Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Remembering September 11, 2001



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Now playing: Bette Midler - From a Distance
via FoxyTunes   

It is September 10th 2008. My historical memories are seperated by what came before 9/11/2001 and after. Like no other time, the memory of what I was doing on that morning is so deeply burned into my consciousness,  it is burnished on me now like the the physical scars that mark my body.

Memories,

Responsibilities pressing:

First class of the semester sophomore poetry at Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson. We had started the class in my usual fashion, making a little music. We were just digging into the reading for the day, the first a piece by Ginsburg,talking about the poet's body being vulnerable to all manner of things.

We all were startled by the interruption of the PA the announcement of the first plane crashing, I watched the students some cried, some went to the office in a panic worried about parents who might have been near the crash, some were not really bothered, said that the monolithic America probably brought it upon herself, with all her shady deeds in the world. I remember feeling like the breath was knocked out of me as I looked into these kids faces, and knew that life as we knew it would be altered forever by those men that took so many lives.

The drive home was endless, lines of cars filled with people who were going no where fast. I remember moving through that weird, extremely painful, disembodied sense of non reality, while being force fed a new vocabulary - I kept telling myself and anyone who would listen - it wasn't supposed to be like this. 

Not after all we've been through as a country to gain and understand the value of independence and equality for all people and pursuing happiness. Granted we weren't quite where we needed to be yet,we'd made a lot of mistakes along the way, and there was still a lot to sort out as a culture but in the scheme of things - all this wasn't what I was thinking I'd grow old living with -

this celebrated new mediocrity
this President from the school of Running the Country for Dummies
this Dubya without a clue,
this thirst for war,
this new normal,
this hunt for Bin Ladin,
this extremist group Al Quiada,
this menacing jihad,
these roadside bombers
these suicidal sacrificial lambs,
this us and them,
this crew from Blackwater,
this innocent citizens targeted,
this acceptable civilian loss,
this grief bigger than most can bare,
this homeland security, this code orange -
this soldiers pulling down an effigy of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad,
this forgetting the first war for the glory of the second,
this wondering when Johnny will march home again,
this televising live the faces of their worst war dead,
this talk of insurgents, this talk of resolve,
this daily talk of resolve
this keeping war alive
this fighting terror,
this forgetting the needs of the nation's people
this loss of a truthful democracy, 
this fabricating new things to fear.

Like I said I didn't think it would be like this, I was looking forward to the New Age of cultural and technological evolution, looking forward to learning some new ways to play out my role on this stage of American Dreams, but since September 11, 2001, vI've been feeling a sense atrophy. While looking for the best, I more often than I would like see the worst. I think people have become so much more self absorbed since the intensity of the threat of harm to nation and person has grown/groan...

I recently met a couple from New York who were visiting in my area. The guy said in absolute astonishment to me that "everyone around her speaks and they're so nice. Where we live no one wants to look at you. They just keep on going." I felt sad for him and hopeful - yes people in my neck of the woods are pretty outgoing and those closer to my age and older seem to have a bit of an awareness that transcends mediocrity so because of that, I'll still keep looking for the best in folks and praying. 

There's so much sinking and swimming going on.
So much wishing and hoping - waiting to see -
holding breaths - picking up pieces -
trying to move forward- just holding on.

All Rights Reserved by Author


 

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Found

 

 

     

                                                            Photo by L.Joy Burke

 

Found

 

One black leather cell-phone holder

1 blue grocery bag with a buck

fifty in change inside

2 bicycles - 1 by an elm tree in the woods

1 abandoned by the trash fort,

1 pair of pink prescription spectacles

left on the parking lot of the market,

1 owner of a pair of lost pink specs.

 

1 twenty dollar bill in a yard

of an unknown neighbor,

2 illegal green cardboard

turtle firework fountains,

1 palm sized red heart

connected by a white button

to a ragged rectangle of blue felt.

 

1 empty brown nylon backpack

I put it back, 1 Junior ROTC

female’s cover also returned,

1 two inch tall plastic red Elmo,

1 two inch long black saw toothed knife,

2 fist-sized white, stuffed bears -

the first on the sidewalk on the way

to a kin’s funeral – the second

shortly after a car ran over the first.

 

1 large black rubber flashlight.

1 ball peen hammer perched

on the carburetor of my teal Escort,

1 magnetic pointer resting on a

ledge under the hood of

my champagne Legacy,

1 live white Persian kitten

dangling from under the engine

of a white Cadillac Seville,  

paused at a red light in the

midst of a rush filled intersection.

 

4 florescent green tennis balls,

2 smudged autographed baseballs,

1 clear round super ball, it

bounced back into oblivion,

1 catcher’s mitt - I left it

2 red practice jerseys, also left behind,

1 new black Under-Armour cap,

1000 pieces of broken glass.

 

1 blue suede pouch,

1 polished black stone

14 fried chicken bones,

1 soft macramé necklace

1 tattered white, blue and red

“Made in China” American flag,

1 grey and white pet cat –

Blithe.

 

1 fledgling blue jay

stayed for 4 days

ate from my hand

remembered how to preen

how to forage, how

to perch and how to 

squak "set me free."

 

Time.

 

July 16, 2008

Revised August 17, 2008

 

All Rights Reserved by Linda Joy Burke.

 

 

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Waiting for the Dawn

                 

Photos by Linda Joy Burke

These days I wake just after dawn, my happy dog eager to get on with the new day, in pre bark mode, she paws my arm, licks my nose, growls her request that I finish with my rest. She takes no heed to my protesting that I was never a morning person. She doesn't care that I'm used to staying up til the wee hours with the best of the world weary.  She doesn't care if I think I'm more profound writing alone in the middle of the night.

I have learned to love the clean slate of dawn as much as the deep stillness in the middle of the night.  I love the smell of a new day's air, before the transports start to role and people with their mindless urgencies spill out into the world, love hearing the delighted songs of birds calling their mates, love the sights of a wild fox slipping in and out of the cover of the underbrush, or a hawk hunting prey, love how my dog finds pleasure in every scent that she encounters even the stuff I find gross, love how she requires play, her bursts of exuberant energy so fundamentally joyful that whatever weakness I feel towards rising so early is transformed.

Transformation isn't always what it's cracked up to be though, you never know when you'll walk past the neighborhood middle school to see the latest graffiti -

I've never seen such admiration for a common garden tool coming from a contemporary suburban kid, makes you wonder what they're learning in that school.

                     

 

This is a photo taken in a drug free school zone. Actually this photo is from the grounds of the middle school, and the vodka and Jim Beam bottles have been in this same spot for months. I really do wonder what kids are learning these days about doing the right thing, instead of taking the easy way to the end result, just getting by on the least effort, or complaining that folks don't care anymore.

The impact of  the trashing of their environment has to have some profound long term affect on how they perceive the earth's value. In the blocks around this drug free school zone there are broken Heineken bottles littering the sidewalks and bike paths on the way to the schools, empty forties strewn in the woods, hard liquor bottles left in the fenced in area around the school's heating system.

Tiny plastic bags dot the football field and cases of Budweiser and Coors cans pile up in the surrounding woods. One day while I was walking my dog, I saw a guy picking up cans. I went up to him to thank him for picking up litter in the neighborhood. He told me he wasn't picking up litter, just the cans, he could sell the aluminum for money. I told him that I often picked up trash and recycled the cans and bottles.

I guess I was proud of my service to the community and was bragging a bit. He wasn't impressed though, instead he told me to leave the cans on the ground, so that he could collect them. I don't.  Then he told me how bad the neighborhood was, showed me a bowie knife that he had securely fastened to his belt, told me to read PS (a local free adzine) then I'd see how bad it was here where I lived,  alluded to the fact that he'd been threatened, said I should watch my back.

                         

 

 

 

All Rights Reserved by Author

                                  

 

Sunday, February 3, 2008


 

 

Tidal Wave

 

In the spring

I thought I knew everything

there was to know about

how earth loved sky.

 

I dreamed of living near an ocean beach

where I’d watch lapis waves caress

pristine shores.

 

My electronic reality

no longer a necessity,

 

my simple life spent dusting off

my pen, exercising my hand, finding  my

way back to my heart’s work.

 

My life fluid with poems sprouting

like nature’s seedlings, destined

to love the sky.

 

Her verdant energy

tested beyond

comprehension.

 

Nature’s imbalance erased

dreams once come true.

 

Inside earth’s womb

seedlings destined to love the sky wait.

I learn the patience of winter.

                                                 

               

 



Linda Joy Burke

 2007 All Rights Reserved by author.