Protecting tigers

From the Animal Legal Defense Fund: (and a poem from me): While the disturbing circumstances surrounding Tony the truck stop tiger have received enormous attention, there are an estimated 5,000 -- 10,000 additional captive tigers throughout the U.S. The majority of these big cats are classified by the federal government as "generic" tigers -- tigers that are not purebred and are not in the same classification as endangered tigers in zoos (Tony, for example, is a Siberian-Bengal mix). Most of these tigers are kept as exotic "pets" and are virtually unregulated by the federal government due to a 1998 United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) rule that exempted "generic" tigers from the permit and reporting requirements that normally apply to endangered species. Due to the current lack of regulation by the federal government, there is not an accurate count of how many thousands of these tigers are living in the country, or whether they live in potentially abusive -- and dangerous -- conditions.

After years of pressure by tiger advocates, the USFWS, on August 22, published a proposed rule that would eliminate this generic tiger exemption. Should it be adopted, all tigers in the country, regardless of their lineage, would be better tracked and regulated by the federal government. People who own these tigers would be required to report annually on the number of tigers they have in captivity and on activities involving the tigers. Until this information becomes available, there is only anecdotal knowledge about the extent and whereabouts of the tiger population in this country. Such critical information could play a vital role in advancing laws that acknowledge and protect these currently "invisible" animals.

The USFWS is accepting comments on this proposed change through September 21, 2011 and your help is crucially needed! Please submit a comment in support of the proposal to eliminate the exemption for "generic" tigers today. Your support will help demonstrate to the USFWS that Americans are deeply concerned about better protections and oversight for captive tigers.

tigers pace the golden cage

     (to tame is to embitter

dreaming deep of jungle days,

the reign of dapple summer.

when rarely I pursued you, man,

I smelled you as an equal.

now fiery hoop, your whip and chain

daily make you smaller.

dust rises from the circus floor;

a tiger coughs politely.

the red and empty human roar

hollows her heart and frightens.

bars are built by weaker men

     (to tame evokes compassion

bones too fragile to withstand

the tigers’ jaws are clapping.

tigers have no love of pain

but know the need of killing,

whether as captor or enslaved

the tigers could be willing.

stripes of yellow, stripes of steel:

survival throws a shadow

that vigils in the tigers’ hearts

and sniffs the air for wild.

truth is water in a pool

now still and growing clear.

when tigers next leap thru the hoop

they will not reappear.

Photo from Cliff1066's photostream at Flickr.

Waiting for shelter

This woman with her clothes
too small too short too thin
a decade out of style
holds her coat together
with a safety pin.  She smiles.
No wind no rain
at least two hours of sun remain
before the dark door opens
and she wears her chains.

Photo from Hadassah28's photostream at Flickr.

"Love Letter To Albuquerque Public Schools

My granddaughter's poem

It's so incredibly satisfying to me to have another poet in the family....my granddaughter is getting married at the end of the month and here's one snapshot of her thinking...

No, but really, I'm sorry if this insults you.

I'm sorry to insult you,

But I will not be a Mrs. Anything, but Chapin.

And we will not be Mr. and Mrs. Man and Wife You May Now Kiss The Bride 'Till Death Do You Part, Under God.

Missus Belongs-To-Owner, what was your maiden name?

I'm sorry to insult you,

But I have a legacy myself.

I'm not an adopted dog, name changed by new master.

I've got my story, not history.

I'd like to live and be remembered, not by my husband's given name

But mine, the one my mama gave me.

See, I grew to love myself first

And I learned myself by calling myself Chapin,

Melody Chapin.

So, sorry to insult you, but I can't let a man replace what I love about me

With what I love about him.

I do not cry in front of this family

I do not cry in front of this family
homeless with a baby
sitting in my office
waiting for a phone call which may never come
to save them

Instead when I step out back
for the brief sanity of trees and traffic
I see the pigeon that I've seen all day
and realize it has a broken wing.
I'm sorry for your injury,
I say to the pigeon,
I'll get you some water,
You are dead but you don't know it,
won't make it till winter
but today I can offer you
crumbs.

Leonard Nimoy captures Martin Espada

I don't usually get to the Arts section of the New York Times in the morning, but today a photo exhibit by Leonard Nimoy caught my eye: he has an exhibit at Mass MoCA in North Adams titles "Secret Selves," and as I scrolled through the photos, there was my favorite living poet, Martin Espada, and his son Clemente!

Martin says that when he was a kid, he wanted to be a gangster when he grew up.  I can't say that was an ambition of mine, but I and my cousins certainly played "Gangsters" a lot as a kid, and my gangster name was Sadie.

Check out the exhibit and also check out Katherine Gilbert-Espada's art page.  What a household!

Photo from Dreamsjung's photostream at Flickr.

Helmetless young man
texting on his bicycle
name: oblivion.

One tree at a time

We had a little tree growing in front of Arise last year, but one day, it was gone, cut down-- a casualty of the State St. Corridor renovation.  We were told that in the spring, we'd get another little tree-- not the same one, of course.  The ghost of our original little tree  lingered above the sidewalk-- and in my mind-- all winter.

This spring I watched trees and flowers being planted up and down State St.-- trees in the median strips, lavender bushes on the slope outside STCC's iron fence.  Then, one day a month ago, I came into work to discover that the previously grassy strip between the sidewalk and the curb had been paved with black tar.

Trees and grass everywhere I looked!-- in front of Burger King, the closed Kavanagh's building, the median strip-- but not in front of our little strip of storefronts, which house a Black-owned clothing alteration and tee-shirt shop, a Latino-owned recording studio and music store, a storefront evangelical church, a Vietnamese-owned nail salon, a Chinese restaurant, a Turkish-owned pizza shop-- and, of course, Arise.

"What are we, too ghetto to get grass and trees?" I asked myself-- and started my phone calls to get to the bottom of this story.  First I was told by the city that it was a state plan, and I'd have to get my question answered by one of several state employees.  No calls were returned over several days.  Then finally I was sent back to the city, to Dept. of Public Works Director Al Chwalak.

Al told me that the tar was only temporary, that eventually the tar would be replaced by brick.

"And what about our tree?" I asked.

"There's no room for a tree," he said.  "The strip is smaller since we widened the street."

"And you know that for sure?"

Long pause.

"I'd have to check with the city forester," Al said.

Now, I'd already called the city forester, Ed Casey, and he hadn't called me back.  Maybe a call from Al would get a better response.

Then I was away for a week, and when I called Al on my return, he told me that the forester hadn't called him back, but he'd try Ed again.  He also mentioned that city employees would be walking up State St. on Wednesday and Thursday, doing their punch list to track the work finished and unfinished.

So we made our signs, put them in front of Arise, and waited for the city to come by.

On Wednesday, we spotted the folks in suits and orange vests on the sidewalk outside our office.  I went out to talk to them, and one turned out to be Al Chwalek.

"You're getting three trees," he said.  We're bricking the strip but we'll create three tree wells."

"Thank you very much!" I said, and we shook hands.  So it turned out our signs were unnecessary, and yet I knew that without the dozen phone calls,our strip would have remained treeless.

Last week I drove by the house where I lived for thirty years, owned by a slumlord who never maintained the house, and which eventually, after the chimney started to fall to pieces and the foundation began to crumble, I had to leave.  Someone-- and I think not the city-- had cut not only the junk trees, but also a magnificent maple tree, at least a hundred years old,  that had provided afternoon shade for my bedroom on hot summer days.  Only a ten foot trunk still remained standing.  It was heartbreaking.

Waiting for a Message

by Rochelle Mass

Trees help you see slices of sky between branches,
point to things you could never reach.
Trees help you watch the growing happen,
watch blossoms burst then dry,
see shade twist to the pace of a sun,
birds tear at unwilling seeds.

Trees take the eye to where it is,
where it was,
then over to distant hills,
faraway to other places and times,
long ago.

A tree is a lens,
a viewfinder, a window.
I wait below
for a message
of what is yet to come.

You underestimate the power

“You underestimate the power of the dark side,” 

Darth Vader says to Luke.

“I know, he’s always doing that,” I say to my cat.

Art about the homeless

I came across this short poem on the internet and liked it-- there's a sense of stillness in the middle of its questions and observations.

What do we know about the homeless people
Sleeping in the cracks that we avoid?
Some seem drunk, some lost, some feeble.
What do we know about the homeless people?
One runs, one walks, one seems peaceful.
We turn our backs we’re so annoyed.
What do we know about the homeless people
Sleeping in the cracks that we avoid?

John K. O'Zemko The Poetry Showcase

"Land of Plenty" by Tammy deGruchy 
You can purchase this print to benefit the National Coalition for the Homeless here. 

The dead tailgate

Living in Springfield most of my life, sometimes I feel like every person's face I see is familiar to me, that I know everyone.  That's probably why it took a trip to Boston yesterday to re-trigger that strange realization that everyone is at the center of their own consciousness: homeless people at the Boston Common, people in suits, the dozens who passed me while chatting on their cellphones-- everyone is more real to themselves than any other person.  Realizing this is a strange, disquieting and liberating sensation.

Usually, if I mention this phenomenon to other people, I get a blank look or a response that indicates they think I might be crazy.  (Same with the other odd things that happen sometimes: like when a word or object loses its meaning and it becomes clear that the meaning is only what we give it.)  But I did have a satisfying exchange with my granddaughter's fiance Jeff a few weeks ago.  We had some time to kill in a bus station together and when I described my experience, he gave me a startled look.

"I think about this all the time!" he said.  No wonder we get along so well.  (In our other rare moments together, we talk about quantum physics-- something else that most of my family and friends have little tolerance to listen to.  Coincidence?  I think not!)

Anyway, driving home on the Turnpike, a poem I wrote some years ago popped into my mind so I share it here:

The dead tailgate.
They get on your ass
or pull right in front of you
so you can't pass.
Like they own the road,
like the road is their name.
Some pull over and watch you
from the breakdown lane.

Home again and busy like crazy

Some people like fun and adventure on their vacation. I prefer going to a place I love, where within a day I feel like I've been there forever. Thus for twenty years I camped with my kids at Nickerson State Park in Brewster, and for the last ten years-- now that my kids have lives of their own and prefer to vacation with their own children, best friends and husbands-- I go to Wellfleet with my own friends. No matter how rough my finances get, somehow I manage to pull it off.

I love the Lower Cape. It's incredibly new geologically-- only 10,000 years old!-- and won't last 10,000 more. Winter storms and rising sea levels have narrowed the Wellfleet beaches; at high tide many beaches have only a small strip of dry land, and this year, as two hurricanes passed close to Cape Cod, some beaches were actually cleared at high tide because there was no safe place to be.

This summer I didn't try to blog from the Wellfleet library, just walked on the beach, read, kept my journal, and savored the rich dreams that I only have when I let myself sleep until I wake up. A lot has changed for me in the twelve months between vacations: health challenges, job changes, and the sense that at 62 years old, I may as well do what I want!

Actually, I won't be 62 until December. Next year, at 62, instead of my annual contribution to the National Park system, I get to buy a Golden Eagle pass good for the rest of my life! That makes me smile, because who knows how long life will be, but I intend to get my money's worth.

I knew that as soon as I got home I'd have to jump in with both feet both personally and politically. Both my daughters and my only granddaughter have September birthdays; one nephew is getting married next Saturday and the other nephew's girlfriend is having a baby shower. I have to buy a dress, buy gifts, and thoroughly clean my 1991 Dodge Shadow, now home to a new bumpersticker: Everything is Connected. I wrote a couple of new poems while I was away, and I'm thinking it's time to pull my poems together in a collection.

Politically, there's a million things I want to do, but stopping a biomass plant from being built in Springfield is my number one priority (why I was in Boston yesterday), with door-to-door outreach about ward representation my second priority (why I'll be in Boston today, picking up a small grant for voter outreach).

Right now I'm living in all dimensions of my life and hope to stay that way for a while. I don't like myself much in stick-figure mode, even though I can be effective that way. I have a window beside my desk and I will leave it open as long as I can.

First one, then two, then ten, and now we see
a thousand flecks of red against the shore
where ladybugs have chosen they will spend
the end of summer. Now they fly no more
but nestle in the seaweed strands or in
the final August footprints that we leave
upon the cooling sand. What days they've seen!
What wind has passed beneath their wings, and how
much like the wind the breaking waves now sound.
They rest. They fall asleep. The sun goes down.

Being poor: call it a crime, call it a sickness, anything but what it is - Part One

Barbara Ehrenreich has an editorial in the New York Times today about the criminalization of poverty. Much of the essay is what I've been saying publicly for some years but it can't be said often enough. I did appreciate the reminder that sometimes creditors have the court issue a summons for you to appear, which you ignore at your peril, so I'd better go pick up the certified letter from Baystate Health that the letter carrier apparently tried to deliver to me.

One paragraph in particular rang a bell. Twenty-five years ago, at the end of a very bad day, my mother called to tell me she'd been denied fuel assistance-- $8 over the annual allowed income. She was a recent widow, dying from a chronic disease, whose children still at home worked low-wage jobs, and I knew she struggled every day to pay rent and meet other basic necessities. When we hung up, words came to me that became a line of poetry, and then the next line, and the structure of a poem quickly took shape. When I finished writing that poem, I was ready to go something, ready to fight against the systems and prejudices that oppressed people, although my knowledge about these things at the time was perhaps more intuitive than intellectual. A few months later, I found the other women with whom we would form Arise for Social Justice.

Here's the paragraph and the poem.

"The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks."

FIRST YOU CREATE THE POOR
THEN YOU CREATE WAYS TO HELP THEM

Here’s how to drive the poor crazy;
tell us it’s not charity,
make us beg for it.
Don’t be available by phone.
Make us wait in the office
until we discover
you’re gone for the day.
Put us in lines in the cold
where we’re ashamed to complain to each other.
Close the factories, open the soup kitchens.

Tell us there’s nothing you can do.
Bury us in forms and file numbers.
Lose our paperwork.
Teach us to work in obsolete fields.
Offer us plastic for unheated apartments.
Shame our children for having bad teeth
and for wearing sneakers in January.
Underpay the parents
and give the kids free lunch.
Close the schools, open the training centers.

Make sure the checks are late,
especially before Christmas.
Refuse to cash our checks
for lack of sufficient balance.
Jack up the prices in our neighborhood.
Give us medicine
medicaid won’t pay for.
Give us vouchers
no one will accept.
Take out the pay phones.
Make the buslines end nowhere.
Raise the rents and open the shelters.

Here’s how to bring on your own downfall:
get us together in the same waiting room
once too often.
Make the size of the lie greater
so our last illusions are destroyed.
Put more of us in jail.
Keep eliminating options.
Send our children home smaller
one more time.

Look away for a moment.

Lithograph by Blanche Grambs

Two poems from Iran

A Rumi Poem

How did you get away?
You were the pet falcon of an old woman.
Did you hear the falcon-drum?
You were a drunken songbird put in with owls.
Did you smell the odor of a garden?
You got tired of sour fermenting
and left the tavern.
You went like an arrow to the target
from the bow of time and place.
The man who stays at the cemetery pointed the way,
but you didn't go.
You became light and gave up wanting to be famous.
You don't worry about what you're going to eat,
so why buy an engraved belt?
I've heard of living at the center, but what about
leaving the center of the center?
Flying toward thankfulness, you become
the rare bird with one wing made of fear,
and one of hope. In autumn,
a rose crawling along the ground in the cold wind.
Rain on the roof runs down and out by the spout
as fast as it can.
Talking is pain. Lie down and rest,
now that you've found a friend to be with.

"These Branching Moments", Coleman Barks
Copper Beech Press, 1988

I have never feared death Even though Its hands were more fragile Than banality. I dread, however, to die In a land where The grave digger's wages Exceed the price of human freedom. Looking for, Discovering, Choosing freely, And transforming one's essence Into a fortress. If the price of death is higher than all that, I deny, in absolute terms, To have ever feared death

From Death
by
Ahmad Shamlu
translated by
Iraj Bashiri
Copyright ©, 2004, Iraj Bashiri
Photo from kashyap_hc's photostream at Flickr

TODAY, NEARLY A HUNDRED BLOGGERS ARE POSTING ABOUT IRAN AS PART OF A CONCERTED EFFORT AT BLOGGERS UNITE!

When the U.S. saves the world

I watched two disaster movies recently, Armageddon and Independence Day,
and I happened to notice
that when the alien mother ships are destroyed in Independence Day
and when the asteroid is blown to smithereens in Armageddon
and when people all over the world celebrate,
it is daylight everywhere at the same time:
Egypt and Australia, Iceland and India, China and Peru:
thus the glorious victory
of the United States
suspends natural law as well as belief
as we illuminate everyone
and it is daylight everywhere.


Photo from Mailonline

The urban legend goes like this:

The urban legend goes like this: back in the 70’s, the only decade in which I lived mostly away from Springfield, the welfare office was housed at the old King’s Plaza across from the Indian Motocycle building. Going there was a depressing experience—dingy, not enough chairs, not much real help available.

The waiting room was separated from the administrative offices by an old-fashioned wooden counter with one hinged section which could be lifted so someone could pass through.

One hot August day, a Black woman was standing at the counter filling out an application for welfare. She’d been given a yellow pencil and when she laid it down for a moment, it rolled to the other side of the counter and fell on the floor. The woman lifted up the counter, passed through, and squatted down to retrieve her pencil. The ubiquitous security guard stepped forward and put his hand on her arm to remove her. She fully straightened.

“Take your hand off my arm,” she said.

Exactly what happened next is unclear, but within five minutes , Springfield had a full-blown “welfare riot” on its hands—parking lot full of police, office full of angry, shouting women and crying children.

Apparently a welfare rights organization came from the riot but it was long gone by the time I returned to Springfield and was told this story.

I’d known that plaza well when I was a kid—I spent the first 8 years of my life on Willard Avenue. Maybe I knew Pete and Don’s Fruit Stand on the corner best of all—candy necklaces for a nickel!—but my dad bought auto parts and hardware at Western Auto and at least one of my Easter outfits came from King’s Department Store.

My childhood was rather sheltered. Years of rheumatic fever kept me housebound except in the summer, when I’d improve for a while. I couldn’t attend school and was taught at home by a kindly grayhaired tutor. I read everything I could get my hands on and spent much of my real life in Arabia, China, Ireland, Scotland and Sherwood Forest.

Never, never could I have known I would live most of my life in Springfield, spend time on welfare myself, and pick up the legacy of welfare rebellion to found a new welfare rights organization, Arise for Social Justice, now a poor people’s rights organization that’s lasted for twenty-four years.

In 1985 the long-empty Indian Motocycle factory was about to become the center of a controversy regarding its re-use: affordable housing or retail? (Sound familiar?) One part of the building had already been demolished and I often walked by the site while passing out flyers for Arise. It was on one of those trips that indulged a vision I knew would never come to be.

for the indian motocycle building

Plant this lot to clover. Never mind the bones

of rusted steel, green bits of broken glass

that shine like hidden water. They can be

the fossils for future history

and the struggling herbs be prophecy

for the generations who will wonder

what lies beneath the meadow thatch

where solstice dances lift the scent

of ancient summers.

Photo from Alki1's photostream at Flickr.

At the Dunkin Donuts parking lot

Four grackles make a donut dance.
First one cuts in and then the next,
and tossing high their heads, they catch
the crumbs of glossy minuet.

The cinnamon diminished by
sharp yellow beaks now grows as close
as earthbound herbs can get to sky:
A shift of wings and up all fly.

Sleep on...

Ghazal 314

You who are not kept anxiously awake for love's sake, sleep on.
In restless search for that river, we hurry along;
you whose heart such anxiety has not disturbed, sleep on.
Love's place is out beyond the many separate sects;
since you love choosing and excluding, sleep on.
Love's dawn cup is our sunrise, his dusk our supper;
you whose longing is for sweets and whose passion
is for supper, sleep on.
In search of the philosopher's stone, we are melting like copper;
you whose philosopher's stone is cushion and pillow, sleep on.
I have abandoned hope for my brain and head; you who wish for
a clear head and fresh brain, sleep on.
I have torn speech like a tattered robe and let words go;
you who are still dressed in your clothes, sleep on.

Translated by Jack Marshall, Arabian Nights, Coffeehouse Press, October 1986

Painting by Michael Green from Rumi Book.

Another old man

Another old man with a suitcase
stands at the interstate ramp
his grin has a glow in the twilight
his cap and cigar in his hand

and he wears a mystique of adventure
as if having nowhere to go
is only a door that is open
instead of a door that is closed.

In winter he wanders the city
he holds in his bare weathered hands
a map to a meal and a shelter
a night in the nobody land

where nobody lies in the silence
of curses that nobody hears.
The echo on asphalt is kinder
the street is no stranger to tears

Home again, home again

Back from visiting my daughter; glad to be with her and glad to be home.

While catching up on my messages, I found a link to a new Western Mass blog, and that led to another link, and that led to another link...most of them focused on poetry and arts.

Funny how we make choices without even realizing, at the time, that they are choices. When I was twelve, I thought I'd grow up to be a poet. Instead, I'm a community organizer who writes poetry.

All the new links I discovered have inspired me to share two poems.

Opal is sleeping
in an abandoned building
still has electricity praise god
who knows for how long.
She borrows a pan from the office
to boil water on her hotplate
to wash her hair.

I notice her cutting is getting worse
arms crisscrossed like her life
but she keeps me laughing.
"Don't even have a dollar
for a library card so I pretend to read."
She is twenty-four.
"See you tomorrow at the rally,"
she says, slamming my car door.

Everything’s damp this morning:
The crib, the bread, the floors:
It rained more hard at 6 a.m.
than ever I’ve seen before
& a fishhead keeps appearing
that my cats set free
from the next door Spanish garbage.
Thrown over the porch, it surfaces
Under the t.v.