Your Very Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem

Subway to the Sea
Wilshire and La Brea
Los Angeles, CA

I love a construction site. Did you know that about me? At the end of my street, the great city of Los Angeles is busy building a subway stop and tunneling through for the great Subway to the Sea that will run from downtown, east of me, to the Pacific Ocean, west of me. Until it's finished, which they're estimating will be a decade from now, the construction and traffic and all manner of just -- well -- shit, is going down, but I aim to make the construction beautiful. As I returned to my neighborhood after a night in Orange County, I drove north on La Brea and looked up into the blue sky to see the biggest flag hanging from a crane, blowing in the breeze and looking pretty damn beautiful against the blue sky. If you know anything about me, you know I'm not particularly patriotic, and I'm not making any apologies for being more of an imagine there's no country, I wonder if you can, kind of woman than one who feels proud of the country that I just happened to be born in instead of any number of other great ones. But today is the fourth of JUUUUUULY, so it's a fine day to celebrate some words of Walt Whitman, probably the quintessential American poet:

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school, or church, or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman, 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass 

Hedgebrook, Day 10

Windowseat in Willow Cottage, Hedgebrook

I startled at the sudden buzz of a fly, so deep I was in the writing. I've been killing flies all week, merciless and decidedly un-Buddhist. Where in the hell did that one come in? I thought. Had it slipped through a hole somewhere or been asleep and woken? Do flies sleep? It sounded frantic and beat against the glass of the window-seat. I opened the window a crack, and it made its way out.

Have you ever seen a bird climb a tree? I watched a small one make its way from the ground, up the pine outside the window, skittering up the bark, navigating the whorls and sappy spots and hopping in increments at a diagonal. When he reached a particularly large knot, though, he stopped and flew up to a branch where he perched in ease.

Happy Fourth of July. At risk of offending someone, I must admit that it's nice not to be waving a flag but to be deep in the greeny woods in the company of birds and bugs who know no country.

Six Pictures, Three Sentences

Sophie is a beautiful young woman, sitting in a wheelchair, the v of her clavicle (a bird flew through fireworks, later, the same v).


The moon was a circus peanut in a blue sky bag.

The sun went down, two men were in pink and so was the sky.

Of Thee I Sing

Someone is always grumpy on the fourth of Juuuuuuuuuly. 

It might be hereditary.

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Italian Cocktails

Last night, we went to a party in the Hollywood Hills, laughed and talked with old friends, ate delicious North Carolina barbecue (there's none better), watched fireworks spread all over the valley below us and drank a wonderful concoction of Aperol, Prosecco and soda water, called an Italian Spritz. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:Ice Cubes (approximately 3 or 4 ice cubes)2 to 3 ounces Prosecco or any sparkling wine1 1/2 ounces Aperol*Splash of soda water, sparkling water, mineral water, or Club SodaOrange wedge or sliceGreen Olive (optional)* Aperol is an Italian orange liqueur. It has become Italy’s most popular light spirit. Aperol Spritz is one of the lightest cocktails in the world having only 7 to 8% alcohol by volume
Preparation:Fill a glass (highball glass or white wine glass) 1/4 full with ice cubes (you want to chill the drink and not water it down). Pour in the Prosecco and then top with Aperol. Add the soda water. Stir gently until mixed.Garnish with an orange slice (either add slice of orange, twisting to release some juice and placing in the glass or simply use orange slice as garnish). Some places add a green olive (your choice).Makes 1 serving.

That's all I've got for you this gray morning in Los Angeles. I'm off for a long drive to pick up The Big O and really very excited to see him after two weeks!

Happy Fourth

Learning to Love America


because it has no pure products


because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline
because the water of the ocean is cold
and because land is better than ocean


because I say we rather than they




because I live in California
I have eaten fresh artichokes
and jacaranda bloom in April and May


because my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows
my hunger with my mouth


because I walk barefoot in my house


because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don't know


because to have a son is to have a country
because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them


because it is late and too late to change my mind
because it is time


Shirley Geok-lin Lim
via Poetry Foundation

Say it with Firecrackers

Watch THIS for some fun --

Read this:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ... 

--Thomas Jefferson

In these days of strident Christianity, I like to think that this is what our troops are fighting for --

Enjoy this:

Fourth of July, 2002

Happy Fourth of July!