Hand-Crank Paper

Don't ask me to speak aloud.
There are switches to
Fill in blanks
In cadence
Imprecise and chopped together
From your scraps.

Double time my interpretation into
Auditory stimulation of
Communication centers
Beyond the inherent
Protocol for the duration of
The mechanism.

(music boxes cranked fast
Distort tunes
Throw off gears
And break springs. )

I need no words

I need no words
To fly
To scream or to
Let you know yes
To communicate
Create build love empower.


Words are only involved
Because you would call me
Storyless
Deny my oppression as real
And yeah this is bending
Into it but


You never would learn
Without your own
Supports and adaptations.


Maybe your over dependance
Is your own damn
Limit of "vision."



----

Written in response to "typical" language processing privilege by otherwise awesome community storytellers, Allied Media Conference in Detroit, June 29th, 2012

Allied, Unallied, Re-Ally.

Allied forces grey and green and flying

Technicolor on the television

our memorabilia reflecting

reminiscing

that our father's father's (father's)

alliance was not based on the same

wants needs expectations

of our allies...

And today I sit in a sea wider

Broader than the Atlantic that frothed

at Nomandy when my "grandfather"

climbed

the beaches soon to be wet with

a fluid that is NOT ocean

contemplate wonder self-doubt

me as ally...

My ancestral family rose up out of

Normandy and conquered and pillaged

presumed dominance

over those whose father's fathers were kings

In the name of our own prides

to subjugate the pride of a culture still rebuilding from

the last invasion...

I have to ask myself if their blood runs

too hot within my veins? Does it

spoil

my heart beats, my ancestral privilege?

Does conquest or obliviousness run in the

double helix of my fathers and again

in me...?

As my Grandfather's brothers walked into

a camp teeming with death unpredicted-

unimaginable-

did they feel the foot of their soul sink

into the quicksand of realization?

Or did they allow pride to restablize

them as heros....?

When we cast our roles as heros

denying how we conquest or ally without

perspective

how is that any different than the ignorance

we declare ourselves fighting to conquer?

Good things do sometimes come from our ignorances-

but should they?

Poetry and the vision of thought

I pour out these words

to describe the state of being

in my head

before I can make them form

the language that you all are speaking

Hours Days weeks at a time they build up

till over washing into this flood plain

of poetry

before fermenting, bubbling, then

coalescing into words that make sense

or seem to

Until I realize I've misunderstood your language again.

I know my place

But:

I worry if I don't try to drive

even if it means I crash and burn

I will be leaving the embers to burn

to ashes all that remains in this shell

an egg that upon cracking will

float off on a breeze.

Chicks are given beaks so that

they can crack their own shells

from the inside OUT into the world

A self determination that allows

the pheonix to blossom up again stronger

after one more self destruction.

If I do not crash (crack) myself

how can the flare of light come

as I push my beak out of my shell

to take in life anew?