Quotes and Poems: Day 45

Quote:

"You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated." -Maya Angelou

Poem:

Stonewall to Standing Rock

BY JULIAN TALAMANTEZ BROLASKI

who by the time it arrived

had made its plan heretofore

stonewall it had not a penny

thats not true it had several pennies

can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending

instead just tell them to honor the treaty

what can poetry do it

cant not not do nothing

it must undulate w/ the 2:30 pm dance music the sole

patrons at stonewall

there was a shooting in ohio today

the music made me feel a little anxious it was

hard thumping dance music a notch

upwards of 100 bpm notoriously the beat of life

the optimum tempo for cpr

I consider downloading a metronome real quick to test it to tap it out but

I don't want to be 'anywhere near' my phone

meaning it's in my bag on the stool 2 feet from me

there is an amy winehouse video on no sound at least

I think it is amy winehouse

she is at a funeral black and white

there is a stuffed bird slightly obscuring my view of the tv

it looks like a kind of tall pigeon w/ mottled brown

and russet with a white ringlet necklace and black dots

is it a carrier pigeon I wonder I sent

a text to jocelyn at standing rock several texts

are you still on the road

ariana and i r gonna go out there in december

sending love to you

tried calling bt yr mailbox is full

send a sign when u can xoxo

howdy. thinking of u w love.

hope all is well. send smoke

signal telegram carrier pigeon

send love to my twospirits at the

winyan camp.

last night we prayed for her and for zephyr and l. frank &

the twospirits especially at standing rock

there's no sign of that struggle here but they are selling tshirts

commemorating

the other and the six days of riots

led by transwomen of color they later tried to whitewash in that

terrible movie

like it was all these hot angry upright downright forthright white gays

so ready

for the revolution

and now people are treating standing rock like burning man

a drink called goslings

videos by the pigeon misaligned with the music

the smell of booze in the air made both of us recoil slightly I saw

or felt it

I'm here to make a poem I was already paid for when I had less than $2 in

my bank account (and I joked I would go right to the bar and buy every-

body drinks ) not even enough for a subway ride and I used the 58 cents I'd

gotten for busking for the first time alone in the long hallway between the

library at bryant park and the orange line trains by the ovid quote 'gutta

cavat lapidem' water (or a drop of water really) hollows out

a stone. lapidum a stone or rock ariana once described cd wright's style

as 'lapidary'

I loved this as a description of writing like the hieroglyphics are

literally lapidary and I told my grandmother about it as we

were driving from mescalero to albuquerque she knew all about the

plants and the names for all the rockforms mesas or buttes or

ziggurats and I said how do

you know all these she said by long observation and

I used to study geology in college I wanted to major in it

but they wouldn't allow women

to major in the hard sciences then so she

began to study religion

tho she already had medicine

ricky martin on the beach

or is it someone younger sexier

the grand canyon splitting apart

is it an ad is it a video

even the sands at the beach

are bouncing with the beat

the tempo has stayed very similar this whole time a tick

up I suspect from 100bpm