When We'll All Go Together

Channel Islands

And I will build my love a tower
At the foot of yonder mountain
And visit by the hour
From a lonely wooden tower

Van Morrison, from Purple Heather

That summer when I was still a girl, more offering than sacrifice, the boy I loved lived in an apartment in a suburb called Druid Hills. Putty colored buildings, mosquito-thick air, Georgia green, no Celtic magicians but a couch in a room where I lay while he took a shower, the sound of water behind the summertime has gone and the leaves are gently turning. I've always loved that song, will you go and we'll all go together. Solitude, the intense loneliness of new love, the piano chords singing of ends and gos.

This weekend I had carnival dreams. I kicked up my legs, hung upside down and swirled breath in my throat then out and over the tops of bars into sky. I slept. He said, You need this sleep. You are safe to sleep and I have, I had no memory of anyone ever saying that to me. You need this sleep. You are safe to sleep. Everything.






What does Drumpf mean when he asks to make America great again? What do any of them mean -- the man in the silly hat with the big bill, the couple in the Cadillac in the parking lot of the Harris Teeter in South Carolina with the semper fi and the sign:

M A K E  A M E R I C A  G R E A T  A G A I N.

Again is the operative word, I think, or maybe it's Make, yet neither seems right and much less left.


Back from a weekend away, I was shoving my small suitcase behind a chair in my room this morning, and a little book, a pamphlet, really, fell out of the bookshelf by the chair, fell out and lay at my feet. Let America Be America Again and Other Poems by Langston Hughes with a preface by Senator John Kerry.  I think I bought it when Kerry ran for President, when he called for inclusivity. That election, twelve years ago, seems almost quaint now. The book has a navy paper cover with silver type. Round water stains spot many of the pages, one dripping, bleeding onto the titular poem. Hughes wrote the poem in 1938.

Here's a bit of it with a link to read the rest:



Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!


Read the rest here

In this crazy world, it's good to know that there are still people who

believe they will bring the needy to Jesus, even on Hollywood Blvd in the middle of a 90 degree afternoon.



Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

Of Thee I Sing

Someone is always grumpy on the fourth of Juuuuuuuuuly. 

It might be hereditary.

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

The Penultimate Stage of Conservatorship

The Conservatee

I say cool, and dig all jive,

That's the way I stay alive.

My motto,

as I live and learn,

is

Dig and be dug,

In return.

Langston Hughes

We had a visit today from a representative of our Regional Center who is required to file a recommendation with the court regarding our petition to gain guardianship of Sophie, now that she is eighteen years old. The visit went as smoothly as one would hope, given that we discussed what is called Powers Sought and the Corresponding Rights to be Limited. In the interest of educating readers, particularly those who will go through this process when their own child comes of age, here are the powers sought:

1. The power to fix the residence of the conservatee.
2. The power to consent or to withhold consent to medical treatment and to make decisions concerning the medical treatment of the conservatee.
3. The power to contract for the conservatee.
4. The power to access confidential records and papers of the conservatee.
5. The power to make decisions concerning the education/work programs of the conservatee.
6. The power to make decisions regarding the conservatee's social and sexual relationships and contacts.
7. The power to consent to marry for the conservatee.

There are few words to describe what was, at best, a pleasant conversation with the representative. The feeling I get when these sorts of things transpire is at once obliterating and grounding. 

In a couple of weeks, The Husband and I will complete this process and appear in front of a Judge with Sophie. 

Two Pictures and Two Poems

To converse with the greats

To converse with the greats
by trying their blindfolds on;
to correspond with great books
by rewriting them;
to edit holy edicts,
and at the midnight hour
to talk with the clock by tapping on a wall
is the solitary confinement of the universe.

Vera Pavlova

Catch

Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail
Curved
Beneath his arm.

Being a fisher boy,
He'd found a fish
To carry --
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry

Langston Hughes

Poem in Your Pocket

Today is Poem in Your Pocket day, and I'll hold a copy of Langston Hughes Catch this year. If someone asks, I'll pull it out and read it aloud; otherwise, it'll sit there and sing itself.

CATCH

Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail
Curved 
Beneath his arm


Being a fisher boy,
He'd found a fish
To carry --
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry.


Langston Hughes

A poorly spelled yet astounding poem

My son, Oliver, is nine years old and struggles mightily with reading and writing. He was recently diagnosed with a learning disability, and when I sat at his IEP,  I thought to myself Really? I'm at an IEP with another child? Don't I get a pass? Evidently not, and I can attest to many agonizing moments with The Big O as we struggle together with his homework. The learning issues, combined with a personality that is about as far from meek and mild as one can get, and my own often teetering on the edge lack of patience make for blazing fires and shouts and breakdowns. The drama! The drama!

So, as I was folding laundry in my room last night, Oliver walked in with his spiral notebook and read this poem to me.

A Dream

by Oliver 

A dream isn't just anything

It is like a spirit deep down in our soul

Like a black hole waiting to be opened

like flowing water trying to escape

pushing

pushing

then 

Boom

it opens

 I thought, for a moment, that he had copied it from somewhere and I asked him where he'd heard it. 

I wrote it, Mom! he said. It's my homework.**  And he showed me the page in his notebook that I've copied above. 

I know, you can't read it, he said, I'm a terrible speller.

I felt like crying when he read it to me again. Not because I had doubted him but because I just felt overwhelmed by him and his presence -- his strange and wild person-hood. The drama! The drama! The love. I knelt beside him and put my hands on his shoulders. He let me pull him into a hug as I exclaimed over the beauty of what he'd written and then agreed to show it to all of you.

**He is currently working on memorizing a Langston Hughes poem called A Dream Deferred and the assignment was to write a poem in that style. When I looked up the Hughes poem, I half-expected to see Oliver's poem, verbatim, or at least some of the words plagiarized. I found nothing. Oliver told me that he liked the way the poet compared things. I'm still amazed.