The Perfidy Report

Day 329: Gag Order (Seven Words)

Hard to talk about 
the effects of 
poverty, old age, and disability
or the state of the nation
under Trumpacabra
and his minions
when you can’t say the word
Vulnerable.

Hard to talk about 
either the need for Social Security
(though it’s not one, dammit. We
paid for it.)
or the attitude of 
too many rich folks
when you can’t say the word
Entitlement.

Hard to revel in 
the beauty of who we are
and demand more variety
in representation everywhere
when you can’t say the word
Diversity.

Hard to recognize, let alone
make someone
welcome in the world
when the way they
look at their own body
can’t be spoken: 
Transgender.

Hard to warn women
about the effects of Zika
or the myriad other dangers
to life in her womb
when you can’t say the word
Fetus, 
and harder still to choose
to end a pregnancy
when every stage of growth
is a baby.

And all too easy
to delegitimize the work
of researchers everywhere
who make your greedy actions 
and false morals 
inconveniently stupid,
and to promote your own
“alternative facts,”
when we can’t use the words 
Evidence-based or 
Science-based.

English has almost a half million words
and synonyms for nearly everything.
It is the glory of our multi-ethnic
hybrid language, its sources
Germanic, Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon,
terms stolen from nearly every tongue
in existence.
They fall in an out of usage
all the time, new ones added
to increase our word-hoard,
each one with its own truth,
its own power
no government can erase.
Use the ones now forbidden
or lose your voice
entire.

–December 15, 2017

Save the Internet!

Day 268: This Machine Kills

This is a couple of days late because it originally went to my personal wall, sparked by the death of my friend and colleague, Miranda Merklein, who was an adjunct, organizer, badass, and shitkicker who took no prisoners. And now she's gone. this is for her.

 

 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

 

 “There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that … you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop!”

 

–Mario Savio

 

This machine kills women

with coathangers and bitter herbs and

fists to the belly

with bottles and dishes upside the head

with poverty and rape

with wealth and rape

with rape and overdoses of

Hey baby, you should smile

and Hey baby, gimme your number

and not a doctor in sight

of their bank account balance

not a man in sight

who will stop it

 

This machine kills children

with the acrid smell of roaches

and fumes of chemicals

in underfunded hospitals and

overcrowded schools

and unsafe neighborhoods

by taking all hope of anything better

away

and blaming them

for being less than perfect

for being Black

or not-white of some other kind

or female

or without citizen-parents

or without papers of their own

because it thinks they

should earn their keep

once they’re born

 

This machine killed my friend Miranda

with lies about the American Dream

and the Yellow Brick Road

of education

with dangled carrots of a good job

just out of reach

with a back-breaking load of irredeemable debt

and a cohort of colleagues

in exactly the same boat

unable to help

—by first taking her job

then her home

then her animals

sending her daughter into the army

in desperation

dragging her across the country

from one coast to the other

with more lies

and discarding her

like so much snot-filled tissue

 

This machine kills anyone

not rich enough

to help themselves

unlucky enough

to suffer fire flood hurricane

cancer crippling or preexisting conditions

foolish enough

to stand up

against it

 

Kill it

before it kills us all

 

–October 14, 2017

Day 267: Emperors’ New Clothes

“We are going to bury them with our words.” –Rebecca Solnit

 

First, the beloved Father, Cosby,

not convicted despite our testimony,

image overcoming his own admissions.

Then the not-so-beloved fuhrer, SCROTUS,

who also admits

he likes assaulting women,

thinks he has that right, and

whose sychophants

threatened the one brave enough

to bring him to judgement,

until it’s she who had to run,

while he’s handed the presidency.

Now Weinstein, Emperor of Entertainment,

Friend-of-Hilary and Democrats,

rapist and harasser of actresses,

brought low at last,

with an avalanche of voices

of women who became

more powerful themselves

by grinning and bearing it

no more.

 

Just the most visible of despoilers,

the most powerful and public.

They sit in every boardroom,

every boss’s office,

every professor’s lab and classroom.

What? No! Not me! you say?

Yet they walk through your world,

stripped bare of humanity, decency, respect

for others, kindness, empathy

—unchallenged, admired

by the Nice Guys, the Good Guys, the Decent Guys.

 

You are none of those things

and just as naked

of humanity

if you are silent.

Speak up

or fall with them.

 

–October 13, 2017

Day 75: Chewing Our Own Leg Off

Look, there's no one right way.

There's no orthodoxy of protest

or engagement or dissent.

Not everyone has the strength,

the chutzpah, the know-how,

the wherewithal, the whatever

to do what the rigid seem to think

should be done.

Children won’t raise themselves.

Meals don’t get put on the table

by magic.

Old bodies need some coddling.

Don't belittle anyone's effort.

We are each of us

just one small person.

But collectively—

in our marching writing teaching agitating organizing

—we're a loud and angry rabble

that makes bad leaders tremble.

 

No one

can pass the purity test

of ideological theory,

and if we cling to that alone

we risk killing others

for mere ideals.

That expectation

is no better than our enemies

and we tear each other apart with it.

Stop chewing your own leg off.

The trap you’re trying to escape

is in part

of your own making.

 

–Harlem, New York, 12 April 2017

Day 31: What Matters

What matters to us
are all the things you fear:
whatever might mock you,
whatever you don’t understand,
whatever is not explicitly about money
            or your penis,
whatever shames your behavior,
whatever contradicts you,
whatever denies you
what you want
            whether others want it
            or not:

Women having the right
to say “fuck off” to you
and your grabby hands and laws.
Artists making art
you don’t understand.
The free practice of a religion
you don’t subscribe to
or no religion at all.
Welcoming arms at the borders
for those fleeing in fear
or just wanting another chance.
Wilderness uncolonized by
golf courses and hotels.
The free exchange of ideas.
The preeminence of facts.
Drugs that don’t bankrupt
or maim us.
An education
that doesn’t leave us enslaved
to banks or corporations
for the rest of our lives,
and teaches us to question everything,
especially authority,
especially your authority.
Air and water
that don’t poison us.
A climate that won’t kill us.
A future for those
not born yet.

–President’s Day, 2017, Harlem, NY

Posting for the following meme:

From Linda Kennedy via Marcia Morgan.

I would like to start a little ripple of resistance today. Tomorrow is February 20th, and Mr. Trump will have been in office for one month.

#NotMyPresidentsDay

I would like people to show what really matters to them: the arts, the environment, their family, their immigrant neighbors, healthcare. Share a picture tomorrow. Heck share it today!

Tomorrow I am hiking in a forest while I still can. I am going to post a picture with the hashtag above and #ThisIsWhatMattersToMeMrTrump

I would like to encourage us all to show, on President's Day, what is really important to US for those running our country.

 

Day 25: Thuggery

“One bullet stops a lot of thuggery.”
–Dan Adamini, secretary of the Marquette County, Michigan, GOP, calling for "another Kent State" for protesters

But whose, sir?

If we shout down
the verbal thuggery
of a white immigrant
who thinks he belongs here
but others don’t,
are we the thugs, then?
Is our violence, which leaves him
shaken but not stirred,
somehow worse,
than stirring others to ropes
and guns, fists and knives?
Is a bullet in my brain
for saying we are all one
better than
tea tossed into the harbor
and a small fire
that hurt no one?
Do you hear yourself?
How is it calling for
“an end to violence”
to propose shooting someone
for demanding that bigots
shut the hell up?

Who is the thug here, sir?
Who is the American?

–February 15th, 2017, Harlem, New York

Day 23: Preaching and the Choir

A white man stands in a public square
and starts to make a “statement”
about Black people.
A Black man
gets right up in his face and roars
“No!” in a long, sustained note,
drowning him out
until the racist
gives up, shuts up.

That one Black man
struck the note for us.
Pick it up.
Harmonize. Riff. Compose inventions.
Take it off into a wild solo
of indignation,
then bring it back home
to that one word of collective resistance.

We are a vast choir of righteous voices.
If a few of us pause to breathe, it's all good.
The “No!”—like an “Om”—
will continue
until the world rings with it
like a great bell
tolling “Victory!”

February 12, 2017, Harlem, New York

Day 20: The Long View

You know we’re going to lose
at least at first.
The system is already entrenched,
the corridors of power
full of irritating, grasping, little
empire builders
whose duty they feel it is
to silence uppity women and folks of all colors
not their own,
who see this moment as
their opportunity
to seize power.

Let them have it.

First, we will let them wallow
a bit, while we find our weapons
and let our leaders
find themselves,
until we have plans,
maps, contingencies accounted for.
For a while, they will seem
invincible.
There were will be crowing
and barnyard strutting.
This is the last gasp
of the Old White Men.
Let them enjoy it.

But not for too long.
Once we’ve gathered our strength
and our millions,
we will roll over them,
inevitable as weather,
unstoppable as the deluge,
a tide of women owning their own bodies,
Black bodies unafraid to walk by a cop,
brown bodies bringing their families
to a better place, all the beautiful
spectrum of people
being their bad selves,
covering for each other
when life gets tough,
making sure we all have
what a whole human life deserves,
standing up for one another,
making the world
how it ought to be.

–February 9, 2017, Harlem, New York

Day 19: Step Up

No one is going to save you.

Stop waiting for orders
and start giving them instead.
“Not just” trumps “not legal.”
Step forward
raise your hand
not in question 
but in a fist.
Take up whatever banner you choose
but take one
and march for as long as you can.
Acknowledge no impediment
but your own physical limitations,
Then take up the pen
which is already mightier
than the delusional representatives
who think they are our
overlords or commanders.
The Continental Army were only rabble
like you.

We are millions
Not minions.

–February 8, 2017, Harlem, New York