Norah Jones - Peace

Sunday poetry

What I Will


I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will 
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat. 
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will 
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or 
even hate you. I will 
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not 
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where 
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our 
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I 
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t 
louder than this breath.


~ Suheir Hammad

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Alicia Keys - Lesson Learned

Yesterday's Lesson

I've come to the realization that when it comes to politics, you can’t depend on anyone.

You’d think I’d have learned this by now but I’m a slow learner.

I’m thinking specifically about people whom I assumed leaned at least slightly left – one runs a progressive website, for Pete’s sake – but who regularly use Facebook and Twitter to direct so much snark, sarcasm and snide remarks toward liberals that the only label they deserve is “bitch.” (I’m not being sexist – one of them’s a dude.)

Yesterday, the Michigan Board of Canvassers – the body charged with approving or denying state ballot proposals – deadlocked along partisan lines and failed to certify more than 200,000 petition signatures collected by people wanting our democracy-killing emergency manager law, Public Act 4, to be placed before state voters. (I’ve written about Public Act 4 before. Google it.) Although the two Democrats on the board wanted to certify the petitions, the two Republicans supported a challenge seeking to disqualify the signatures because – and get this – the petition circulators used the wrong font size in the petition headings.

Regardless of the fact that this was a b*llsh*t reason to disqualify the signatures – most previous challenges based on type size and formatting have failed as long as the substance of the petitions and the number of valid signatures were clear – the thing that gets me is that people I thought I knew felt it necessary to ridicule the petition circulators for neglecting to do their homework and giving the Board of Canvassers a reason to send them packing. One even tried to make the case that as long as we have hungry kids digging in dumpsters for food in this state, we ought not to concern ourselves with less important issues like, you know, assaults on representative democracy and stuff.

I tried to make the case that there was no need to be derisive – that the signature collectors were fighting the good fight and deserved respect for their efforts even though they didn’t cross all their t’s and dot all their i’s (after all, they did collect 203,238 signatures, 40,000 more than the number needed to place the question on the November ballot) – and we’re allowed to care about more than one issue at a time but it was like trying to communicate with my ex-wives: they were so busy distracting and condescending and ignoring my points that our conversation went nowhere.

So not only did I learn that this important challenge to our emergency manager law is probably heading to the state Court of Appeals instead of the November ballot, but I also realized that just because people are thought to be progressive or insist they’re unbiased doesn’t mean they are. They might be more invested in composing clever Facebook posts and arguing than in working to improve government or at least supporting those who do.

We really do learn something new every day, don’t we?

Source: Huffington Post.

Fauns Have To Eat Too