Writing, writing, writing...

I had a house in Africa, at the foot of the hill that was Dabakala. The water ran downhill creating a baffon of stagnant water where the mosquitoe orchestra played around my ankles each night.

That is how we're going to start the book we're writing about our Peace Corps experience - Pygmy and I. Bryan Mealer's article about the Congo in April's Harper's Magazine was a tough story. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't this simpleton Africa but this really, really honest account of a country that's completely and utterly screwed. However, it was the other depiction of Africa - of hopeless and despair. And I think there is another story that needs to be told. Pygmy and I are going to write a story about our experiences in Cote d'Ivoire - and it's going to be hilarious! And heartbreaking, fun, witty and honest. It's going to show you that we're realy all the same people - and we really all want the same things.

Of course, now that we're livin' in the same stinkin' city - we can't manage to find much time to hang out. Typical.

While I've been working to get back into my writing, I picked up an anthology of 20th Century American Poetry, spending the evening with a glass of wine and reading, mostly, the poets' biographies. Suicidal group those poets. So I wrote a response to Ginsberg's Howl and I thought I would share:

Howl (reprise)

Today
I have a bruise on my thigh
from clipping a table
One on my foot
from a Saturday night Stiletto
I feel like an old woman
easily bruising
I am so aware of my age
great years I'm told making better decisions in your 30's than your 20's
(which I'm not)
nor 47, I've been told jaded.
I still don't take no for an answer
Finding there are so many yeses to be stolen, snatch away
like a 15 year-old-shoplifting a trashy romance novel from the dollar isle of the Walgreens.

(Youaresooptimistic mumbled with admiring distain, screwyou I exhale quietly)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
Compliancy
Apathy
Greed
a TV in every bedroom and a myspace neighborhood more interesting than my own,

That's too harsh - tha's not my generation

Who came to the Great Cocktail Party called America to find that they were 25 minutes too late, the hors d'ouevres of crab and pumpernickel were dry,
the wine was gone and the cheese on the tray was shiny.

Who joined Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and Vista reaching out to their fellow humans who not only shared the same limited oxygen but a desire for a better future for their children only to find that poverty is in great demand keeping USAID and the World Bank in business

Who protested at WTO and School of the Americas
and sat a Canadian jail for two months
because someone changed the rules when they weren't looking

Who were Latch-Key kids, off spring of the 70's and 80's phenomenon called divorce and wondered if this thing called marriage meant anything at all when at five we dreamt of beautiful white weddings with Barbie and Ken or Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake
who had a rather large head

Who were told that we were apathetic, lazy, irresponsible and weren't going to amount to anything by all of the people who had raised us on nurture vs. nature
and we were left wondering how it was our entire fault.

Who left budding careers as teachers, publishers, academics, lawyers and musicians to repave the information super highway with the likes of Amazon, MySpace, and a blog at every dinner conversation.

Who grew up with AIDS - when Sex was still dressed in bell bottoms and disco shirts of the exploratory 70's; She came home from the cocaine-after-party to found a punitive father of an unforgiving God they somehow didn't meet in Temple or Sunday School.

Who joined radical and no-so-radical political groups seeking social justice (because an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere) and were rolled over by an Israeli bulldozer or were Rhoads Scholar victims of mob mentality in the newly release yet Apartheid-stricken South Africa

Who chewed on candied pacifiers because the ecstasy they raged with caused them to grind their orthodon-trick teeth as the electronic music went underground into warehouses, art houses, studios that you had to know someone in order to get to.

Who were murdered in a war they didn't vote for by a people who were supposed to greet them with roses and kisses in a land that use to host the beginnings of what we know as civilization.

Who educate, matriculate onto higher levels of degrees and learning, with jobs and later welcoming Sophie, Aisha, Caitlin, Aiden, Owen and Will into the world but still can't afford a decent home with out at least two incomes because some one forgot to raise the living wage in 1978

Who were also taught during an age of intense white-guilt and political correctness, establishing rules that did everything except tell them that the black/Hispanic/Asian/white American person sitting next to them was actually another human being.


X marks spot where the book was found on my neatly made bed
While the walls were licked greedily, truly, with brilliant orange flames.

You should be dead
The fire chief said to the soot mask known as my face without a single trace of tears
Screwyou I exhaled
Grabbing his affirmation from under his fireman's hat, behind his fire chief's badge,
to find my place at the table.