to continue the contest to the last, in hopes of victory by our own skill, or, at least, of giving a stalemate, by the negligence of our adversary.
~Benjamin Franklin

For Art Thursday, chess knights. I grew up thinking of them as the horses, but I also like these pieces which include the rider:

The Lewis Chessmen, probably made in Norway, about AD 1150-1200
Found on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
photo by Rob Roy

Chess Figure, 12th to 16th century
photo by Andreas Praefcke
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My heart's a drummer

It's funny...as I get older, I'm reverting to my roots. I want to plant stuff.
~Melissa McCarthy

Before we have songs for Music Monday, does anybody need emotional care?
Plant Care for Emotional Care: Grounding Techniques for Anxiety Using the Garden from Garden Therapy

Eva Noblezada's voice!



For a more serious song, here are two versions of a catchy anti-Nazi tune from Chumbawamba: an a cappella cover and Chumbawamba live.

Do you hear the people sing, for Ukraine

Visual Communication

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.
~Banksy

Graffiti is permitted in the Leake St Tunnel, London.
Photo by Dmitry Djouce

Happy Poetry Friday! I've got two poems for you today. The first one is mine and has a side story. I'm doing a Coursera poetry class with Denise (called Sharpened Visions) and one of the prompts was to take the rhymes from someone else's poem and use them in the same order. I picked Longfellow's The Arrow and the Song.

At first I had trouble coming up with a poem because his was stuck in my head. I had to think of a very different topic to send me off in another direction. I picked graffiti, which must have come to mind because I am going to be making graffiti for my birthday in a couple of weeks. (Although this is a lawless age, mine will be law-abiding, never fear.)

Rap it, as best you can:

GRAFFITI

Spray paint shakes, shoots through the air--
A word from a can freed to go where
It lands on a wall and gives in-sight--
Not every wall catches words in-flight.

Go outside, breathe unplugged air--
What you seek finds you out there.
Start out weak and wrap up strong,
Listen up hard for a skeleton song--

That's all you need to sprout a mighty oak--
The bones, the seeds, your acorn unbroke.
It's not like the end is even the end--
The painted-over wall is still your friend.

***********

Our second poem is by Sophia Thakur:



Laura Purdie Salas has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Laura!