The anti-immigrant law in Arizona

People in Arizona, at least the part that I'm familiar with, the S.E. corner, tend to be rather uninformed at best about the world they live in, and oftentimes willfully ignorant if not racist.

What I know from living in the military town of Sierra Vista is that there is a great influence of 1) ex-Southerners, 2) ex-military, 3) conservative evangelicals and 4) an acceptance of unjust laws to the point of disconnection with reality.

Now, this, as far as I'm concerned is a great change over the last 30 years, in that town. I don't understand it, especially the acceptance of unjust laws.

Ranchers, militiamen, government officials and business owners tend to represent Arizona as the last redoubt of independence from government authority and tyrannical "liberalism."

Having lived there for the past two years, I think that half the problem, literally, is the hot sun baking everyone's head. There's no escape from it, and it leads people to think that it is their fate to suffer from a harsh environment, and further to blame Other People's lack of understanding of them for the conflicts that they (Arizonans) are causing.

Strength is causing a lot of anger. There's no justification for it.

There will be an international war over these changes in Arizona.

There will be stubbornness and fear and rage on each side.

Being here in N>Y> makes me realize that not everyone likes the pain that this law is causing.

Behind the mask of government officials is the reality that I am topped.



I know what it is to want other people to be like me.

I also know that there's no reason for them to be so.

My life demands of me that I simply let it be. The victors will find out that there is no death, only cruelty.


This is what is sad ("tragic.")

I do love happiness.

I do love home.

Being here is teaching me to feel.

And I am her as cruelty.


Never can I ever know fair charges.


Make love not war

The crime is the pain of knowing home.

I no longer know that.

May there be justice.

Last Night

Thank you, C and R for having me go to last night's Poetry Reading in Woodstock (N.Y.)

Though while waiting my turn I thought I would bomb and that my poetry must certainly seem insubstantial in both length and quality, I went right up and delivered my lines with energy. I was surproised.

This was the first time in fifteen years that I had read poetry, at an event that I attended also due to C and R.

I hope that it won't be as long a break this time.

I really enjoyed the other poets, especially Bob Thomas, who made me feel like I had been a bore.

Finally, I am part of it.

Me have made pain strong.

I have to stop making life painful.

With the feelings that I have, darkness is a change. Hope can teach that I've been a pig.

I think that teaching that taking life is "dark" makes hate the motive of one's actions. Darkness has nothing to do with death. It is only a cry for life.

No one can be strong without having the courage to know that time only makes feelings part of life, not cruelty.

I have thought that in this world there is no "Cod". I am saying here that that's not true.

There is life, there is beauty, there is divinity in all creatures, no matter what gender. Stark hatred is nothing but the way that I made myself a "pest", i.e. a source of vengefulness, selfishness and anger. It's like worshipping all of that plus making all time bad.

Sounds grandiose?

It is that, but it's also completely factual.

I hope that in time I can let you know that I am approaching life with some degree of levity and good humor, and that there'll be a place for kindness and even love within it.

I force too much, but this is where my thoughts have led.

Poetry is not only a way to make words go together with music and rhyme but also a way to reach outward and inward to something that can teach, can bring about calm acceptance.

Changes

Today a Goddess was loved.

I sought it.

So mote it be.

I wish

I wish my mother loved me for myself instead of as her "firstborn child."

I wish I would remember that I cannot be her friend, but that I can be her daughter.

I wish I had a lover.

I wish I would not fear death.

I wish that people would love me.

People's Revolutionary

Sylvia Rivera was a proud, passionate, dedicated and strong political activist. She has inspired thousands if not more to take up the banners of individual freedom, of people's revolution, of gay/trans rights. She was the torchbearer of the Stonewall Riots, and to me the very personification of the late 1960s in America.

Political activists and her friends seem to have declared many interpretations of the sources of her strength and her prominence in our histories. I wish I knew exactly what to say that would unite us once again, as she did, around the issues she cared about. What I can do is to iterate, or re-iterate, that her so-called weaknesses, drug addiction, homelessness, prostitution, etc. were not signs of moral turpitude from which she had to be redeemed but were what fed her revolutionism. Perhaps when one has been living on the street from age of ten in a destructive, hostile and dangerous world, there is great motivation to try to change one's environment. I believe that her gift in doing so was due in part to great intelligence, to great perceptiveness, to great compassion, to a deep understanding of the way the world works politically and socially, but perhaps also due to the greatest possible ingrained in her very being love for her sisters and the knowledge that peace and justice are not abstract distant goals but matters for action in the here and now. She said to me once that she was the heart of the world, and knowing her, I believe that is true.

This is all a longwinded way to assert that Sylvia was free, not a tool for anybody, and that her freedom came from herself. To try to capture her as a representative for one kind of activism over another or to try to characterize her as simply one more heroine of the movement for change is a mistake. She was dedicated, she was powerful, and she sought unity and liberation for her sisters and all who had suffered from social injustice, but she was able to be that for us because she wanted to. That to me is her individuality, her liberation, and an ethic to rejoice in. Do because you wish to, not because you feel political obligation or "sympathy." Be there for who you are, and then you will find those with whom you stand.

I know that she was and is a figure for us to rally around, but let us not forget why, how, or ourselves in these struggles that matter so much.

Back East

I am presently looking out the window of Chelsea and Rusty's Pine Hill, N.Y. house at a beautiful Catskill Mountains scene of tree-covered mountains. It is so far very quiet and restful here, and I've pledged to help keep it that way.

I've been circulating a lot both physically and mentally. I've visited CR in Brooklyn, JW in Catskill. Now I'm here.

I want to convey that I understand that I cannot take people for granted, that I have to learn to live my own life, and that I have to love myself as I'm doing it.

For some reason that seems a tall order to me, but I have to face up to being a human being.

So much seems to be changing, but I need to, as JW said, make decisions. I need to write. I need not to destroy myself. I need to let myself be hopeful.

If anyone knows anyone who needs a typist/proofreader/writer/poet/religious-historical fanatic to start/finish/maintain tasks/projects/work (housework) I'll be glad to do it.

Chelsea has a great bookstore.

Yours,

c*mare

Mortality on the Thirteenth of June

Today is the fifth anniversary of my father’s death.

Feelings include: dismay (that the effects he had on my life are continuing); sadness (I wish everything were different); remorse (not sharing with him more on the intellectual level, which I know he longed for); anger and a corresponding determination to live.

My mother and I nearly went to Applebee’s after visiting his gravesite at the Veterans Cemetery this morning and propping up a large floral white and red cross against the headstone.

It was too early for them to be open.

I still don’t understand the necessity to feel like I am crying .

Anger does not feel happy. I have to work through it, according to the opinions/theories of my more emotionally developed friends.

Somehow I’ll be free.



Note: feelings are very much stuck (and tough to have).

I want to feel everything.

I want to be every thing.

I am still hopeful.

Maybe if the universe pours me out instead of me pouring it out, this will go better.


Feelings are wrapped tightly.

I am a terrorist and I want to live.

Any suggestions?